Unnecessary and deeply concerning bow to the new “king”

Update: position got backed up by an official Proton post on Mastodon, it’s an official Proton statement now. https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503

Update 2, plot-twist: they removed this response from Mastodon - seems they realize it exploded into their face!

        • Xamrica@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          12·
          15 days ago

          I wouldn’t call it “writing on the wall,” but they have done some not-so-good things over the last few years:

          1. Handing over data for their email services (which was legally required) (ref).
          2. Releasing a Bitcoin wallet. The problem for me is that Bitcoin is inherently not private.
          3. Lying in marketing. Proton claims “no data or speed limits” for their free VPN (ref), which is just plain wrong. If you download a few gigs, it will slow you down to a few Mbit (if I remember correctly). I even contacted their support about this, and they just said, “They are balancing the servers for the free VPN.” But then why was it fast in the beginning, and if I reconnected to the same server, would it be fast again. Just to be clear: I have no problem with the speed limit/balancing itself, just that they are lying about it.
          4. Proton incentivizing free email accounts to connect to a Gmail account to get 500 MB more storage. (You need to go through the “tutorial” steps to get the 500 MB extra, and one of them is to have a Google Mail account send all their emails to your new Proton inbox.)

          This is why I personally decided against Proton.

          • s38b35M5@lemmy.worldEnglish
            8·
            15 days ago

            These are useful data for making decisions about using their service, but not exactly indicative of support for a right wing authoritarian leader who lies more in one day than he has hairs on his entire body.

            Edit: typo

            • Xamrica@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              6·
              15 days ago

              Mostly true, that’s why I opened with “I wouldn’t call it writing on the wall.” But for me, it shows that they are not as privacy- and consumer-focused as they like to present themselves. Supporting Trump is just five steps further in this direction. (That’s just how I feel about it.)

              • s38b35M5@lemmy.worldEnglish
                6·
                15 days ago

                that’s why I opened with “I wouldn’t call it writing on the wall.”

                Damn; you’re right. My bad. I somehow missed your opener saying exactly the opposite of what you were saying.

                Everything you said is true and verifiable, and worth considering when you decide which service to use. It’s a lot of reasons to favor the .onion/tor version of their service to limit what they have access to depending on your privacy stance.

          • frozenspinach@lemmy.mlEnglish
            4·
            15 days ago

            Woah… an actually rock-solid account of problems with Proton! Nicely done.

            This contrasts with the incoherent conspiracy theory spaghetti that has sometimes been trotted out to make the case against them.

          • jaybone@lemmy.world
            1·
            15 days ago

            This is interesting. I’m current using btguard, but was thinking about other vpn providers. I have a free protonmail email account and was wondering about their vpn service. Sounds like they are not so privacy oriented. And I assume NordVPN is a similar story?

            • Xamrica@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              1·
              15 days ago

              Well, I’d say Proton is still better than most other options (open-source software, no ad trackers on the website and in apps). However, specifically for VPNs, I would recommend Mullvad or IVPN. If you are a bit more tech-savvy, you may also take a look at Cryptostorm. Of all three, only Mullvad is police-raid-proven to not store logs or other PII. The most important thing for me personally would be that the VPN company is not owned by a larger parent company, which in turn owns multiple different VPN providers. This alone excludes a lot of the heavily advertised providers (Private Internet Access, NordVPN, Surfshark, ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, OVPN, and probably a few more).

            • Xamrica@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              2·
              15 days ago

              Drive - Selfhosted Nextcloud

              Email - Posteo/Tuta

              VPN - Cryptostorm (IVPN/Mullvad are more user friendly)

              Passwords - Keepass (Sync over my Nextcloud.)

        • huginn@feddit.it
          03·
          15 days ago

          They’ve been cooperating with law enforcement and handing data to the cops proactively since 2021.

          Pay attention.

    • ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee
      112·
      16 days ago

      And then we have the communists making Lemmy. Is there any moderate developers lol. Valve is the only big company I can think of that isn’t annoying. All the faceless Linux devs are good too

      • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
        12·
        15 days ago

        Glances at the child gambling enabled by the steam marketplace, an issue being blatantly ignored by Valve leadership.

        Buddy, I don’t know how to tell you this. I love Valve for all the good they do, but they got some serious skeletons, too.

        Valve representatives were asked point blank if the third party gambling sites have a positive influence on their bottom line, and the dude replying sweated bullets for several seconds before nervously going “we… don’t have any data on that” while the rest stared daggers at him.

        Coffeezilla has a recent video on the situation.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        5·
        15 days ago

        If it’s between fascism and communism, the answer is pretty fucking simple imo. Only one of those ideologies considers all people to be equal.

        And no, I am not a communist, and I would not choose communism unless it was the only alternative to fascism.

        • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
          2·
          15 days ago

          I have a bigger fear of what happens to Linux when Torvalds retires. He took a break a while back, and it was an absolute shit show of a power struggle.