A community for Lemmy users interested in privacy
Rules:
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).
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.
There are a lot of advantages to the fediverse, but privacy really isn’t one of them.
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
Seconded.
For anyone considering switching though, make sure:
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.
Are those people who have been quoted supposed to be significant to the privacy community?
I've looked through the links provided and read a couple articles (one is titled "Does Proton really support Trump? A deeper analysis and surprising findings" and it is all very he said/she said with almost nothing to back anything or anyone up...
I'll gladly read more if anyone has info?
No, as far as I am aware these are simply people that got significant traction on Mastodon today. Michael Stanclift is a contributor to Mastodon. This post is more me curating popular sentiment than expert opinion, though I recognize both are important.
The most significant quote is from Proton itself, which made an official statement in favor of Republican and JD Vance.
I haven't seen many people simply post archives to the now-deleted contents of what Proton said, which is pretty damning in its own right. Before Proton realized their mistake, started erasing their original replies, and crafting a much less damning-looking narrative.
I've reviewed the article that tries to ascertain Andy Yen's politics (as if doing this would have been less weird if it was unabashed love of Democrats) and I agree it's pretty bad in several ways.
Besides slow responses to support request and handing over info on that ~~Swiss~~ French activist, is there anything else they've done wrong? And I understand that they had no choice in the Swiss case - they had to abide by the law there.
CEO came out in support of Trump and criticized Democrats.
If a business chooses to take a political position that isn’t strictly policy related they should expect blowback.
Honestly that's just silly. Some random CEO enforcing Trump shouldn't be the thing to break the camels back.
How is the CEO of the business that makes the product in question "random"? Regardless, supporting Trump in this day and age is support for all the very worst things. You're way off base thinking it shouldn't be influential, few things mean more these days.
Yeah afaik their hands were tied with the Swiss incident. No VPN (or was it mail? it's been a while, either way) is going to jail for a user.
Not to mention that the data they did actually provide was very minimal. They didn't have to compromise any of their existing services to provide it.
There wasn't exactly anything Proton could have done from a technical standpoint to prevent themselves from knowing what they did, without making the service itself nonfunctional.
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.
What's Xitter?
It's like Twitter but Xitty (pronounced like Xi Jinping).
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.)
At least we know where their loyalties actually lie, now.