This might sound crazy but this is way worse to me than the CEO simping for orange man. At least for Trump he has a semi plausible excuse.
Reposting stuff on Mastodon or Bluesky barely requires any additional effort. And I cannot think of a good reason to close abandon the free publicity when they already have it set up.
Red flag… Do they tools to migrate ?
Lmao k bye Proton
I feel like those resources are about to get even more limited.
Not even Bluesky, they went straight to Reddit. Shame.
It’s a sad day when “you can find us over on Discord” is a better option.
At least reddits getting selfaware enough that every other post is ppl getting mad at ppl telling them to google since those posts are what they find off google, or they’ve already googled and found nothing.
The immediate assumption that everyone is an idiot who hasnt tried to google is annoying but used to be valid, ppl got lazy there (including me) and would just ask questions that were easily googleable, the issue is those posts are now first on google and none of them have answers lol
After Andy Yen’s endorsement of the orange utan, I would seriously reconsider using any Proton product.
Yen tried to backpedal meekly several times since then, to get out of the pickle he got himself into with his definitely-not-impressed customers, but it’s a bit late for that: either he’s pro-Trump or he’s naive. Either way, he makes Proton sketchy.
Idc if I likes Trump or not (even though Trump is garbage); but I do care that he says the Republicans - the party that has spent years attacking encryption and privacy, who has sued to obtain private medical records of women and trans people who see doctors, and who is funded by billionaire big tech moguls - is the better option for privacy.
Also just taking ANY position for a leader of the US - one of the biggest parties to the Five Eyes agreement - just leaves a bad taste.
Any alternatives for their VPN service with port forwarding?
There are none of them as good as Proton.
For example, AirVPN hasn’t had any security audits and doesn’t seem too interested in them either due to monetary concerns. That’s a deal breaker for me.
Airvpn, or Azirevpn if you’re ok with few servers
Of those I’ve only used Azire, and it worked well. I’ve seen Airvpn recommended often though
Mullvad (or Mullvad on a router with Adguard)
Mullvad no longer has port forwarding.
Private internet access is nice
Do you have any recommendations for someone who just uses them for email?
Posteo is good. Have been using them for 2 years now.
I’m a happy mailbox.org user
I use them too. Their web ui and app are totally ugly crap but if you use it with thunderbird or another mail app it’s good.
Just switched and couldn’t be happier. Now I can use FairMail as a client and loving all the extra features.
I used a custom but generic sounding domain name which made the switch pretty seamless.
I made it, so I’m obviously very biased, but I think it’s better than Proton. It’s got some really useful organization and anti-spam features.
The labeling idea is pretty interesting, an email service with inbuilt proxy, but your website is pretty light on details. Stuff like pricing or custom domain support is absent.
Good point. I’ll add that.
I’m working on custom domain support right now. And pricing is pretty straightforward, since I only have extra storage and sending options. You get 500MB for free, and the ability to receive email. Sending is $1/month. I put that behind a paywall to prevent spammers from using Port87. As a small email service, if you send spam, the big players can blocklist you and kill your service. So, keeping my SMTP servers’ IP address reputation high is really important.
You can join the Discord to follow along with new features and updates:
I’ve been using Tuta for more than 8 years now and had one serious issue with their service during this time (longer outage, pretty early on). Other than that I have nothing but positive experience with them.
They’re also based in Germany if that makes any difference.I’ve been a Runbox customer for many years. Never had any problem with them. They’re located in privacy-friendly Norway.
Been very impressed with Runbox since Andy turned out to be an idiot.
Tutanota
Seconded, but they just go by Tuta now.
I’ve got an account with tilde.club
They even have a newsgroup service for the tilde community. It’s not full on Usenet and there aren’t any hosted files, but it’s a nice community feature.
You get a gigabyte soft cap (three gig hard cap and a week grace period to get back to soft cap) but it actually talks to google, for the time being, and I’ve been making an attempt at migrating to the point of using gmail as a ‘talking ot my republican family’ and ‘spam’ account.
I think im going to try it out. I dont like where proton is going.
https://tilde.club/signup/ https://tilde.club/wiki/faq.html
Remember. This is a hobbiest community. Personal recommendation is using tilde.club for emails, and spread your other needs across other tilde servers.
Yes commandline interaction is required.
Save your SSH keys not just on your computer but in a couple other secure places. If you have to pull them from backup, remember to reset the file’s permissions otherwise SSH won’t like them. Setting up a password backup is very helpful here especially since that will let you use your mail address with apps such as k-9 on android, or claws/thunderbird/outlook for desktop.
oh yeah def. Im going to donate if/when I take a look. sdf also has something similar.
SDF’s been, in my experiance, less sure? I don’t want to talk trash about what is effectivly pubnix’s grandaddy. I’m going to put money in the pot because I want that place to keep running, but i view it more as curiosity than cornerstone.
Not OP, but I’ve been using Fastmail for a few years now and have had no issues with them.
Migadu!
Hotmail. Been using it since high school and every data breach and fuck up taught me something new.
Just did the transition off Proton! Most replacement self hosted in my homelab except for email.
Does Proton really support Trump? A deeper analysis
One thing to note is that while on Reddit, people are alleging that Proton is a company run by a fascist, pro-MAGA, pro-dictatorship CEO, users on X are accusing Andy and the company of being anti-MAGA/anti-Trump.
So, in the face of all the evidence I’ve found, to compare Andy to a tech oligarch like Zuck and Elon, who are now bootlicking on display for all to see, is not supported by the evidence.
[…]
However, being disillusioned with one party on one issue doesn’t mean that all of a sudden Andy Yen changed all of his stances and that now he’s actually pro-Republican or pro-MAGA. All of the evidence gathered suggests the exact opposite.
Considering how many users here have expressed similar disillusionment with the current Democratic party, it seems a bit hypocritical to judge Andy Yen for having the same feelings (or expressing them on occasion).
This whole “Proton supports MAGA” thing is another example of internet mob-think where everybody has an opinion informed by no facts at all, actively ignores or dismisses the larger context in order to protect that fragile opinion from reality, and most haven’t even looked at the original statements that sparked the controversy.
Considering how many users here have expressed similar disillusionment with the current Democratic party, it seems a bit hypocritical to judge Andy Yen for having the same feelings (or expressing them on occasion).
The only thing Yen should have done to be credible is shut the fuck up and not take any side, or express any political opinion. I expect no less from the CEO of a company that pretends to sell me privacy from a neutral country.
I’m not saying Yen is a raging magat. I’m saying the moment he opened his trap about US politics, he tainted his company and damaged its credibility.
Ah yes, I too require everyone else to only express views that agree with my own or else keep silent. Of course, I am the only person allowed to have nuanced opinions.
🤡
“10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
Yen said this as our government is being devoured by someone with massive conflicts of interest. In no way is this nuanced. It was in extremely poor taste and the worst time to say something political.
We don’t use real names on the internet for a reason. CEOs that use their own names as platforms should have a department (or at least a publicist) take a look at their posts as it can effect a company.
People are leaving the platform now because of something pretty avoidable.
Sure sure. The guy who unprompted endorsed a trump appointment that has deep US Telco ties, bizarrly said “the GOP is the party for the little guy,” had nothing but wonderful things to say about J.D vance, stated that Chuck Schumer slow rolled 2 internet privacy bills because of “quid pro quo” with his daughters working for big tech, used the phrase “triggered” unprompted, and just randomly added “88” to the end of his new user name.
Yeah, that guy is just neutral and disillusioned with the Democratic party. It’s not utterly clear what spaces and politics he aligns with. That would just be wholley unknowable.
At least personally I agree with the part of his statement about the corporate capture of the democratic party, I don’t think that’s the part most people have a problem with imo. It was saying that republicans are now the party of the little guy, or more likely to tackle abuses by big tech that was dumb. Obviously neither party is going to seriously go after any abuse or anything, but the richest tech CEO is blatantly running the country under the republican president, so saying they’re “more likely” to help is straight up a lie lol. I don’t think calling Andy a fascist is correct either, but I also very much disagree with his opinions of the republican party. Under either party billionaires and corporations are in control, but Trump is definitely not making that better at all.
And honestly all things considered Lina Khan was a pretty great FTC chair tbh, and Johnathan Kanter was pretty decent as the head of the antitrust division too. He was probably a lot better than Gail Slater will be. She’s literally a VP in a few different big companies, so touting her as a champion of the people against the abuses of big tech feels either misinformed or disingenuous.
There is not and never was any endorsement of Trump. I wish people would stop spreading such wild disinformation.
He also never backpedaled.
Here is the tweet - if that’s not the most flagrant Trump bootlicking, I don’t know what is:
And here is the backpedal:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/
Believe what you will. I believe what I read.
I wouldn’t call that boot licking. Maybe a misguided opinion.
I think he internet mob went a little hard on this one.
A perfectly guided opinion. You do get why the CEO likes Trump and left the fediverse while staying on Twitter, right?
Looking at the board of directors for the proton foundation, I’d say people are jumping to conclusions way too fast about proton.
I don’t like that they’re ditching Mastodon to focus on reddit. But, it makes sense in a marketing perspective. Reddit has a LOT more users, and potential customers. If they indeed don’t have the resources to manage both then Reddit is the best option if they want to attract more people as customers. On Mastodon they’re pretty much preaching to the choir.
Here is the tweet
I know exactly what you’re referring to.
if that’s not the most flagrant Trump bootlicking, I don’t know what is
I agree, you don’t know what is. Agreeing with a single decision someone makes is not an endorsement. But that’s exactly the kind of irrational dichotomic reaction I expect from society these days.
And here is the backpedal
I don’t see anything here that could be construed as backpedaling. If he were smart he would have, but if anything, he doubled down several times.
I believe what I read.
You didn’t read that, you made it up.
It’s kind of stupid to say that Republicans aren’t the party of big business anymore. Both parties are parties of big business.
If you want to claim it was a stupid thing to say, I will agree with you 100%. If you want to claim that it was a tacit endorsement specifically of Trump, you are just wrong and spreading disinformation.
“No you don’t get it! Supporting trump isn’t really supporting trump! Just bc the CEO likes Trump’s policy and endorsed him doesn’t mean he endorsed him!”
Normal people don’t jerk off Trump like that. Dude is blatantly a Nazi, if you can’t see it that says a lot about you
“Anyone who disagrees with me is a Trump supporter and a nazi!”
See, I too can make up things that you didn’t say and put it in quotes and pretend like you did.
I’ll sometimes agree with stuff Trump does too, like appointing Tulsi Gabbard, but I’m not going to say this means Republicans have become the party of anti war lol
Sad, but I’m largely indifferent to this.
Gross. I’m slowly moving from ProtonMail to Port87, which is kind of embarrassing because I made Port87 and launched it almost two years ago. Switching email providers is hard though. You have to update everything.
Any alternative free VPN’s
If you aren’t the customer, you are for sure the product. Even then, sometimes you are both.
So first taking Trump’s side and now that…
I wonder if Andy was watching fuckface destroy Unity, and just thought to himself, What could I say or do to aggressively power-fuck the Proton brand?
Honestly they should be using https://publer.com/ or something similar. Makes publishing and maintenance of social media very easy. If you have a large org it makes sense to publish to multiple platforms.
There’s not much point in “post and ghosting” to platform if you’re not going to engage with its’ users. You might as well just direct people to your blog instead.
I agree!
Other “like” tools to publer have comment/reply options so it just goes to the HR/publicist/etc… I used to be part of a fortune 500. Its the only way to actually keep up with anything. Keyword finding, etc…etc…Its all automated nowadays. Im actually not sure about publer specifically on this so im not going to say its possible or not.
At this point, most have some sort of Mastodon integration since the API was pretty simple to pull in.
That doesn’t take lot ressource for communication on both social network.
I’ll take a guess that they are going back to Reddit so they can control what gets posted and shown to others. They got railed on Mastodon following the drama, which is probably why they’re leaving.
It depends how they are doing it.
People learned years ago that there is a big difference between microblogs (twitter), blogs (facebook and tumblr), and message boards (reddit). And there are major differences even within those. The post you make for tumblr and the post you make for facebook are targeting very different audiences. Which IS time consuming for a good community manager and is shitty 100 character blog posts for someone’s nephew.
From checking out their bluesky, it looks like proton is pulling out of all the microblogs in favor of just reddit (https://bsky.app/profile/proton.me). Which sucks but is “fine”. And it is likely more that positive engagement on Mastodon was just too low to even be worth multi-posting once every two weeks. Which… is something a lot of not shitty companies have decided to be the case.
That said: I didn’t check twitter because fuck that shit. If they are still super active there then, yeah, ridiculously “sus”.
It’s kinda weird though. Mastodon can have a pretty high character limit, on par with a reddit comment length.
The instance my author account is on has it set to a much higher limit. Enough so that I can post a short story in two, maybe three sections.
If it’s the lowest possible character limit that’s the problem, they could definitely get around that with damn near zero effort.
Which is whatever, I get that streamlining social media reduces time costs, I’m more questioning the one they chose in terms of how much upkeep it’ll be compared to other options. Reddit is going to have a lot more bullshit to wade through.
Thank i didn’t see from this perspective. On mastodon the character limit is very small so i didn’t understand how difficult it could be as i would do the same communication everywhere to stay consistent.
In my opinion, they wanted to avoid the backfire from their ceo supporting Trump.
You’re welcome to believe whatever makes you happy in this post truth hellscape we live in.
But reddit (generally left on drugs, center-right on social issues) tears into them pretty regularly for that. Bluesky seems to be left-center-left-ish and is also a place where people can tear into the account. And while there are much better moderation tools on both platforms, that still doesn’t protect them for the equivalent of a trending hashtag or /all post.
We can only speculate but considering plenty of people have criticized the mastodon community over the past year or so (Alec from Technology Connections being a great example where, if anything, he should be our patron saint rather than the guy who gets harassed any time his posts get surfaced by The Algorithm) AND basically the entire “internet” decided on bluesky… it likely really is just cost cutting and not caring enough to monitor the mastodon account.
Also, it looks like they have a Threads account anyway? https://www.threads.net/@protonprivacy. Which means that the Mastodon users can still follow them? I forgot what the status on federation with facebook ended up being.
It’s also worth pointing out the fact that they offer free services; most likely, your data is their real product. That’s to be expected with, say, a social media platform, but a VPN? That is a HUGE security threat. I’m just waiting for the proton security leak. The amount of sketchy data will be choice.
Proton’s revenue comes from paid subscriptions.
No. They’re a non profit with a specific mission to further the enhancement of provacy. Under Swiss law they’re legally obligated to adhere to this. Which means they can’t collect user data willy nilly and sell it.
Also, it wouldn’t make sense for a non-profit organization to profit from selling user data.
Non-profits make profit all the time. The key difference between a for-profit and a non-profit is that a for-profit company takes that money and gives it to its owners, and a non-profit is legally required to reinvest that money in its organization or missions.
Of course, non-profits can also do shitty things like nepo hires with vastly inflated salaries, throw parties and extravagant galas for “fundraising” and spent almost nothing on the charity aspect.
This is why lots of rich fucks setup their own “philanthropy” organizations. They can dump their wealth into tax free and pay themselves and their heirs ungodly sums while paying for villas/jets/etc from the untaxed non-profit.
How about you go read about the foundation before making any judgements.
deleted by creator
They literally say they won’t be posting anymore
I saw that part after i posted the comment then promptly deleted it. Though unfortunately some can still see it lol. My bad
