Andy Yen’s values are incompatible with Proton’s mission. He advocates for poor security practices, supports fascists, and he verbally abuses his subordinates. As such, I can no longer in good conscience continue to financially support a company with such terrible leadership.
Unfortunately for me, my subscription just renewed last month on a multi year plan, but it does give me time to browse for and experiment with alternatives.
If you’re able, I encourage you to do the same and cite Andy Yen as the driving factor for your decision. We can’t let these tech bro fascists destroy what little semblance of privacy we have left.
I’m sure in a few days we’re going to hear about an all hands or internal memo where Andy apologizes for his “poor communication” and how hes “committed to being a better leader by being a better communicatortm”
But how he communicates - his tone, his word choice, his inflection - is just an indictment of his character. I honestly don’t give a fuck about the kind of person he is. Mostly because selfishly, I don’t have to.
The main issue is his ideas. The things he’s advocating for are fundamentally incompatible with a business whos only two value propositions are privacy and security.
A.I. is surveillance tech. Period. Every interaction, from keystroke to window focus, is meticulously categorized, logged, and sent back to to a handful of people like Andy Yen; Who then use it to draw conclusions that reaffirm their own cognitive biases. Its a doom-loop for C-level execs that suffer from main character syndrome. Because surely, the only reason the company is successful at all is because of the CEOs hard work and business acumen and any perceived failures come from those lazy engineers that only think about going slow. Like losers.
Im not the biggest fan of A.I. but theres a huge difference between asking it to help spot a difficult bug and using it to spy on your subordinates and determine their individual productivity rankings.
Like, that guy seriously can’t be in charge of the privacy company. We’re fucked.
“Every interaction”? Starting when…?
Starting from the first one.
Glad I chose Tuta instead of Proton
sadly Tuta is also going down the AI track. Can anyone please recommend AI free email hosted outside the US. And please don’t recommend Faatmail, they too are using AI.
I’m on Infomaniak, the free tier is pretty good. Can hook up a custom domain and multiple domain aliases. And you get 50 email aliases.
If they are making their Drive available for the public, their lineup starts to seriously compete with proton
I honestly thought the CEO is a fascist is old news? I’ve been wondering for awhile why Lemmy seems to have forgotten this, despite the fact that it was Lemmy that raised the issue about Andy.
On Lemmy first? Where would that be?
It was a long time ago when he posted supporting Trump on a social media post.
If Proton is looking for a CEO that’s a) Not an ass b) Has a bunch of degrees and c) Will trust and support experts in the workplace because I don’t know enough about tech to act like a pretentious jerk…
I am looking for work.
You sound cool. I’d vote for you. The problem is that CEO positions are basically incompatible with those values. They are looking for someone who will happily lie to save face, grow and milk their customer base whilst gradually reducing quality and ignore anyone who tells them they are doing the wrong thing. Ideally this person will qualifications but the important qualification is an MBA (a badge of honour for absolutely vile people)
Thanks. I’m alright.
II went a different Under > Grad > Post Grad direction. Morality in tact; lacking a Super Yacht.
I keep seeing folks mention that at least it is a good and secure service why should I leave? this should be why: via: https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, had a message for an employee in the company’s security Slack channel who urged the company to at least take a few days to pentest newly written code before pushing it live. “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August. “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.”
I think they’re thinking of how to be securer dumbass. Which is probably smart considering everyone and their uncle is using AI to find vulnerabilities everywhere they can these days.
I didn’t give them money, so unfortunately I can’t give less than nothing.
You’ve done all you can.
Except, if you’re ever in their area, you could try to get a tour and steal someone’s pens.
Paper clips, Scotch tape, post-it notes are also great targets. just saying.
Oh and don’t forget sharpies!
Talk is cheap, things won’t change while Andy is at the helm.
This is what I wanted to see. A blanket bullshit “excuse” apologizing for nothing and trying to make this about AI instead of him being an asshole.
This proves they are not willing to replace him even for these serious offenses. I will be cancelling my subsription today.
I have two things to add:
- You all rock. Thank you for all the migration suggestions, and tips.
- Fuck Andy Yen, of course.
I’m glad I bounced when they were caught sponsoring far right creators. Luckily, I had set up my own domain name so the switch was easy. Tuta has been alright thus far.
Yeah, that’s very unfortunate. I just recently moved everything over to proton and I’ll be spending today looking for yet another alternative.
Please do share what alternative(s) you end up with and what you like about the providers. I had a look at mailbox, infomaniak and tuta for mail and airvpn as a replacement. I think I’l be switching to mailbox.
I signed up for tuta right now and I’m currently moving my most sensitive accounts over but I think I’m going to go with mailbox as well. It sounds good for around $13.50 usd.
I’ve been using Startmail for a while now with no complaints
I’m going to check them (mailbox) out first once I wake up a bit more. I already know I can’t afford tuta on top of everything else I pay for currently. Budget is about stretched to the max but I will update with which one I go with.
I’ve been happy with infomaniak. If you host a domain name with them, you get a free email too. I switched from Godaddy, gmail, and protonmail earlier this year all to infomaniak.
I’m also happy with AirVPN, but a lot more sites block it than other VPNs, so be ready to deal with that.
But Infomaniak is an entirely different product to Protonmail.
They offer email hosting and kSuite. It’s an alternative and more.
Protonmail is end to end encrypted. Infomaniak can be decrypted. It’s a less secure product and therefore not an alternative to Protonmail
But I agree that it’s a good product compared to like gmail.
Fair point. I think protonmail is only that way with other protonmail users, and I practically never send personal emails, so I honestly forgot about that feature. It’d be nice if other hosts could integrate with that.
I’m unaware of true feature parity alternatives then. I guess I just tend to use other communication media when I need encryption.
For email, have you considered Mailfence, Posteo.de, Fastmail
or Disroot?Disroot is currently not operational due to a server failure
After decades on Gmail I finally stopped procrastinating and moved almost everything to proton over the last week. I had made a Lemmy post asking for service recommendations. Almost everyone said proton except two jerks who railed against it but had no interest in explaining and they made no alternative recommendation, just railed against proton.
Reading this article right now sucks.
Yeah, I don’t get why some people don’t elaborate. Just before I deleted tiktok and reddit, Proton and Tuta were the 2 everyone was recommending and I went with proton bc of the easy move feature which didn’t actually work for me for whatever reason so I ended up moving the most important accounts first and then all the ones that mattered one by one. I recall seeing some people do the same as you claimed; railing against proton without explanation but the looks of it and ease of use were what got me. Tuta doesn’t have that “easy move” feature either but it might be my go to. I thought all of their tiers were paid tiers but it looks like they have a free tier with twice as much space as proton.
Yeah, not only do people who do that not elaborate, they often insult you for even considering something they’re judgy about. Proton in this case. That was how both commenters approached it. Telling me I’m an idiot if I go with the recommendation that actually existed. They could’ve at least said what they use. One (non rude) person did mention tuta but I figured the bigger company would be more reliable to stick around 😭
You can probably not worry about this and be fine. Email is insecure to begin with.
I’m not gonna fight anybody about this but the proton ceo is making the right call telling everyone to just spam fixes out there without testing. The security environment has gone from the old way of making sure the hole is patched perfectly to the new way of making patches live immediately.
The reason is that ai automation makes exploitation of a vulnerability incredibly fast. Used to be if you and the opp both found something at the same time they’d have to spend a long while figuring out where it goes, what it can be chained to (this was a big one because they had to carefully interact with someone whose knowledge domain was different from their own to hook their php deserialization fuck up to someone else’s use after free etc), what that gets them and how theyre gonna use it to accomplish what. So there was plenty of time for you to patch the bug while they get their ducks in a row. Now that’s all automatable and they don’t have to deal with a different criminal in a careful and safe way.
Idk how much computer security news you get, but it’s been non stop insane banger one after another and proton has a target on its back. I’d tell people to get in line and ship the fixes too.
The way I see it is that proton’s mission hasn’t changed. I pay for their products, which remain secure and privacy focused despite their asshat CEO.
Security is suspect because the CEO is pushing devs to release code (AI-generated) to production without testing.
i finally deleted my ~20 year google account last week, finally migrating every single account that used that old email over to proton. and now, this
It’s still astronomically better than Google. People seem to be forgetting this.
True for now. But it seems headed down a path where it will be competing with Google in shittiness some time in the not so far off future (and I use Proton as well).
Better than Google in terms of ethics and privacy maybe, and not shoving ads in your face when you don’t use an adblocker. But it’s behind in features.
And unfortunately Google caters to the majority, who generally don’t care about privacy, even the ones who say they do but refuse to act on their words (and I’m not even going to comment on the “they have all my info anyway” crowd).
To me comparing Gmail to Protonmail feels similar to comparing FB Messenger to Signal. The former has more features and therefore is chosen by most people despite the enshittification.
It’s not better.
It’s fine, at best, and free alternatives are fine too.
The only thing Proton has is their integrity and focus on privacy… Or was supposed to, anyway.
It is. The direction they are going is shit, but only in isolation, if you compare it to Google, they still look like angels. Perhaps you dont understand what Google is doing.
FUUUUCCCK. SAME.
And a custom domain so there was no automatic transferring. Had to do the obnoxious mbox import rigamarole for two accounts (mine and my tech-illiterate dad) and talk two friends through the same.
Whatever. I’m sticking with it for a couple years, I don’t have it in me to do it again.
You’re good—it’s still one of the best options out there right now. Even if it gets shittier, unfortunately, it’s still a way better option than almost any others out there. Which is depressing. But don’t beat yourself up for staying.
I use them for email and I’m not moving anytime soon. Thankfully, 98% of my email, probably more like 99.9% if I’m being honest, is just worthless junk. I don’t care if they see it. I was self-hosting my email server for like eight years until Debian decided to just eviscerate itself one day on a system update for some reason. I gave up, moved to them, and I don’t have the time or the energy to move again.
I don’t use any of their other services. I have my own seafile for file storage. I have my own Wireguard on a VPS for VPN usage. Etc etc
Sooo… what VPNs do y’all like
AirVPN
iVPN is supposed to be good.
Mullvad. Cheapest one I know, works perfect, is simple and apparently so far there are no controversies.
Oh come on. Now I need an alternative. :(
I’ve heard iVPN is supposed to be good. Haven’t heard anything bad about that one. At least not yet.
Sounds awesome. I’ll try it, thank you!
had to move on from mullvad for port forwarding, but it was solid.
I just switched to Migadu. Super good plans and very good if you have multiple domains.
When I canceled Proton, I put the reason, “Your CEO is a lunatic.”
Does this count or is was this too aggressive? I’ve been known to be a little too angry when it comes to things like this.
If anything, it’s not aggressive enough! Everyone is so apathetic about everything compared to 20-30 years ago. Between the rise of Fascism and the cost of living, life has never been shitter yet no one seems to give a fuck. Why aren’t we rioting and revolting until shit stops sucking so god damn much!? Where is everyone’s passion!?
I’ve been on this planet for four decades. It used to not be this way! People used to care! Now it seems like all of society has become emotional zombies, and if you dare to step out of line and speak up about some injustice, you get labeled as “crashing out”. It’s such fucking bullshit! I’m not crashing out; I’m pissed the fuck off that the world is run by evil men and no one is doing anything about it!
Oh I like you
I agree. However, I think the best ways to fix Proton are to send endless complaints until Yen is removed or to establish better competition with stronger morals.
You’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore!
See? This is what I mean! People like you are part of the problem. Nobody takes this shit seriously. You just mock me when I get mad for a valid reason. I really hate how apathetic everyone is compared to 20-30 years ago. All you care about is being clever and funny enough to get upvotes while the world burns. It’s fucking pathetic.
On line 4 you opened quotation marks at ‘"re-interviewing’ but never closed them. For that reason, I am afraid it is a failure and must be re-written.
Ahh shit
Did Andy Yen do something stupid again? I think I’m out of the loop.
EDIT: Just saw it. Ugh. Why can’t we just have nice things not run by jerks?
This time at least was just tech bro AI crap, not fascism crap. Progress??
Well, the way he seems to treat his workers…
