Long term Proton User here and general privacy enthusiast. Don't read into that as I'm wedded to proton, or a shill. Genuinely looking for others opinion here.

Why does this indicate the company is no longer commited to privacy and indicate that its clearly some sort of a sham? I'm no crypto expert, the only crypto I have any of is XMR and even thats just reserved for as and when services allow me to pay with it. Really this new offering is of no interest or use to me so I'm by no means defending it. The same goes for their AI. I'm struggling to understand how these 2 decisions are being perceived as the death of Proton and how its no longer a Privacy Company though?

From my understanding, Protons offerings are still worlds more private than other mainstream offerings, and still come with a fairly high degree of quality of life features that make it easy for Joe public to use and not be put off by lack of features. Is this not still a major victory in the grand scheme of all privacy rights being slowly stripped away?

Have I missed something else behind the scenes around Proton's practice's that are indicative of a larger problem or are people annoyed more so that Proton haven't fixed long outstanding pain points with their existing solutions? Trust me, I understand the frustration as a Linux user that several features dont work but as a business I also appreciate proton have to stay ahead in the market and appeal to the masses in order to make a profit and keep running effectively as a business so would love to hear some other views on why this and AI has been so badly recievdd as a whole by the privacy community.

Also, what alternatives are there I have missed that work well on android and Linux without making sacrifices? Always down to try alternatives

First AI and now freaking Bitcoin...

You would think that someone at Proton would've had the foresight to realise the reputational damage this (along with the LLM announcement) would do to the company.

Without wanting to sound smart after the fact, I've been suspicious about Proton for years. I briefly had an email account with them but I could never quite shake the feeling there is something off about the whole company. This move just confirms to me I was correct to be suspicious.

Proton is the main predator and one of first who started with the boom privacy scandals and when this “privacy market” started. Also NEVER give all your stuff and depend on one company. In IT is something that causes severe harm just because management want to get the bonus by saving money. A lot of people made billions from the fear of privacy. Terror terror terrror terror terror oil oil oil oil

Its crazy that this article doesn't even have a single section that warns the user that all of their transactions will be publicly visible.

You would think a privacy company would use a privacy coin. Did they give up on privacy?

Are they going to publish all of their customers emails publicly too? Or only their monetary transactions?

Why build Proton Wallet?

Early in our journey, we experienced first-hand what it’s like being cut off from the financial system and at the mercy of large banks and institutions — an ordeal that affects millions of people across the globe. In the summer of 2014, as the original Proton Mail crowdfunding campaign was in progress, Proton had a near-death experience when PayPal froze our funds(new window), questioned whether encryption was legal, and whether Proton had government approval to encrypt emails.

Fortunately, in that instance PayPal returned the blocked funds, and Proton was able to start the journey that we’ve been on for the past decade. However, that dangerous moment has always stayed in our minds, and we still keep a proportion of Proton’s financial reserves in Bitcoin.

Having experienced firsthand the unreliability of the traditional financial sector, building Proton Wallet is an important strategic move to make Proton more resilient and independent in the future. By enabling us and the entire Proton community to more easily adopt means of payment that deliver on the promise of financial freedom for all, we better insulate Proton from the risks posed by traditional finance.

Oh no no no no no. I half thought this was like an onion article or something. Seems like a pivotal misstep

Nostr communities were calling it a honeypot (even though all they talk about everyday is cryptocurrencies). I am also calling it a honeypot. Also, if they care about privacy, why not make Proton Wallet compatible with Monero? This is why I left Protonmail after one year of using it. They are the shittiest privacy company ever. They only seem like they care about privacy, but I know they aren't. I mean, any privacy focused company that has that "Hot now" or "Best seller" etc. thing on their pricing page can't be trusted. I switched to Posteo since their privacy policy and website seem to be much much better than what Protonmail's ever could be. They don't even support POP3, fortunately Posteo does. Proton was redirecting Tor users from their .onion domains to clear net domains a few years ago and even then they were requiring a SMS verification just because you were using Tor. How "private" of them.

People on Lemmy really should start realizing this about Proton but some are just stubborn.