Proton left Mastodon...

due to limited ressources
Is it that hard to post the same thing on various social media? Maybe it is, I wouldn't know. But that sounds like a shitty excuse.
It looks like they're not up to date on X tho, hopefully they drop that shit. And they're on Bluesky, which, if not Mastodon, is a little bit better I guess.
I really don't get the hidden idea behind leaving Mastodon.

Another L by Proton. Why would they even say it and just stop posting silently.
Even if you agree with Proton's positions it's clear that Andy is just tanking the company's image with such rookie leadership mistakes.
Incredibly incompetence which makes you wonder how competent the actual code running everything is?

I only use their Drive, I need a privacy focused alternative with a browser version in case I can't convince my family to download an app, any recommendations?
- disroot.org maybe
- Filen.io is decent. Client is open source and storage is locally encrypted. They claim to use zero knowledge tech on their end.
  Additionally, look into rclone to upload and automatically encrypt data to cloud providers. This way, cloud providers can't access your data regardless.

One shitty CEO can destroy a company the same way one shitty president can destroy a country.

Meh

Not that they'll care but I bought for two years but will find something else when that runs out.

What ashame, I thought the CEO should be poked in the eye with a blunt stick for his Trump support but I would've kept with Proton if the business and his personal views were kept seperate
It appears this is no longer the case, at least proton provides a lot of decent services I don't mind abusing for free now.

I’m a proton user but I’m out of the loop. Please paste link or give me the tl/dr?
- Whoo boy. The Proton CEO posted a deeply troubling remark praising trump and republicans as the champions of the little guy, and lambasted democrats for being in the pocket of big tech. This, understandably, seemed rather... icky to a great many people, who dislike the idea of the service they trust for privacy kissing the ring of the Fascist in Chief/Putin's Towelboy/Elon's Hamberder Carrier. This might have been more palatable if it was made clear that Proton itself does NOT endorse the policies of Melon Husk's puppet administration and the MAGAt Horde, and that the original post was made by the CEO in his capacity as a private citizen, and not as the CEO of Proton.
  So when, in the face of backlash from the federated community, Proton decided to just leave the fediverse, rather than clarify its position, but stay on Reddit & the Xitter, using the half-baked excuse of "it's too expensive for us to cross-post on this completely free system", people, understandably, took this to indicate that Proton, previously one of the most trusted privacy companies, may not be as independent as its swiss headquarters leads one to believe.
  
  Hugely disappointing! Can’t believe in a single thing!
- Here's one archive reddit thread proton responded with that has since been edited to remove the comment.
  https://archive.ph/quYyb
  There's also a medium article from a random user that keeps being reposted to defend him. https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
  But, it leaves out that Gail Slater left the FTC to became vice-president for legal and regulatory policy for the Internet Association which is a lobbying group for companies like Google, Amazon, eBay, and Facebook.
  The Internet Association—a trade group for big technology companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon—spent nearly $176,000 to lobby the California legislature last quarter, according to the Washington Post. It is now running misleading ads on social media asking Sacramento lawmakers to weaken the law.
  The group claims that surveillance-based advertising technology, which slurps up and broadly spreads consumers’ personal data without their knowledge, should be exempted from the CCPA. In truth, surveillance-based adtech is one of the worst privacy hazards that the law was designed to stop. It also provides little benefit to online publishers, and erodes trust between companies and their consumers.
  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/lawmakers-must-not-let-internet-association-weaken-california-consumer-privacy-act
  Which is a pretty big omission if the argument the founder/CEO made hinges on trying to make people believe Gail Slater having been on the FTC means she fights for little tech.

every time I hear anything about this shit company, I keep thinking it's valve's linux compatibility thingy and I get real confused about why people are hating on it.
- The lesser company needs to change their name or add a descriptor. Proton Woken? Proton SaaS? Proton Supreme? Proton x GOP? Protonaz...

I'm so disappointed Proton. So sad, but maybe you already live long eniugh to become evil? Time to move on, aah so bad..It was so great piece of software and so great company in this hell capitalist world.

I was using proton pass but I would like to move on. Is there a good open source password manager that is secure and hosted locally?
- keepass plus syncthing works well for me. I sync between linux, android, windows.
- Vaultwarden is the opensourced version of Bitwarden. One of the employees of Bitwarden is allowed to maintain it in their own time
  
  Bitwarden premium is crazy cheap anyway. I have proton in limited and still get bitwarden premium.
  
  +1 to Vaultwarden! I've been self-hosting it for the family and it works great.
- I use KeePassX. there are android, linux and macos clients. i sync them between devices securely using Mega
- Depends on what you mean by "good". I use KeePass. Works for me. Open source and free.
  
  Same. You can sync your database however you want so it's totally under your control.

I really dislike these commercial "private" solutions to surveilance issues we have but people always seem to prefer them because of strong marketing around.
- I mean, I don't have access to a personal international VPN array. For that kind of service, you pretty much have to get a commercial product.

Honestly I would be fine if they just setup some kind of mirror so their posts would show up across different platforms. The biggest issue with then not using mastodon is just not being informed of what is going on. They don't need to engage with people on mastodon just setup some kind of bridge.
- Everyone doing social media posts to multiple networks from a single app. This is a BS excuse from Proton. Very disappointing.

Yup, no sorry. Only bots left in reddit, have fun!

"limited resources" wtf? just copy and paste the content. I guess they didn't like the backslash on Mastodon because of the CEO and Trump bootlicker Andy Yen
- This is even more ridiculous given they have a bluesky account and all they need to do is follow the bridge and their content will be ported to mastodon. Literally 5 seconds.
- Oh yeah that’s prob it. On Reddit they can delete any negative comments
  
  Same on Bluesky actually. They can hide comments they don’t like in response to their posts.
- Yeah not even copy paste, this has been easily automatable for years.
- It’s the age of stinginess

yet another reason to use mastodon, because they can't control it yet.
- What do you mean?
  
  They moderate their own subreddit and can censor things. There has been some drama about them deleting some posts and stuff, and in general, them moderating their subreddit makes it so that you're less likely to express what you really feel
  I believe

Didn't the CEO of Proton lick the Trump boot recently?
- They did, yes.
  I'm assuming the next video to be released will be of the Proton CEO and Trump on on some fetish.
  
  "oh yeah, encrypt me daddy"
- Andy is a cuck.
  Fucking disgusting
- People on here like complain and will tell that he has his balls in his mouth when in reality all he did was show some hope after the Republicans appointed someone who has a track record of being anti-bigtech. I still think the way the situation was handled terribly, but to say that he is MAGA would be a hell of a stretch in my opinion
  
  So it came as a surprise last month when Proton CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party in a post on X, declaring that “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.” When the tweet went viral, Proton’s official Reddit account posted a now-deleted comment stating that “Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
  show some hope huh
  
  I wonder how that's working out for him.

Can you even use Reddit if you’re running Proton’s VPN? I know Reddit has been actively blocking other VPNs (eg Mullvad) for some time.
- I was wondering the same
- Yes they have a stealth feature that is helpful for detecting a VPN

This ain't a fucking airport

I was an apologist for Proton during the whole Andy Yen commentary mess, but this is a really sus choice for Proton to be making.
All that matters under capitalism is growth. I wonder if the thinking here is that Proton has already captured all the geek/privacy enthusiast crowd that it's going to, and Andy Yen's social fuck-up basically killed any future expansion in that space, so this is part of a pivot to new markets and abandonment of areas they know they aren't going to win back.
If so, I'd expect to see Proton making expanded ad buys targeting preppers, libertarians, sov-cit types and other "I'm being watched!!" kooks.
- They're focusing on platforms that allow them to censor discussion.
- Same. I’ll be shopping around for something else when my sub comes up.

Looks like I'm leaving Proton. Fucking hell, not even a year ago I migrated from Gmail
- Learn your lesson and switch to a custom domain :) that way you will never have to change all your services' email addresses anymore, when you want to switch mail provider.
  
  How costly is a domain? Also how does one set it up, do you need a DNS server?
  
  That's what I'm leaning towards. Now to think of a domain that's easy enough I can tell my email over the phone of needed
  
  Yeah, this is gonna be my next move I think. I was using Proton VPN for a while and just recently started migrating my emails there, then they started doing all of this.
  I wanted to self host my email anyway, but now I have no excuse. I've been burned by the last team I expected it to come from, I'll be self-reliant now
- SAME! I only just finished getting all my servers and custom domain set up, and I already have to look for a new provider.
  If someone has any recommendations for a good hosted email, VPN and online storage provider let us know. It seems there's not many good options left.
  
  Self hosted ,or cloud?
- Me too. Same predicament. I was a paid user of Proton.
  Just got moved over to paid Tuta, and it seemed to go smoothly.

On Mastodon, Proton is held to a higher standard. That’s why they left for the dumb masses instead.

Makes me glad that I procrastinated on switching over, I guess I’ll just ride out my current NordVPN subscription and switch over to Mullvad?
Almost makes me afraid to ask the community, what exactly is wrong with Nord? 😅
- They've done other things, but the reason I don't use Nord is that they had a breach where an attacker had physical access to one of their servers, and they tried to sweep it under the rug rather than notify users.
  
  Fair cop; I guess there’s always risks in renting space in a data centre (physical intrusion), and that response definitely isn’t the best.
  Not enough for me to be a deal breaker currently, but will definitely switch when my plan expires.
- Unless you never want to torrent, I would say to not use mullvad, you can't forward a port with them (same with NordVPN). There are plenty of VPNs that don't log and allow port forwarding. I use AirVPN.
  
  I’ve not encountered any issues filling up my NAS with torrented Linux ISOs via NordVPN?
  My priority for a VPN has just been no logging and the ability to ‘travel’ internationally.. so if there the case, no need to rush out and switch then?

It's as if with each passing day, Proton wakes up and chooses to wear a slightly different red flag for a cape than the one they wore yesterday. I'm obviously being hyperbolic here, but I'm also a bit upset with myself for having decided to get an annual subscription with them last November.
I've heard good things about Mullvad for VPN and Tuta for mail. I've got my own domain that I can start using with whatever mail host I land on.
I'm in the U.S. What other mail providers are people using, and what other VPN providers should I be considering?
- If you ever want to torrent, some service that allows port forwarding, like AirVPN or PureVPN. A popular alternative of mullvad does not allow this.
  
  I just wanted to follow back up on this helpful comment here and the ones along with it from other posters. After testing and review, combined with what folks explained below, I can say for sure I'm looking for a service with port forwarding. And now I understand how someone could unknowingly offload the port forwarding responsibility to other parties thereby making torrents less accessible than may have been intended while mistakenly being under the impression they were providing equitable accessibility just because "it looks like it's working".
  I feel like this should have been more obvious way sooner, but my skull is remarkably thick it seems. Thanks for helping me wrinkle my brain a little more today.
  
  You keep posting this and I haven't been using port forwarding at all but torrents keep coming through. What am I missing here? Serious question, because I do not know what I'm either doing wrong or missing out on with port forwarding and I have not been experiencing what I would call a degraded experience as far as I can tell, but there's a whole world of things that I'm entirely ignorant to.
- I've used Mullvad VPN for almost a year and it's amazing. I only switched to Proton because I use all their services.

I wish VPS providers didn't commonly block email ports. Self hosting seems like the only way to stay in control
- It's understandable though, they just don't want to deal with email spammers.

Honest, stupid question: Why exactly is this such a big deal to so many of you? (I don't use Mastodon.)
- Proton recently got shot in the foot when one of their board members said some stuff that made it sound like he was somehow not certain that fascists are bad for privacy. The guy responded and clarified and made some good points...and still very clearly did not realize or did not feel it important to mention or even imply that fascists are very definitely bad for privacy. This is still post-record-scratch for Proton.
  So leaving what's basically the only social media of the future, such as it is, and sticking it out in the garbage heaps, makes two data points that make a line that goes in the direction of "definitely going to enshittify". It's possible this could be wrong, because two data points isn't huge, but these are also things that were extremely easy to get right, and require an oddly large amount of effort to fuck up like they have.
  
  Thanks for the reply! I was only aware of the CEO's X comments regarding Trump's politics. I JUST moved away from Google and have been quite happy with Proton, especially Mail and Pass.
- To me, the federated social network (Fediverse, which Mastodon is one portal into) offers some distinct advantages for pluralism. No single entity can control the whole discourse. When you don't agree with your mods, you can go elsewhere without losing your connections with people: just move to a different instance.
  Furthermore it's not controlled by corporations, so there is no incentive of trying to spread things like the plague just to get you addicted and make as much money.
  
  In practice the design of the Fediverse leaves some problems open (notably, moving between servers comes at a cost to the online identity you built, and getting bootstrapped if you don't have real-life connections who are interested is more difficult) and it even creates some interesting problems of its own. But all in all it's better already than the mono-idea, "there is one norm everyone should stick to" culture we see on commercial offerings.

I've been giving them the benefit of the doubt, but I'm kinda done with them. Anyone have any suggestions for a mail provider? I'm not yet willing to self-host that.
- It's sad, I really like their UI
  If you're afraid of self-hosting, https://mailcow.email/ is pretty great and easy to setup for that if you want to go to this adventure, else, Tuta would be their main competitor but I don't really like their UI
- While not exactly privacy focused, I've been using zoho for a while. Really happy with it. I distrust most of the ones that sell privacy as their main thing, because email is not designed to be private.
- I've been happy with mailbox.org. I left proton after the boot licking. I had been a paying customer for years.
  
  But are they on Mastodon? This is a very important factor for my purchasing decision.
  
  I just signed up for mailbox.org, let's see how this goes
- If all you need is mail, Tuta.
- Posteo
  
  Posteo unfortunately doesn't support custom domains.

Funny how they didn’t make actual post on Mastodon, but just silently edited their profile to say they left Mastodon? That’s pretty cowardly.
Yet another reason to not like Proton.

Guess I made the right choice to leave Proton.
- Looks like Tuta’s getting my business now.
  
  Unfortunately, they lock you in. If they decide the AfD is their best friend, you can't get the emails out of their system because they don't have an email export function...
  Anti Commercial-AI license
  
  Do you believe a country that's part of the 14 Eyes, in which the far-right party just won the most votes in the recent election, is going to be a surefire supporter of your email privacy? Also, do you believe that Tuta would refuse a court order by the German government to turn over your data?

If you're looking to shake up your email provider in the wake of this, I highly recommend getting a custom domain name, whatever provider you choose. Cloudflare sells domains at cost. Get a not-embarrasing .com of your own, and then you can move email providers in future without losing continuity. Proton allows exporting .eml files, which you can then import into your next provider. Or just keep in cold storage and declare email bankruptcy. Once you have a custom domain, you can use unique emails for all your services by setting up a catchall address. This will at least impede credential stuffing attacks, and let you know who sold/leaked your address if you do get spam.
I personally left Proton a month or so ago after the last bit of drama, in part out of principle, but also because their offering is just really expensive for my use case: I just want email, on a budget, with reasonable privacy. Plus I was tired of not having IMAP support and being locked into their clients. Moved to a Zoho business account (for now) and have been happy for the $12/yr. I already had a domain name, but they typically run <$20/year too.
- Would I need to do anything with the custom domain beyond registering it for this to work with an email provider?
  Because this sounds like a great migration plan: set up a custom domain, add it to protonmail, update emails, export data, and then switch providers.
  I’m just a bit clueless on the whole setting up a custom domain part.
  
  You don't have to do anything else with the domain, it'll work fine for email only.
  You could add it to Proton, take your time to migrate all your accounts, then dip. Or you could just go straight to a new provider with the domain, and take your time transitioning accounts to the custom domain over time that way. Assuming Proton's free offering is sufficient, you can always keep it around and set up forwarding to your custom domain.
  Regarding domain name setup itself, Proton should provide steps for how to do it correctly, but I found them to be a bit fiddly (might have improved, this was a few years ago) - when I moved to Zoho I found it really easier. If you're using Cloudflare for the domain registration, Zoho can basically do it all automatically (click a few links link and accept the proposed changes).
- Get an embarrassing domain, then give that one out to all the shitty stores that ask you for an email. Bonus points if it will make people extremely uncomfortable.
  
  CanIgiveYouAkiss@yesplease.com
  
  Just don't be this guy...

Ugh, I use proton for VPN and email. Any suggestions for decent VPN at this point?
- I've used Mullvad for a couple of years now and they're great.
  
  Sadly, mullvad doesn't rotate their IPs so they often get blocked and detected. You're kicked off many websites and services
  
  Unless you never want to torrent, I would not choose mullvad. Torrenting requires port forwarding if you properly want to give back to the community, which mullvad doesn't support.
  
  Thank you!
- AirVPN is great, allows port forwarding, 5 devices, and they run very good black Friday specials every year if you decide to buy it after trialling.
- I don't have any complaints with Nord but other people seem to.
  
  A lot of connectivity issues in some countries, and the app is often bugged when switching servers
  
  I had it for over a year and then, one day, every time I stepped outside my home, it would go into “connecting…” and never come back.
  I’d have to go into settings and completely deleted it, then re-add. I gave up, and went to proton. Literally zero issues until the ceo started praising nazis
  
  Nord has no port forwarding. No deal

At least they are still on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/proton.me
But a true fediverse presence would be better
- Bluesky is not much better than X despite it claiming to
  
  It's... better in the sense that you don't have right wing weirdos all over the place. But technically? Organizationally? Feels like we're on track to replay the same exact shit over again. It feels like people just aren't learning the lessons they should from the Twitter takeover.
  
  Bluesky is WAY better than Twitter. It's still vulnerable to the same issues Twitter is, but someplace with no nazis is always going to be better than someplace with nazis.

I understand. Why use resources on a platform that is so badly designed for new users that isn't used but to post manga and linux memes from tech nerds? If this is your reason to drop Proton then you're priorities seem a bit off imho.
- No the reason is they are pro-nazi

Follow us on Reddit
HowAboutNo.jpg

Does anyone know of a good alternative to simple login? They're owned my proton too and I have about 150+ aliases to move
- Addy.io
  Life changing. SimpleLogin sucks so much.
  
  Amazing thank you, I'll look into it now
  
  I like the shorter addresses but addy is blocked from many websites
  Sometimes they also block the MX server so even custom domains don't fix it. But for most services, it works great
  I often whine to the website's support and sometimes they allow my email

Proton is a CIA honeypot episode 978.

I can see a company not wanting to invest resources in a social media platform without critical mass. But for a company that itself is trying to gain critical mass, moving away from a similarly situated privacy focused platform is idiotic. It signals to potential Proton users that the company cannot be trusted and it’s very hard to recover from that.

Good bye privacy.

Anyone know any good vpn alternatives with port forwarding?
- AirVPN is a popular choice
  
  I'll second this. While it doesn't have a track record like mullvad, it doesn't have a bad track record so far and I have not had any problems with it since buying.

so the social media manager has time to clean the toilets in the afternoon

Sad news :-/
At least we have !protonprivacy@lemmy.world but they're not on it I believe

Yeah fuck proton

I believe I'll need to move to mailbox.org with custom domains.

Man. Right when I was about to buy into the ecosystem and get away from google.
[edit]: slightly less worried after reading this: https://lemm.ee/post/55314225

Just another nail in the coffin that hopefully convinces those who thought Proton was maybe still okay after CEO licking Trumps toes.

Your options are mostly Proton, or Tuta. One is located in a country that's part of the 14 Eyes, and who just had an election where the far-right party just won the most amount of votes.
EDIT: THE ABOVE INFORMATION IS WRONG, IN THAT THE AFD CAME IN SECOND PLACE, NOT FIRST.
- Uh while i dont disagree completely... most votes is for cdu (riding the strongman train hard these days)- that would be right wing dems by US-standards . Most votes for NSDAP (read:afd) since 1933 however.
  
  You are absolutely right, I looked at the graphic wrong. Thank you for correcting me.

Only thing keeping me from leaving is the low price I'm paying for proton unlimited.

This is a genuine question : how Proton stopping using Mastodon for communication make them bad ?
- They're supporting commercialized, walled-garden social media platforms instead of ones that are publicly accessible
- My understanding is that their users were calling them to account pretty heavily on Mastodon. This is a way for them to curtail that (and save face) without answering to the users there over the CEO's pro-Republican/pro-Trump statements. They can't control the narrative on Mastodon so they're running away.
  This is despite the fact that a lot of privacy focused potential customers aren't using Twitter or Bluesky or Threads. In fact, the userbase on Mastodon that followed their account was larger than that of both Bluesky and Threads.
  
  Makes sense, thanks a lot !
- Because they are exclusively on the Nazi social media now. You do the math.
- Because it sends a message that they do not support community-driven projects and will instead support large, corporate social media.
  It would not have meant anything if they were never on Mastodon in the first place.

I mean, it makes sense for a company to focus on a platform with a large user base. Social media managers aren't free.
- I disagree, Proton is a privacy company with more followers on Mastodon than on Threads and TikTok. Should they also drop what Linux support they have to focus only on Windows because it has a large base? This feels alienating to their privacy conscious users if anything.
  
  Yeah, this is what's kinda worrying me about this move. Proton's got a pretty good name with folks who are security conscious. This move feels more like they are kinda trying to pivot, to cash in litterally years of good reputation for something else. That'd suck at the best of times, but in the second Trump era? Really just ain't any good answers to what they might be cashing that in for.
- It doesn't make sense when that company is founded on concepts of privacy and they axe the (relatively) private platform instead of the exploitative one full of Nazis and anti-consumerism.
  
  I'm not sure being full of Nazis would be an issue for proton
- Setting up some basic bridge functionality is probably not that difficult either, so they could just mirror their xitter posts.
  
  Playing devil's advocate, someone has to moderate replies on the mirrors though.