This was enough for me to jump ship, after some research fastmail seems to meet my needs. Sure its not a perfect replacement but im willing to miss out on some features to avoid funding this kind of behaviour. Voted with my wallet
The same CEO who, a while ago, praised the Republicans? How can a company under someone like that ever be “privacy first”? If I remember correctly, there were a lot of people acting as if this wouldn’t affect the products in of itself, but how could it not?
I get downvoted on Lemmy every time I point this out. It’s like clockwork.
My thoughts exactly! I was banned on a Reddit sub for critiquing him. Seems he really has his fanboys.
yikes… i need to dump proton.
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.”
In a follow-up message, Yen reiterated his point: “only losers think like that.” His ultimate message for the team was to “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”
This sounds like the most insecure loser statement I’ve ever heard. Andy Yen and the rest of the Proton Execs seem to have fully bought into the man-o-sphere in the same way that every basement incel has.
I’m not at all surprised by a lot of men in tech coming out as insufferable insecure weird little guys, but what I continue to be amazed by is how many of them seem to not understand how technology works at all. It seems every tech company is another Apple, run by some freak who got lucky and found a talented tech guy whose work they could exploit.
To be fair, Classic Jobs & Woz™ were OG, and Jobs knew he wasn’t a tech guy like Woz and more to the point (afahwc) that was how technology should work - for people to not know or care how it worked under the hood.
But since the explosion of social media, yeah, way too many “companies” run by nerd hitlers getting traction for garbage “products”. There are good products out there but they don’t have the reach because they aren’t in the pedo cabal. *cough* metaphorically speaking *cough*
Yeah, Jobs didn’t kid himself to think he had the skills, he only fooled his cult. And he was great salesman, so it’s not a perfect comparison.
well, actually, that talented tech guy (Jobs). founded the company and was later forced out. he got back in when they came back and groveled as he was developing NeXTStep OS and hardware.
but point understood.
I was thinking of Woz.
It’s impossible to argue that Jobs didn’t have a sharp eye for marketing, but most of the brilliance Apple got famous for was other people’s work paired with Jobs’ marketing. And Jobs was a complete fucking weirdo, from abusing his employees to dying because he refused to accept other forms of cancer treatment than eating fucking fruit.
I hate winner mentality. Competition is an artifact left over from our evolution and society has historically reinforced it because it resulted in better outcomes for the in group to the detriment of the whole. Eventually we’ve reached a point where people can compete against each other on unimportant things for no reason other than competing, which was also celebrated as a spectacle. Now we’re at the point where people are applying the same “competition for competition’s sake” attitude to things that do matter even to the detriment of the in group and themselves. And it is still celebrated because competition and winning has such a strong association with betterment in our culture. We will not improve as a society until we start viewing the desire to win as antisocial behavior.
It’s a spectacle.
Well formulated! Those managers probably have a gene thinking “if I’m better, then it’s I who will get laid” or something.
I was out as soon as this dropped but anyone still in may want to reconsider.
He was actually correct on that one, and Gail was ousted shortly after for not complying with the tyrant.
His statements in response were much less accurate
He was not correct, Republicans don’t stand for small businesses at all, maybe the specific move was good, but all the other groveling was completely unnecessary.
I was clearly referring to Slater
I know. You mean appointing Slater was a good move, and I don’t disagree, my point is that Yen complimented way more than that decision and that is what was wrong…
Yup. Same. Gone within a week of that one. Told was “over reacting”
When they show you who they are, believe them. The first time.
I hate when people spew this kind of crap, just because he said trump did something good (which is was apparently) it doesn’t mean that he’s a maga or something. If only Mullvad was hold to the same standards…
Now we have a real bad take, so let’s deal with that.
Holy fuckin shit, what a jackass
Crap, time to drop Proton and find an alternative.
“Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.”
It’s not “how to be slower” but “how to be safer and ensure we deliver a product that holds up to what we’re portraying it as.”
“how to have time to do my job”
These fuckers treat us like machines.
I switched to Mullvad and Tuta yesterday. Still working on moving password managers. I’ve let some things slide in the past but Yen has turned into such a big asshole. Proton deserves a better CEO.
Holy shit, well that slipped through my research. Time to checkout IVPN, maybe?
I switched to IVPN. So far so good.
Literally a Nazbol, a joke ideology indistinguishable from just being a Nazi in red. Being a true believer makes him a Nazi and pushing Nazis as spoilers makes him, guess what, a Nazi.
It’d be one thing if he got pushed out afterwards but the reality is Mullvad’s founders support ethnic cleansing, and as much as I don’t like Yen I don’t think the timing of their compliments can attach that sin to them, provably.
Isnt the founder of mullvad just as much of an asshole funding far right politics etc ? Not meant as a criticism of you, I’m in the same boat trying to move my stuff and its so fucking frustrating that so many of these companies are either led by psychopaths or being enshittified in other ways. I guess I’m looking more and more at self hosting shit again, but that also scares me a bit for stuff like email and password managers and hardware prices are insane… But either way I’m definitely spreading everything out to different companies this time… Not looking forward to changing my login email on every single website again after just having moved it to proton about 2 years ago…
So far I’ve come up with:
Email: Tuta seems okay
PW-Manager: Found no good service yet, self hosting Vaultwarden seems like an option but I read some concerning things about changing company structures at Bitwarde wich it depends on that implies them possibly moving away from FOSS
VPN: Dont know honestly
Calendar: Im with murena from /e/os seems fine for now
Cloud Storage: Dont really need this, as i have everything on my server but i need a better backup strategy for that server and my god harddisk prices are crazy…
Yeah i completely missed that during my research and am back using Proton until my subscription expires. I had a custom domain which made switching to Tuta easier
Holy shit this CEO is fully unhinged, I feel so much for the employees at Proton. What the fuck. I like Proton products T.T
I have never bought into the Proton hate seen on Lemmy, as most if not all of it came from a fundamental misunderstanding of how technology works. And if anything, this report confirms that the employees inside Proton really do seem to care about the product.
But ultimately, if the CEO is this hostile internally, those employees will leave and the product will just enshittify at an exponential rate. This is actually some very damning insight into the future of Proton.
Proton has a couple competitors that are viable to switch to, if not somewhat half baked next to Proton. But it’s important to understand for the people who have been berating Proton for handing over metadata to authorities and similar things, that Tutanota and other competitors will have all the same problems. Tuta is based in Germany which is a member of 14 eyes, and will if anything be more susceptible to the whims of the US government than Proton was.
I don’t really care if they hand metadata to authorities. I want to replace “we give you free services, in return we spy on you, then we ALSO want you to pay us later and we’ll still spy on you” with “pay us for our services, we literally can’t spy on you bc of encryption”.
Whoever has that will get my money, (well, except Proton because fuck that CEO).
You’d be surprised at how many people on Lemmy have decided Proton is lying to people and secretly sharing all your data with US authorities because of the handful of times they have been ordered to by law hand over metadata that does not include the content of their data.
These people then say to ditch Proton and use Tutanota instead as if they they somehow won’t be compelled to do the exact same thing.
Lemmy is odd. Its more tech aware then reddit yet some how just had ignorant and stupid as reddit on tech related matters.
I think it’s just anyone who actually understands or has a reasonable take don’t bother engaging with the stupid.
While the idiots open their mouths.
Proton ain’t perfect and yen is an idiot. But some one the claims I’ve seen about proton baffle me.
People literally expect Proton to break the law. That’s what lavabit did and it was their demise.
I haven’t seen this view. I mostly see people defending Andy Yen when anyone brings up the first red flags he dropped
Or to use Mullvad…
I also would like to have a perfect VPN & mail client, but for now nothing beats proton it seems (fuck that loser CEO attitude though, what the hell).
Andy Yen’s political afilliations are one thing, but this does indicate an imminent decline in the function of the product.
It’s not a misunderstanding. I hate them because they deal in crypto.
Proton uses cryptography, thats applied mathematics, not bitcoin lol.
You can help us by spreading this https://molecule.build/
we need collective worker power at proton
You’d be surprised how many companies have CEO’s like this. Mine is the same way. Use AI or get fired is becoming very standard.
Proton products have been great for me, I use them all every day. Not renewing when my sub is up and I’ll quote Andy Yen as why.
So what are the alternatives?
Haven’t done enough research to say yet. Others have been suggesting in the thread. Might self host my passwords. Email seems the easiest switch with the most options. Cloud storage, not sure yet; I need a decent amount of it for crucial backups.
Well, that’s the problem IMO, there isn’t really a perfect alternative.
I never claimed that there was.
I didn’t say you were 🤷🏼♀️
I suppose I’m just confused at the purpose of the sentiment, then. Not having a perfect alternative is not a good excuse to continue supporting Proton with its current leadership and direction.
I guess I’ll say it here, but I have always had weird feelings about proton. They are always marked as the top of privacy alternatives to Google. I was never sold on it though and figured that the shit would hit the fan eventually
I wish I could just throw out email and calendars as a service and still live in the modern world. I really don’t like my only options for them being having to host it myself with all the pitfalls that can come with or using services controlled by data brokers like Google, shit heads like this guy apparently is, or our way or the highway gatekeepers like Apple.
I just want to give someone money to let me point my domain at it for email services and host my calendar without any drama or BS. Why does that concept have to be so complicated these days?
I use StartMail for email and I’ve been pleased so far. You can bring your own domain (though that might be restricted to annual subscriptions, like $60/yr), bring your own PGP key or have them generate one for you, and you get unlimited alias addresses.
I’m just waiting for the day to hear one of the founders eats babies or something, but they seem alright for now. It’s from the same company as StartPage, which very early on was providing a proxy to Google search for increased privacy.
They aren’t without concern based on their parent company. But they offer me enough features to mitigate that they seam leagues ahead of Google or Yahoo for mail.
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i’m just so goddamn pissed off. i am too overwhelmed with life and health stuff to have to worry about what my email client is up to. i dont have many switchovers left in me, boss
You fight the fights you can, and you make peace with the fights you can’t. This is a marathon, you have to maintain yourself to keep running - that’s human nature and okay. We all can’t make 100% optimal and good choices. Do what you can, educate yourself and others, grow; but also rest, enjoy, and don’t let things wear on you if you can help it.
Everyone needs a break. There’s always another chance to cancel, later.
Anyway, I canceled an extra time today, in your honor. (It seemed like their cancelation server was overwhelmed - I was getting timeouts. Naturally I reloaded each page a few times to be sure, because fuck everything about this.)
It’s hard to imagine someone more intimately familiar with “loser thinking” than Andy Yen. Go gargle Trump’s balls some more and bully your workers who actually want to build without security concerns. I’m staying far, far away from anything Proton…
I’m giving them a month to fire Yen and change direction or I’m out. I’m also looking for good recommendations of where to go - so far I’m looking at Tuta or Murena (my phone is already on /e/OS)
I just mailbox.org with a custom domain and it’s been great, no complaints.
I never liked proton’s app suite approach instead of picking one or two things and getting good at them so I’ve replaced all other services with other options.
I’ve been using Tuta for 8 or so years now and outside some rare technical issues years ago, I’ve been pretty happy with it. I’m also not aware of any drama they’d be involved in so they have that going for them.
The horrible search turned me off. I wish it made sense to support tuta but it was painful a year or two ago when I switched. Has it gotten any better?
I don’t really use search but I can play around with it to see how it is now. Is there anything specific that bothered you about it I should keep in mind?
It defaulted to only searching from the same day. If you pick a longer search range it warns you that it will take a while, and it does (did)
I believe they improved that quite a while ago. For me (using the desktop app) search returns results from 2021 within about a second or so. Granted, this will probably differ based on the number of messages to comb through and possibly the source (web/app) but it seem to be working really well in my case.
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.”
“Due to insufficient velocity,” Proton is not on track to achieve its annual recurring revenue target by the end of the year, one internal document obtained by 404 Media reads. Proton’s year-over-year growth is also “far away from what the market today considers to be good,” and, “By all metrics that matter, we’re an underperforming company.”
In a Slack channel dedicated to thanking people for their work, Yen jumped in. “Get it fixed,” he wrote, referring to Proton’s Reddit post announcing the feature. “Now Reddit is pissed and we look worse than Tuta,” he added, referring to a Proton competitor.
I think he believes that he will be the next Steve Jobs by screaming to their employers and forcing AI to increase annual revenue and imagine TAKING REDDIT COMMENTS SERIOUSLY AS AN CEO and comparing themselves with Tuta.
Just a friendly reminder that Mozilla (creators of Firefox/Thunderbird) created a email service called Thundermail in case you want to check it out, I honestly trust more in Mozilla than in Proton, is a bit expensive and it’s currently on beta access, but I love Firefox so I feel like this is the way to give them money they can actually use.
It makes no sense, Proton was just on for a free win and growth, they just had to keep status quo. I dont know who Yen has been speaking to, but he has become a complete nutjob (unless he always was?).
I think he’s always been an idiot and and a shithead, but yeah he has basically just did more damage to proton than anyone else ever has or ever will.
He probably was in that Ted conference not so long ago where it appears all world CEOs went and they all were drinking the ai koolaid. My ceo also came from there talking insane shit and that we should adopt it and it’s the future and that so many companies are using it for cool stuff. Completely insane.
I think he spoke with ChatGPT too much. It really seems to be unhealthy to do that, especially when you already have delusions of grandeur.
Proton’s year-over-year growth is also “far away from what the market today considers to be good,”
More insight here. You can’t have a company focused on privacy and security and expect to have the same growth as Google. You’re a niche market, and you pigeon-holed yourself on day 1. That’s just not how that works.
And, boy, will he ever be surprised when his tantrum sinks the company.
Manbaby Proton CEO Andy Yen confusing his codebase with what he fills his diaper with is sure gonna turn a lot of people away from the service.
Thunderbird in case you want to check it out
Oh, I shall indeed check it out.
Looks like it could be a good contender, except for the price. $6/month for 30 GB of Mail Storage, 60 GB of Send Storage, 1 Inbox, 15 Email Addresses and 3 Custom Domains isn’t exactly amazing. Especially with options like Mailbox.org and others.
In my humble opinion: they are stealing you with that price for what it offers.
Buuuuuuuuuut, it’s Mozilla, and I’ve been using Firefox for ~10 years, so this is my way to “pay them back”. It also contains a super useful feature in my opinion called “Send”, that basically if you have attachments that are too big to share through email, you can send them through “Send”, imagine Mediafire for sending files, but inside your mail client, I don’t use it that often but is useful when you need to share an .iso or something like that instead of a link to a cloud service.
Does sending large files still work if the other person has a different provider, or do they have to be using Thundermail as well?
Recipients with Thunderbird see your files as natural email attachments, others can access them securely via a link.
*checks it out*
“join waitlist”
:/
Yep, sorry, that what I mean with beta, I wasn’t specific :(
I THINK they are currently accepting people often, cuz I registered 2 different accounts and the second one was registered recently and got accepted a few days ago
And, of course, the implicit assumption that “More AI = more profits!”
What did Tuta do?
Tuta is based in Germany, so they are more likely to have to comply with information requests as Germany is part of the 14 Eyes international information sharing network. Thus countries like the USA may be able to get your info from Tuta legally.
Other than that? Honestly I’m not sure.
you can look at the privacy policy to see what they store unencrypted. tldr; don’t use if you suspect that governments are after you, but otherwise it’s fine. for governments i think protonmail is still the best option, but if that goes to shit, startmail is a valid alternative.
https://tuta.com/privacy-policy
Isn’t it a paid service, though? I trust Mozilla more than Proton as well… but I also can’t afford a paid service at the moment.
Yep, and not a cheaper one I fear :( This one is like $72 annually, it don’t have that many features but it works, and I like Mozilla, so I think it deserve my money.
I hope you can afford it soon, $72 is too expensive in my opinion for a email service but is Mozilla. I think you should at least register so you can receive an invitation, and maybe when you receive it you can afford it, I think they don’t expire anyways unless you use it and don’t pay.
I already got my invitation 🙂 I hope I can afford it at some point, too.
Nice!
Some choice quotes:
“The CEO is in full AI psychosis and has been for a while now,” one of the sources told 404 Media.
I think it’s important to use the term “AI psychosis” until it becomes mainstream. There’s power in simplifying, in two words, the mental illness that has spread to nearly every major-company CEO and C-suite MBA hump. And until it becomes a meme, until they know the general public sees them and knows they are blindly confident in something they don’t understand, that we know they are conning themselves and us, they won’t spare a moment of introspection to reconsider.
“Perception is more important than truth, the truth doesn’t matter if you don’t win on perception.”
Let’s unpack this. The programmers are concerned about Proton’s push for security, and they push back on objectively unmaintainable AI code - to say nothing of Yen’s bullying to push to live before it’s even tested - and this is Yen’s response. In essence: Security does not matter more than the perception of speed.
This is demonstrably idiotic, because security issues are the “truth” being undermined here, and when someone hacks or compromises key parts of your service, that will be far more damaging some CEO-naval-gazing version of “look how fast we are.”
In all, the many quotes from engineers really do the job convincing that this guy is not just a bad CEO, but a bad person. I’m sure to Board members or billionaires, this type of psychopathy and lack of empathy looks like a feature and not a bug. This probably won’t change that, but every moment spent holding up a mirror helps.
Be careful though, just like “Trump Derangement Syndrome” got swapped from meaning people crazed for Trump to meaning crazed against Trump… AI psychosis could be twisted by the media (tech bro owned) into “people who dislike AI are crazy.”
i apologize, not to throw shade at you because I fully agree with the comment, but
let's unpack thisis a bit of a trigger phrase along the lines ofsit with that a minuteornot just x, but yYou’re right to push back on this.
Yup, totally. AI outputs also killed my confidence using hyphens mid-sentence (but I still do it because it’s just how I think). But thanks, I’ll actually make a note to stop using that AI-hijacked phrasing…
Load bearing comment.
Can we fucking have nice things anymore? This is crystal clear, that CEOs of all kinds, ruin everything. Fuck you, Andy Yen.
I’ve never seen a CEO do more good than harm. Ever. Some or mostly neutral, but most are actively demential to a business and the world. The only real use they even have is to resign/get fired when the company fucks up enough to need the appearance of accountability.
The optimum CEO (symbolic image):
He’s just idly hanging around until it’s time to suck up some punches.
