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).
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.
If you might allow me to disagree with you slightly…
The key to this, as in many things, is balance; in ALL things. Voting with your wallet does work, its a form of influencing and controlling the direction of the capital. It just doesn’t work in a long term sense because people stop there; like boycotting. It is hard to boycott a company that has a monopoly on a market that has become a necessity, even if it’s only a necessity to a niche community.
The key is, that you spend on smaller businesses, that are closer to the consumer than at large conglomerates. If there is none for the market, create one and encourage people to support your business that doesn’t have any political ties yet. For example, I live in a capitol city, and my neighbor a few houses down has started a small chicken coop in their back yard; i began buying my eggs from them as its much cheaper and I don’t have to worry about my funds being reallocated in support of something that would harm me or my community as they are a part of my community. Also, I deliver pizza as a third job for a small, mom and pops place and encourage those political minded people to spend money there as the pizza is made with fresh ingredients and made there. Takes a bit longer but we are too small to allocate funds to political matters and organizations; we do small events for the schools in the community but that is about it.
Once said businesses start to grow too big, rinse and repeat. Find another small business and support them. As support dwindles from a company that is growing too large, their options become more and more limited.
This seems not to work due to peoples mindset and preferring convenience over meaningful spending; which is something that I know not how to combat. What say you, friends?
First off, I am happy that your community is functional and that (at least for now) the capitalist structure works for you.
The core of this issue lies in human-nature and incentive-structure. The thing is, majority of people never act as the ideal in any system. In fact most of the time, due to the often strict guidelines of systems, people act in bad faith. What this means is that any system, at all times, will have significant resistance to existing and will need sufficient guardrails to not fall apart. Why bring this up? Because capitalism has no guardrails.
The “start another business” argument is not viable because (unfortunately) most people do not have the capital nor expertise to compete. An extremely high number of people on Earth do not own businesses, and there is a reason for this.
The “rinse wash and repeat” argument also quickly falls apart because:
- The very very small population that has capital and expertise shrinks every time we do this
- The new businesses born are not likely to survive (based on startup failure rates)
- The more businesses, the harder it is to compete
A significant amount of industries around the world are effective monopolies, there is a reason for this. Low capital pool, low talent pool, high failure rates, and high competition - means that once you make it out of development hell, you are almost always unrivaled and can easily destroy/outlast your competitors.
Since we’re here, lets talk about incentive structure. Most people do not have disposable income, those that do are investors. In a system where money is the “goal”, the natural result is that the investors will be prioritized. This generally means that the end-user (me and you) are being exploited. Mom and Pop will not save you from the physics of money.
The only thing I’ve seen “work” is when there is a community of strong moral fiber that refuses to sell out their neighbor. This is why I said I am happy for you, because this is extremely rare.
As for the solution, any answer I give will be bad. This is a complex (not complicated!) issue and requires influential, smart, and rich people to work towards a goal for many years.
That said, I am giving a bad answer anyway. We need a way to “miniaturize” infrastructure, with the end goal being distributed (decentralized) infrastructure. The reason being that we need to decouple the government and monopolies from the market. This is obviously extremely difficult to do, but I think it can be done. We actually have a lot of the tools for this (3d printers, foss, internet, etc) but the direction, knowledge, and polish aren’t there.
Proton is a bandage solution to email being hijacked by Google and Microsoft - they used their infrastructure to turn an open protocol (email) into a closed implementation (you cant send email to your buddy without gmail). Proton is a middle ground where they respect us, but are also “in the club”. We wouldn’t need them if emails could simply be sent from my router to your router (tor has something like this).
I agree with you, and yeah the convenience factor is in fact a huge problem and is highly exploited. The only thing I saw working are in fact laws to make the switch to another “service” more convenient (e.g. you have a messaging app? your protocol must be open source so that other clients should be possible by law, idk how feasible is this, but u get the idea).
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.
This is good news. It means we aren’t monitizeable enough.
Proton is going boots up.
Proving that a company is not a person. A person goes tits up when the boots go up.
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?
Tutanota
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).
Does anyone know if Tuta has an alias email feature?
Kind of. If you sign up with their cheapest plan €3/month you get 15 email addresses included (so some can be aliases) or can also use a custom domain. If anyone wants my referral link you get some months free I think, but they will also give you a free email address with 5gb storage if I remember right.
gmail
(this is a joke dont hunt me down pls)
Hotmail is better. The authentication process and the junk filter is soooooo cool.
nahhh yahoo mail is objectively the best one
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
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.
Reddit has been taken over by right wing mods, particularly Russian state sponsored trolls. They take over management of subreddits to spread misinformation. They will even pay off the old mods. Reddit admins don’t do anything about it. I guess it’s a built in flaw to their (anyone is free to make a community/subreddit) premise. If you don’t stop shitty people, they will make it shitty.
It’s engaging, though.
If it draws eyeballs, Reddit admins are happy with it, long term health be damned. That’s someone else’s problem, once they exit with a truck of cash.
There are a lot of advantages to the fediverse, but privacy really isn’t one of them.
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
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.
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.
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”.
With ActivityPub specifically, I’m aware. Yet privacy-conscious people tend to congregate there as well, which was my point.
Can’t have privacy for your speech if you don’t have the freedom to speak in the first place.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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’m out of the loop- what happened? Recently people were promoting Proton as an alternative to Gmail and Microsoft.
Owner of proton is a huge MAGA Trumper because he “stands up for the little guys”.
Ooh okay thank you.
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.
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
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
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.
iirc, they removed port forwarding because people were hosting CSAM and Mullvad lost some location/internet providers business.
Wow. That is so much worse.
@protonprivacy@mastodon.social
I get tired of being so right all of the time
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.
Drive was mentioned, not vpn. The vpn client even works.
The ONLY reason I have Proton email, is because my bank thinks it’s the only secure email in the world…
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
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
