Post #1411338

2026-04-10 19:05 UTC

Speaking of reasons to not use Proton; there's an interview with Andy Yen, Proton's CEO, in our local NRC newspaper today, and there's a number of things in it that are worth highlighting; 1) Dude only does job interviews on Sundays, because that filters out the people who aren't really 'committed'; 2) They want to grow to a billion users by 2030; 3) The unmasking of the Stop Cop City protester is not the first time Proton has assisted law enforcement, there are similar cases involving a French climate activist, and a Catalan independence activist; 4) They have complied with 94% of all requests for information since 2017, and got 9.301 requests last year, of which they rejected less than a thousand; 5) One of their latest products, Proton Meet, is built on top of US cloud services. — So, yeah, be wary of Proton, and the promises they make. They are Big Tech, they are tech bros, and they want to grow, grow, grow. That is not compatible with the image they have created for themselves. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/04/10/de-privacy-vriendelijke-tech-van-proton-is-geliefd-bij-activisten-en-idealisten-het-bedrijf-wil-ook-uit-de-nerdniche-komen-a4924552 https://www.sambent.com/proton-helped-the-fbi-unmask-a-protester-then-said-they-didnt/ https://www.sambent.com/proton-meet-isnt-what-they-told-you/

Replies (4)

@sindarina@ngmx.com 2026-04-10 19:24

The idea that you can trust a company of that size, even if they didn't have the ambition to grow tenfold in five years, is completely antithetical to any sort of goal of 'data sovereignty', or Big Tech independence. Any company with a hundred million users is too big to fail, in terms of accountability. Heck, I would argue that even a million users is already too much for a healthy internet, and especially for email. That kind of volume should not be concentrated with a single commercial entity, no matter how much you like the stories they tell about privacy, being owned by a non-profit foundation, and so forth. The dynamics just change, and do so well before you hit that number. You start thinking in percentages, instead of about individual people, and that is not really something you recover from.

Open ##1411339
@sashag@anarres.family 2026-04-10 19:32

@sindarina @silhelm He also endorsed Trump at least once. When called out as a right-winger he said that his endorsement was just for the things Trump did, not for the person 🤦‍♀️

Open ##1411346
@theartlav@anarres.family 2026-04-10 19:38

@sindarina I'm a bit confused by the 1. What makes that a bad idea or anything to do with being committed? Kinda sounds like a good idea to me to have an interview on a day when most people are not busy and/or at work.

Open ##1411351
@pastelfluffyfox@meow.social 2026-04-10 21:09

@sindarina also they've jumped on the AI bandwagon and use google for notifications on android while trying to present themselves as a viable alternative to google they are not a viable alternative lmao

Open ##1411356