Stolen from @vmstan
More analysis from @wiredfire:
It’s nothing to do with [difficulties in using multiple platforms]. It’s to do with the massive backlash they got on Fedi for their CEO being all Trumpy and somewhat horrible right wing. So they’ve run away because they were made to feel unwelcome on account of us not letting their BS fly.
Original screenshot is of the bio of https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy and wasn’t a post (that confused me for a sec).
This is good news. It means we aren’t monitizeable enough.
I’m not on the exit proton bandwagon. All CEOs are awful and I don’t have the energy to do the vote-with-your-dollars ethical consumption dance every time we’re freshly reminded of that fact. Especially not with the only service out there that packages data integrity, privacy, and ease of use in a complete suite at the level that proton does.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say this a million times again, capitalism is simply not viable. The main mechanism to punish bad business practice (using a different business) also hurts the significantly weaker consumer; meaning it will almost never be used properly.
I point this out here because I agree with your stance and cannot stand the “vote with your wallet” nonsense people pretends works.
This makes it really difficult to navigate the privacy space because eventually a cornerstone like Proton is “corrupted” and we have no way to correct it. We seriously need people thinking about solutions to this problem, or we’ll be going nowhere fast.
Techies interested in privacy and fairness is just another target/focus group to be marketed to…
But even given that every company sucks(eventually) and every ceo is an asshole. there’s something to be said about about spreading out and e.g. using proton over gmail and other google services.they might both suck, but at least if it’s spread out, there’s not one asshole ceo that controls all our stuff at once. You can’t vote with your wallet, but preventing monopolies (the natural end game of a free market) by supporting smaller alternatives can still be worthwile. Not that it solves the underlying issues, but i think it can at least slow the decay a bit.
Yup. If there was an encrypted, federated solution that provided all of the services that proton does, even if half as polished, I’d absolutely consider switching. I’d even consider running my own node. All centralized solutions that see success also become over time the thing you want to flee.
Proton is dead
fuck proton. finally started moving to it from gmail like a month ago. then the ceo thing happened, now this. good thing i only changed email to a few places so i can immediately steer away…
Any alternatives?
I found this site useful. The list of alternatives is very large.
From my looking around at other info and advice, I’d say that Posteo is the best one if you don’t have custom domains; and that mailbox.org or possibly Tuta mail is best if do need a custom domain. Tuta is probably best if you need it to be free.
Another solid option not on that list is fastmail.fm (which is Australian).
gmail
(this is a joke dont hunt me down pls)
Proton is going boots up.
Proving that a company is not a person. A person goes tits up when the boots go up.
You know I was like this close to getting proton VPN before this whole thing started. I’ve been researching for like 6 months to decide which one I was going to switch to. They were on the short list. Bullet dodged.
Mullvad
Ah yeah, located in Sweden, country known for the Pirates Bay scandal that may also soon introduce a law requiring apps to have backdoors to access user’s data. Great choice.
You owe it to yourself to research past the platitudes. Then you would know that they already got raided and the police left empty handed because there was nothing to find.
Sweden is also at this moment preparing to pass legislation that will require backdoors into encrypted services.
The government is preparing legislation, Parliament has yet to decide on it.
Looking at other Western countries and their history of privacy invading surveillance laws, how likely do you think it is that Sweden won’t pass it? Are you willing to bet your own money that they won’t?
I don’t hade to look to other countries, Swedens track record for enacting this kind of legislation is quite bad. But the process is still transparent and even if new legislation pass it won’t come into effect immediately. So taking actions at this stage is premature imo.
Yes? It’s a pretty small bet.
I just had signed up to de-Google as it looked like a good suite of drive/mail/vpn but I’ve just deleted the account citing this ass-hattery as the reason.
deleted by creator
The ONLY reason I have Proton email, is because my bank thinks it’s the only secure email in the world…
Making quite a few ungrounded assumptions here. Maybe your platform is just shit?
You’d think Fedi would be a good place to be active on from a privacy-conscious user-base perspective, but I think this is the second time they leave Fedi? Either way, I guess being on Reddit allows them to moderate all the naysayers away.
I made this basic comment about the CEO saying something pro-Trump and my comment got removed by a mod of /r/degoogle on the grounds that it wasn’t factual.
Pretty infuriating.
/r/degoogle is total bullshit. That sub routinely and consistently shits on any non-google suggestion, for all sorts of bogus reasons. It’s like the sub exists to trick people into thinking google is impossible to avoid, rather than just supporting steps away from google.
There are a lot of advantages to the fediverse, but privacy really isn’t one of them.
At face value this is true, but I challenge you to consider the knock-on effects of having a decentralized platform. One of which being that it become increasingly difficult to coerce someone into giving PII (i.e phone number) to signup - they’ll just go elsewhere
This effectively makes it more private for everyone.
Nobody thinks it is, but privacy-interested peope are more likely to congregate on an open and decentralized playform not controlled by the privacy-invading corpo megaghouls
Can’t have privacy for your speech if you don’t have the freedom to speak in the first place.
Maybr not exactly privacy, but as long as your instance admins doesn’t leak you IP, you have much more privacy than on Reddit. There are no algorithms trying to show you relevent ads, because your account isn’t tied to your identity (unless your instance admin is evil).
Also, most Lemmy instances allows Tor. Yay for anonymity.
For me, the main advantage of the model is “you cannot conveniently observe everyone’s activity from one place”.
True, but privacy conscious people tend to also be wary of concentrations of power in a platform, such as Reddit or Twitter. If you are aware of the issues with a closed system you tend to also be aware of privacy issues, security issues, state censorship, and so on, so the user base is more aware in the fediverse and if they are leaving for Reddit that really does say something. I won’t be using their service, I feel very lucky to have found out about this before shifting as I was in the process of finding a stable email host and blending with the VPN seemed financially reasonable, guess I will stay with Mullvad and get a separate email provider.
With ActivityPub specifically, I’m aware. Yet privacy-conscious people tend to congregate there as well, which was my point.
I get tired of being so right all of the time
Is it time to change VPN platforms?
ProtonVPN has more servers, so its less likely to be blocked than Mullvad or IVPN. When I was using ProtonVPN I see much less “Log in to prove you are not a bot” or the reddit snoo avatar getting mad at me for using a VPN (there are still Movies and TV discussions I’d like to read).
Nevertheless, I’m currently using IVPN, I’m not sure if I’m staying tho.
Also: For people in authoritarian countries (like actual ones that already censored the internet), it would be difficult to pay for a VPN since banks would also block the transaction and cryptocurrency is likely also banned, so ProtonVPN’s free tier is their only choice. (I’m not in a country that has censorship yet, but just want to mention that some people are in that situation)
Also Mullvad is slow, I recommend IVPN over Mullvad.
Absolutely. Mullvad is way better.
How so?
it has a cool sounding name, of course!
Lmao a valid point, but I’m a function over form sort of guy
well, in that case, Proton has more servers, and also allows port forwarding. so don’t use mullvad if you’re planning on sailing the high seas.
Mullvad, lad
It’s to do with the massive backlash they got on Fedi
That makes no sense, considering the message in question was posted on Xitter, and the backlash they received was far worse and more public on Reddit, where they are directing their followers to go. It won’t stop anyone from talking about them here.
The message was on Xitter from Andy Yen, but it was highlight on Mastodon by Jonah from Privacyguides.
The official Proton account also tried to defend Andy Yen on Mastodon (and later deleted it).Here the link to the thread on Mastodon.
it was highlight on Mastodon by Jonah from Privacyguides.
Leaving Mastodon doesn’t make Jonah disappear.
The official Proton account also tried to defend Andy Yen on Mastodon
They also tried to defend him on Reddit. Again, it makes no sense.
which they have full control over
And yet it remains.
which got removed by a Proton fan
They have the ability to moderate their own comments on any platform.
Your account history is public
Do you think there’s nothing that archives the content from Reddit? How do you think they knew it was removed?
The corporation doesn’t have to stifle 100% of their criticism, they just need to disseminate enough of a counternarrative, with PR statements that are technically true enough, to overpower the criticism so that it no longer matters.
(Plus, based on your last comment, I know you already have a “they can moderate anything they feel like” response lined up, if they do start clamping down even harder where they can.)
What’s Xitter?
It’s like Twitter but Xitty (pronounced like Xi Jinping).
Portmanteau of X (current name) and Twitter (former name)
And shit, don’t forget the shit
I suggest Mullvad as an alternative to Protons VPN services.
Yeah, plenty of good VPN alternatives. Not so much for email though if you want encryption.
I would not rely on provider-dependent encryption anyway. If you want actual encryption - use PGP.
Don’t use PGP.
https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem/
Also read “Why does Tuta Mail not use PGP?” here: https://tuta.com/encryption
tuta.com seems a good option, I switched to them a few months ago and so far so good
Tuta is in Germany, part of the 14 Eyes, which share intelligence with the US. If you are an American engaged in activism under the current administration, do not use Tuta. They are absolutely obligated to comply with sealed warrants for your data, and nobody there is going to put their livelihood or freedom on the line for you, nor should they be expected to.
Good thing it’s encrypted then.
So is Proton. And Proton is in a country where it’s illegal to give data to the US government.
They don’t encrypt as many parts of emails as Tuta does, tho.
A point that’s largely moot, considering all of nothing is still nothing, which is what the US gets from Proton, while Germany will hand over whatever little information Tuta has when asked nicely.
Yeah I was considering this service. There are a few things that make me hesitant, like searchability of emails and possibly calendar features and integration. But this one is definitely at the top of my list.
Searchability is good, better than Proton even. I’m sure it requires keeping all the emails stored locally but thats ok with me
Yeah I’ve seen people run into issues not finding some emails, but from what I researched, this seems like a really good service. Slowly moving my stuff back into my hands, so email is coming lol
Seconded.
For anyone considering switching though, make sure:
- You don’t need port forwarding (e.g. for faster P2P online gaming, or various other P2P services) since I don’t believe they have it, or if they do it certainly doesn’t work well
- You’re okay with a smaller selection of servers, since Mullvad has less
I will say though, I found less sites throttled/blocked me on Mullvad in some cases, since Mullvad’s IPs are less widely shared than Proton’s, so that’s a plus, but a few sites will have hard blocks on some VPN providers like Mullvad that they’ve made manual exclusions to for larger VPNs like Proton.
From what I understand, Mullvad removed port forwarding to clamp down on piracy.
Yeah, their Linux dev team consists of two people, who, I believe only handle Linux things as part of their responsibilities and there is no dedicated team. I’m not salty that people have been asking for a Linux drive client for 4 years and the only response came this year saying ‘there’s only two people we’re focused on mail and vpn clients at the moment’.
Not trying to take away from Yen saying dumb shit with the company account or any of the mounting criticisms they’ve earned of late. Just a point toward their explanation not actually being too far out of the realm of possibility. And the likelihood of their PR/Social Media team being similarly small to the point of being understaffed.
Like yeah, this is needlessly antagonistic and blunt? Sure, but that feels more down to bad copy than the actual intent and direction of a companies PR dept, right?
“Due to a need for consolidation in the face of limited resources we will no longer be able to maintain our current scope of social media presence. This account will remain active and be updated automatically but for the foreseeable future it will be unmonitored. Please join us on Reddit or contact support if you have any questions! Thanks Mastodon, toot on!”
Explains more clearly the logistical need to limit focus without disregarding the importance of the community. Someone hire me, I need a job. Leaves the account open to be reactivated some day and there’s no reason they couldn’t automate posting there.
I use ProtonVPN on Linux and I don’t even use a client. There’s Wireguard and OpenVPN right there.
I was tempted to cancel after the CEO comments on politics, Reddit is a bit much though.
Reddit privacy policy is dog shit, having a company advertise privacy and use Reddit is comical
