Vote on making him step down
Anyone who gave him the benefit of the doubt on his dumb political statements should take his demands for shoddy, insecure code more seriously. If Proton isn’t secure, there’s no point in giving them your business. They really need to throw this gobshite out on his ass before the company goes down in flames.
Get rid of Andy Proton
I commented before from the summary. Read as much of the 404 story as I can now.
It's bad. If I didn't trust 404 Media, I might think this was a hit piece. But 404 does good work and I trust their journalists. I should really subscribe!
Social media is prone to instant lynch mobs, one of its worst aspects. I do not intend to rage quit. But I WILL re-evaluate in 3 months. Just marked my calendar. They need to very publicly reverse course, AND restore my trust. I believe in giving ppl and co's a chance to learn from mistakes, or nobody ever gets wiser. But I need to see that happen, or me and my $ are out.
I also no longer trust Andy's judgement. The Proton engineers are saying the right things. Again I trust 404's homework, or I would be much more skeptical of all of this.
Ugh.
I've heard Andy interviewed. Couple times. He came across as personable and likable. But that takes a backseat if he's gonna steer his company off a cliff and I have to stop trusting their products. Even smart people can make dumb choices. Esp when no one is empowered to push back. It can get pathological, when the CEO starts to believe they walk on water.
Frankly I think the Proton Foundation needs to sit Andy down and have a heart to heart.
Ah, yes, once again the old adage "When they show you they are, believe them" has proved it never fails.
A happy Proton paying customer, I bailed within a week when Andy made his pro GOP/trump comments some time back.
Folks said I over reacted. I handed them that adage. It was right.
Protons top "loser" engineers will find themselves welcomed elsewhere. What a disaster Proton has become under Yen.
goodbye proton vpn, hello airvpn
I have six months left on my protonmail. Started the move to mailbox.org yesterday. Signed up for oscura and need to set up my vaultwarden
Andy Yen sounds like an asshole.
I still need to move away from Gmail, but it's probably not going to be to Proton.
He sounds like my manager. For him AI is a silver bullet for every problem.
guess its time to host my own email
I'm on a 2 year family plan in proton that has to be around 1 year in. Now, in the last few months I've been upping my game in self-hosting, even for our family business (moved from Zoho Workplace to a VPS with Nextcloud and MXroute for email, with mandatory PGP for internal emailing and all files in next loud encrypted, and it's been great, but it does come with some extra work for me).
I spent the last 2 days deploying stalwart in the same VPS with a domain I wasn't using to test it as a potential email server to self-host when Proton's subscription ends. It seems to be working well, I even got it to e2ee between that and my Proton email (~~can't get Tuta to accept a single email from it though, still need to tinker a bit it seems~~). Using SMTP2Go for outbound emails (free gives me 1,000 emails sent every month, ans I know my 6 family users together don't send even 500 emails in a month combined) to avoid the VPS IP address from being blacklisted if something goes wrong.
I urge everyone to try it. It is not as easy to implement as they try to make it in YouTube videos, specially if you try to use as many security and privacy features as possible, but it is the easiest email server I have ever tried to implement, and I believe it is absolutely feasible for personal stuff (not too sure about business, so I'll stick to MXroute for that for now).
If you have an unused domain (maybe a used one that you don't rely on for emailing) and some space in your homelab or in a VPS, Stalwart + SMTP2Go is a fun and potentially productive project to give a shot.
Edit: I just went into my Tuta account and the emails are there. Seems it was an impatience issue more than it was technical 😁
Goddammit... I just switched to Proton. I really don't know if I can handle switching again so soon.
Thanks for sharing! Good post, totally worth the read.
And I know which company to stay away from, and will solidly recommend this to others as well.
Proton is legit, they said.
Horrible stuff. I've been using Proton since 2020 and back then Proton's thing was just an encrypted email service. Year after year, they've started adding all these other apps and services to Proton's platform, and some of them fits nicely with the core email service (calendar, cloud for files, VPN). But lately they've began adding apps and services such as AI LLM chat (which is pretty crappy and inaccurate), remote video meeting software (which is really barebones feature wise) and apparently now they are working on Chromium based "privacy" browser (as if we don't have enough browsers already, let alone Chromium based). All of this requires a lot more developers and takes more time to develop and maintain, which is probably why Andy is so keen on making progress faster by using AI.
But why does Proton need to add all of these apps? To fight big tech in all fronts? To create same kind of ultra loyal, "will buy anything" fanboy culture around Proton products like Apple has (and to lesser extent Google has)? Or is it to grow bigger company much faster than originally intended (because the investors want that) all the while taking bigger financial risks in doing so?
In any case, Andy needs to step down as the CEO. The next CEO needs to take a good hard look at what's relevant to their customers. I don't think anyone is asking for a vibe-coded Proton web browser, just because it's "Proton".
I'd like to thank Andy for introducing me to Proton's competitor Tuta.
I've literally registered with them yesterday. Seems nice so far, worth exploring further.
Tuta, funnily enough, makes it very hard to send encrypted mail to people who aren't also using tuta. Maybe also look at Mailbox.org and Posteo. They have a lot less marketing/hype/fearmongering compared to tuta and Proton, but have similar features regarding encryption and security, with less walled-garden like restrictions.
I can give +1 for posteo. I have my posteo adress some years allready.
I just took mailbox.org for a spin and wasn't impressed, I have to say. No apps, which I can live with, I guess. There was an option for installing the various functions as apps - but apparently Firefox isn't compatible. So sadly it's a no from me, I need a bit more functionality from a paid service.
I don't want/need an app, and would say that there are more than enough mail clients on all platforms.
If you want one, though, I can see why this is a no-go.
He certainly clarified for me whether to pay for Proton or not. It's not.
I just cancelled my subscription and quoted him as the reason.
I'm currently in the market for a new VPN provider. I'd like to thank Andy for pointing me towards IVPN.
“Loser talk” is something a fucking 4chan basement dweller would say. I hate how society is just the stupidest fucks at the forefront now.
Stupid fucks keep getting money from evil fucks because evil is controlling the stupid to do bad things without understanding what's being asked until it's too late.
Guess that's one way to throw your business case of being a secure and privacy focused service provider out of the window.
Didn't you listen to the man? Security and privacy are for losers!
truly innovative and disruptive
he must be getting so many linkedin points
Every time this asshole speaks it just throws the entire company even further off a cliff lmao
As someone who has been an Executive Director, I couldn't imagine taking a political stance on anything. Good way to alienate your customers and lose profit. Anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together knows this.
Idk, somethings are worth taking a political stand on, not all things, but something. The all mighty dollar isn’t all there is to life
For those of you that care enough, I suggest letting Proton know in their community voice platform/forum. You can also email thier foundation.
WTF? Is he 12 years old?
Is this really true?
The business culture is sick. This way of thinking is not limited to just a few people.
Stop giving Proton money
Maybe I'm a particularly sensitive, spiteful snowflake, but if the boss of my company accused me of being a "loser" because I cared about the quality of the product, I'd be looking to deliberately sabotage the product. And for a new job, of course.
Ah shit balls! 3 months into a paid up email, calendar, drive and VPN suite. Have moved a lot of files over. Will start looking again, but definitely separating everything from now
Everything is going this way, best to set up a list of things to do to help yourself move quickly each time, you're going to be doing it a lot.
Great strategy and one I've adopted (now).
I just got out of my 1 year membership with them and happily moved over to tutamail and selfhosting 😅
RIP Proton.
Privacy minded people tend to also want security.
Well...some people are linux distro hopping and me...email hopping...f*uck
Alright, that's enough for me. What's the best mail, calendar and drive alternatives? Preferably the ones that aren't slop-coded.
Also, has anyone had any experience with Migadu?
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