I was considering buying their subscription but that’s going to be a tough sell after reading this. Anyone have any good alternatives?
Tuta is probably the closest direct replacement.
I left Proton though for Fastmail. Ultimately I just needed a Gmail replacement and it ticked all of my boxes. If I need to encrypt email I’ll just do it myself with OpenPGP.
No
Can they force Yen out in anyway and save the brand?
It’s already ruined
Can we fucking have nice things anymore? This is crystal clear, that CEOs of all kinds, ruin everything. Fuck you, Andy Yen.
Time for them to jettison this asshole.
I wonder why revenue is flat. Could it be the CEO making dumb statements which alienate their user base?
I bet it’s that. I bet management of the niche company doesn’t understand their market and why they got popular in the first place.
Now I’ve got to figure out replacements for their services.
VPN -> Mozilla VPN? Mail Relay -> Firefox Relay? Mail -> Tuta? (Need ~5 custom domains and lots of email addresses) Calendar -> Tuta? Drive -> ??? Docs -> ??? Notes -> ???
I’m so glad I went with Infomaniak instead of proton. And when Tuta comes out with a drive replacement I’ll try that too
Cocaine is a helluva drug.
I think we forget it’s endemic to grindkultur AI douchenozzlery.
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 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.
I was out as soon as this dropped but anyone still in may want to reconsider.
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.
Going to be migrating some of my info and deleting my account later today. They’ve been making bad headlines a bit lately but this paints a very clear and bleak picture. This company is completely fucked unless it has a total change in both leadership and company policy.
We’ve all been down this road before with these AI-obsessed dickweed tech CEO’s. We know how this ends.
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.
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 yYup, 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…
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
*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!”
This is fucked up. I had proton in good consideration, security wise. I even saw it as a good alternative to big tech (it doesn’t need to be perfect).
These last reports change everything, I cannot trust the quality of those products and on the advertised security strengths. “Fast and no eyes on code”, doesn’t inspire too much confidence. “No time for security testing”, defeats the whole advantage (unique selling point) of your company.
I guess Tuta is the alternative I will consider and promote, after knowing this.
Oh fucking hell…
I gave him the benefit of the doubt with his trump “support” comments… but this is clear as day, asshole behaviour…
Been a protonmail customer for over 10 years… not sure where to move next
Same, that good will has evaporated though as he’s continued to demonstrate poor decision-making and social skills. Bad traits for a business leader.
I have a lifetime Simplelogin account because I love that service… It’s now part of proton (as they bought it), so I think I’m stuck.
I’m in the same boat. If all my email aliases get stolen though it’s not a huge loss for me. Now their password manager (which I also have a lifetime subscription for) is something I’m going look into a self-hosted solution. Although the only self hosted part would be syncing some file they lives locally on my machine.
Oh well.
What’s the next e-mail platform to try before it enshitiffies? Thinking of going back to postal mail.
Tuta is pretty decent I use them only for email/calendar so if they go to shit it’s easier to jump ship. Gotta look into an alt password manager since I don’t trust a vibe coded app to be secure with my passwords.
Seconded on Tuta. I’m currently pretty locked into the Proton ecosystem, but I have a Tuta account as well, and it’s pretty usable if all you really care about is having an email that works. (haven’t used their calendar yet, so I can’t speak to it)
Definitely less feature-rich than Proton though. Worse spam filter, more basic UI, no auto-categorization of email by topic, etc.
I just recently deleted my entries in my commercial password manager for all my email addresses. I’ve written those down. Between vibe coding and vibe hacking, the internet is going to be chaotic for a few years… certainly at least until the Butlerian Jihad comes for shitheel CEOs like this.
I use pass which requires a bit of a set up but has been working flawlessly so far.
I’ve been very happy with Bitwarden for password management. Their hosted service is pretty good and if you want to retain complete control you can self host.
currently still using bitwarden but recently there’s been signs that the app might go full closed source in the upcoming years, and then start adding god knows what. i’d keep a backup of your passwords somewhere and be ready to move somewhere else if need be.
https://community.bitwarden.com/t/published-version-update-in-app-stores/102750
With E2EE:
- Tuta
- Mailfence
- Startmail
Without:
- Posteo
- Mailbox
- Fastmail
Disclaimer: I haven’t actually tried any of these except Tuta.
Ugh. I just signed up for another year in July.
I don’t need my email to be exciting or edgy or whatever CEOs think I should pay extra for. It’s fucking mail. You literally have ONE job, but apparently that’s not enough “growth” for high-energy tech bros.
The stupid part is that I hardly use email anymore. It’s all signup and login confirmations daily notifications from my self-hosted server backups, unskippable Amazon purchase, shipping, and delivery notifications, and notifications from various banking and payment platforms. Probably 2% or less is actual correspondence. The vast majority of it gets deleted without ever opening it.
Adding AI services and features is just an excuse to charge more money.
