Andy Yen’s values are incompatible with Proton’s mission. He advocates for poor security practices, supports fascists, and he verbally abuses his subordinates. As such, I can no longer in good conscience continue to financially support a company with such terrible leadership.
Unfortunately for me, my subscription just renewed last month on a multi year plan, but it does give me time to browse for and experiment with alternatives.
If you’re able, I encourage you to do the same and cite Andy Yen as the driving factor for your decision. We can’t let these tech bro fascists destroy what little semblance of privacy we have left.
Mullvad supporting literal Neo Nazis crosses a line for me but Proton using some LLM’s isn’t that level of massive ethical breach. Though feel free to support other smaller VPN’s only good for alternatives Proton will probably sell out harder at some point.
No. I’m not going to make changes in my personal digital life because of online influencers.
Proton is fine.
It’s going to be funny watching to say this every single time some terrible thing comes out about this loser. Keep hand waving it away and burying your head in the sand. You could just be honest and say you don’t care about the things he’s saying.
Fine until it isn’t.
The CEO is hell bent on turning everything you are paying proton for into empty marketing speak.
I have grave concerns about it being ‘fine’ in the long run, and frankly you should too.
Glad I chose Tuta instead of Proton
I’m on Infomaniak, the free tier is pretty good. Can hook up a custom domain and multiple domain aliases. And you get 50 email aliases.
I’m glad I bounced when they were caught sponsoring far right creators. Luckily, I had set up my own domain name so the switch was easy. Tuta has been alright thus far.
If Proton is looking for a CEO that’s a) Not an ass b) Has a bunch of degrees and c) Will trust and support experts in the workplace because I don’t know enough about tech to act like a pretentious jerk…
I am looking for work.
You sound cool. I’d vote for you. The problem is that CEO positions are basically incompatible with those values. They are looking for someone who will happily lie to save face, grow and milk their customer base whilst gradually reducing quality and ignore anyone who tells them they are doing the wrong thing. Ideally this person will qualifications but the important qualification is an MBA (a badge of honour for absolutely vile people)
I have two things to add:
- You all rock. Thank you for all the migration suggestions, and tips.
- Fuck Andy Yen, of course.
I keep seeing folks mention that at least it is a good and secure service why should I leave? this should be why: via: https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
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.”
I think they’re thinking of how to be securer dumbass. Which is probably smart considering everyone and their uncle is using AI to find vulnerabilities everywhere they can these days.
Unfortunately I can’t send a message by cancelling. Fortunately it’s because I already saw their CEO was a fascist-supporting duck dickwad who only paid lip service to privacy/security in the name of profit (so I went with different companies for my VPN/email/etc needs).
Share what you went with
Did Andy Yen do something stupid again? I think I’m out of the loop.
EDIT: Just saw it. Ugh. Why can’t we just have nice things not run by jerks?
This time at least was just tech bro AI crap, not fascism crap. Progress??
Well, the way he seems to treat his workers…
I was on day 21 of my 30 day guarantee on a 2 year subscription. I have cancelled and requested a refund. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
I had already made up my mind when he called trump’s administration something like “the people’s party”. I’ve been a client since forever, renewing every 2 years during sales, but not this time.
And now reading more about what kind of person he is, ultra capitalist boss talking about “loser” mentality… What a cunt. Reminds me of musk
company’s security Slack channel urged Proton 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.” Yen added, “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”
I did my part. My sub renewed in Sept hoping this shit for brains issues a sincere apology but given the state of the world I am doubtful. But either way time to find something that doesn’t put all my peas in the same pot.
Does this count or is was this too aggressive? I’ve been known to be a little too angry when it comes to things like this.
On line 4 you opened quotation marks at ‘"re-interviewing’ but never closed them. For that reason, I am afraid it is a failure and must be re-written.
Ahh shit
It feels pretty balanced, to me. Nicely done.
If anything, it’s not aggressive enough! Everyone is so apathetic about everything compared to 20-30 years ago. Between the rise of Fascism and the cost of living, life has never been shitter yet no one seems to give a fuck. Why aren’t we rioting and revolting until shit stops sucking so god damn much!? Where is everyone’s passion!?
I’ve been on this planet for four decades. It used to not be this way! People used to care! Now it seems like all of society has become emotional zombies, and if you dare to step out of line and speak up about some injustice, you get labeled as “crashing out”. It’s such fucking bullshit! I’m not crashing out; I’m pissed the fuck off that the world is run by evil men and no one is doing anything about it!
Oh I like you
I agree. However, I think the best ways to fix Proton are to send endless complaints until Yen is removed or to establish better competition with stronger morals.
You’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore!
See? This is what I mean! People like you are part of the problem. Nobody takes this shit seriously. You just mock me when I get mad for a valid reason. I really hate how apathetic everyone is compared to 20-30 years ago. All you care about is being clever and funny enough to get upvotes while the world burns. It’s fucking pathetic.
I just finished a long process of degoogling. Don’t tell me I have to deproton now. Ugh.
I was going to use them to de-Google.
Then he did stupid shit and I passed on going proton.
Then I considered:
If I'm going to de-google, just to throw all my shit on another company I have no control over, what in the fuck is the point?Host your own for what you can/want to.
Seperate the things you don’t wish to self host and put them with companies you like for the time being.
If one of them becomes awful, you’re only moving one service.
Self hosting is down the line for me, for sure.
There’s a Hetzner option. The server is super fucking cheap. They just give you a virtual slice of a VM and host up a nextcloud. That gives you storage and office apps. Move mail to tuta. Keepassx and syncthing for passwords. ( i would have said bitwarden, but they’re in halloweentown at the moment too)
Honestly mail on Tuta is disappointing. It works nut it’s very basic.
Rules have one option… send the mail to a folder, of which Trash is one. Can’t forward, can’t add tags or labels, can’t even disable the new mail notification even if you send it to trash.
Want folders to only show up if there are unread messages? Not an option.
Calendar events… want a reminder? You get 6 choices (start, 5m, 10m, 30m, 1hr, 1 day). Want 15m or maybe 2hr? Sorry, too bad… no custom option.
Things work but it’s very basic. I wished I’d researched a bit more before took my domain to it. I’ll switch later.
Is there any truth to the rumors that Tuta is some backdoor intelligence operation or such?
I literally just started the process of Google -> Proton, so I feel you. In terms of personal privacy it’s a step in the right direction…I’m not going to self host or anything too complicated so I think that’s the balance for now. Glad others are able to put some pressure on them to do better though!
Personally, I will stick with Proton for now because they are the least fascist option I have found for my use case that suits my standards of security. As such, I would not consider myself able to cancel my subscription.
But I do deeply dislike their CEO, Andy Yen, and will send a complaint regarding his conduct and recommending his removal. He is a danger to his own company’s mission and to Proton’s user base.
I agree with everything you said in this post. I will add that:
- Proton’s insistence on using Electron applications for their “standalone” apps is a major issue as well.
- I recommend using LibreOffice instead of their rather trashy office suite.
- Lumo also needs to go. Ethical software cannot be developed with—or in support of—LLMs.
company’s security Slack channel urged Proton 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.”
If that suits your standards for security, you might want to reconsider your standards for security :)
Yea it’s a swamp. Mullvad’s co-founder Daniel Berntsson is a fasch blockhead too.
I’m leaving protonvpn and thinking about a local VPN provider. Non profit, more expensive, only one country (the provider’s).
Which won’t fit most people’s needs, but for me it’s 99% of what I need.
Also I hope being a small organization the IPs won’t be blacklisted as much. Using a VPN full time in the last 2 years has become increasingly annoying.
My fallback was Mullvad, but yeah not really an option anymore. I’ve used Azire, much smaller but kinda similar, it worked ok. Could go back. I’m open to suggestions
God damn it. What’s wrong with Mullvad now? They were my fallback when my Proton plan runs out.
Mullvad’s other co-founder gave half a million dollars to a small populist party in Sweden. Not as egregious as some other examples, maybe, but up to ya to see what you think.
Have you tried AirVpn?
