DISCLAIMER!!!
I have NOT done any proer research in all of this. Every bit of info provided in this post is only what I stumbled across, so I am open to be corrected. Otherwise, take all of the info in this post with a grain of salt
This post is NOT written by AI
Usually I don't wanna talk about things like this, only to my personal connections, however this will affect my journey to Degoogling. I am, by no means, a new Degoogler, however I am new or completely unfamiliar to many aspects of it (like self-hosting). The community on Reddit has gone through a civil war on whether Proton has or has not been too evil as of lately
What happened?
(Not so) Recently, Proton's CEO has been using more and more AI code. From what I heard of, they aren't using humans to check the vibecoding. Also, I've heard that as times Proton has been exposed for not actaully providing the respect for privacy they claim to have
Why it matters
One aspect for Degoogling is trust. If there's an open-source app out there that suddenly adds telemetry even tho they claim to be provate, that breaks trust. The Proton community has not been to fond with AI slop, and the (not so) recent actions of Proton didn't help. This means Proton isn't tooooo trust-worthy in my opinion
"oH, bUt It'S jUsT rEdDiT bEiNg ReDdIt"
I know, but this is wayyyy more serious than the other types of drama. And besides, Twitter (X) had it wayyy worse from what I've heard of. I, myself, am not a fan of AI slop either, and I would at least check if the vibecoding is checked by actaul humans
Ok, but why?
Some people say it's not that bad, others say it is. I am open to any final corrections. If I am misunderstanding something or just blatantly wrong, tell me in the comments
Its' not about AI, it's about Andy Yens sledge hammer use of AI. But, to start let Andy tell the story in his own words...
"CEO Andy Yen told staff in an internal Slack message that 2026 "will be the last year that we hire engineers." From next year, he wrote, the company will instead hire "what we used to call product managers, to build things with AI."
Now, "product managers" is just word play to make "salespeople without developer skills" sound palatable. Effectively, Protons skilled employees are working to replace themselves, as they surely are well aware of now. Protons one and only agenda going forward under Yen is profit. And then more profit. Everything else
security, values, principles, fall by the wayside in pursuit of profit over all else
Andy Yens viewpoint as CEO is AI gets him to his profit nirvana, employees only show up as liabilities on the spreadsheet. He thinks he's in the widget building business where none of those other things matter. And it won't to some. But let's watch long term how privacy & values focused consumers decide. Andy will show you who he is again... soon enough.
Hey, just my two cents, I'm glad to be a spectator of this sideshow after Andy showed us who he was with his previous fiasco. Good luck,