this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
54 points (96.6% liked)

Privacy

49320 readers
681 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
k_o_t@lemmy.ml
tmpod@lemmy.pt
Yayannick@lemmy.ml
ranok@sopuli.xyz
54
Help Me Understand The Proton Hate... (lemmy.ml)
submitted 6 hours ago by pyramidengine@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
20 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I've been a paid Proton Unlimited customer for several years now and aside from a few small complaints, I'm generally very happy with the services I'm paying for. I agree that there is too much focus on "sidequests" like Wallet and Meet before core products are fully rebuilt and meeting expectations. I agree that Linux versions and some feature implementations are taking a long time. However, I have a fully functioning suite of Mail, Drive, VPN, Calendar and more that meet 95% of my needs. To be fair, I'm sure the zero-access/zero-knowledge encryption aspect makes development much more difficult.

If you're worried about political affiliations/interests, I'll give you that Andy Yen has made a few worrisome comments. I'm not sure what to do there. Assuming there aren't repeat occurrences, I'm satisfied with their statement about the French political figure sponsorship.

If it's the FBI cases and subpoenas, it comes down to understanding the difference between privacy and anonymity, and knowing what strategy is required to achieve actual anonymity.

So why (especially on Lemmy) is there so much Proton hate/relunctancy? Eager to hear some non-biased, fact-driven thoughts here!

all 21 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Reisen@sh.itjust.works 1 points 49 minutes ago

maybe i'm a bit odd for my reason but i don't like their price model. that they try to price themselves like a mobile contract where things are cheap initially so you subscribe and then they get more expensive once you are in their ecosystem. no company that really cares to do right by users should do things like that.

and this despite them wanting to be a non profit company? i get that you still gotta make money of course but you can also do that by having one month and 12 month cost the same or maybe mostly the same.

and on top of this then there's also that? this is the same browser and the same cookies i just once googled for their vpn prices and once i went over their general pricing page that started with mail pricing and then switched over to vpn pricing. i'm not logged in with them or anything.

one tries you to buy into a two year plan and the other into a one year plan but why do they even have two different types of trying to get new customers kind of deals and one is worse than the other? just makes me not like them.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 11 points 4 hours ago

It’s really all about proportionate response. You need to do what your situation demands.

People who criticize Proton often have very high standards. Maybe they self-host everything and expect you to do the same. Maybe they live under constant threat of torture or assassination because of their political statements, and they assume you face the same risks. As long as those unspoken assumptions hold true, their advice is actually pretty solid. Next time you see comments like that, try digging deeper to uncover the invisible but foundational assumptions behind them.

Honestly, those are extreme circumstances, and most people don’t need to meet such strict standards. Just check your personal cybersecurity threat model and act accordingly. If you don’t even have one, you’re definitely not in the same boat as those guys.

If you live in a some backwater dictator land stuck in the dark ages, your need to take these things seriously. If your life is at risk, your threat model likely requires you to take security and privacy very seriously. On the other hand, if your threat model is all about giving the middle finger to Big Tech for philosophical reasons, you need something else. For example, switching from being a Google product to paying for Proton products is probably the right and proportionate move, given your your situation and goals.

Security and privacy also involve balancing convenience with your goals. A solution needs to be convenient enough to be practical. Your personal tolerance for inconvenience and your desire for privacy and security should guide your choices. For many people, using Proton for everything is a convenient option, and that’s why it’s the right choice when their threat model doesn’t demand stricter measures.

I've also previously written a comment about Proton hate.

[–] just2look@lemmy.zip 45 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

There are a couple issues I'm aware of that tend to make people wary of Proton.

First is Andy Yen's open support of fascists. Which you mentioned in your post. I know that he has tried to walk back his comments and claim they aren't political, but anyone claiming the GOP is anything other than fascists and oligarchs is either too stupid to trust, or dangerous because their beliefs are aligned with those fascists.

Second is that Proton continues to expand their suite of services and are trying to get people to buy into all of it, much the same way that people bought into the google suite. This centralizes many services, which is problematic if the company makes changes that do not align with the users wants and needs. So many people push to avoid this. Centralization in general opens users up to enshittification that is difficult to extract yourself from.

There may be more, but that is what I'm tracking. And it's why I ended my subscription with them, and moved most of my things away from Proton mail.

[–] huey_m@reddthat.com 13 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

The big difference, of course, being that you're paying a not insignificant amount of money explicitly for privacy, not a "free" service like Google. While Enshittification can happen everywhere, they've got a pretty direct incentive not to just start selling data and that sort of thing compared to the incentive Google had. The bigger concern is the security risk of all your eggs in one basket, but that's a convenience vs security tradeoff we make all the time. Each user needs to assess for themselves that tradeoff. But just the encryption at rest alone along with seemingly not reading your emails already puts an average Proton use way ahead of an average Google one, and moving them to a complete suite is a lot more likely than to 6 different services. That's a hard sell for an average user.

Also, I think the framing of open support of fascists is frankly ridiculous, personally. The way people were talking about it I was afraid we were talking full maga here, but the guy literally just praised a single appointment in anti trust... and she did have some actual bona fides that made her surprisingly (for this administration) qualified for that job, she has actually worked blocking mergers. This wasn't a Robert Kennedy appointment, this appointment could have been under any admin in the last few decades and nobody would blink, if anything might also have been praised for the pick. Broken clocks, guys, broken clocks, they're right sometimes.

Everyone can make their own choice here, but praising a rare decent pick from a shitty politician doesn't nearly reach a divestment bar for me and I think probably all except the most militant.

[–] just2look@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

It wasn't just praising an appointment. “By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade firsthand,” Yen wrote. “Support for cracking down on corporate monopolies is popular on both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, corporate capture of Dems is real, and in the end, money won. It is hard to see how this changes, and Republicans are likely to lead the antitrust charge in the coming years.”

He is praising the party as a whole. The party that is full of fascists and pedophiles. The dems are corporate shills, but in what fucking reality can any sane person claim the Republicans are better? That is why I framed it as open support to fascists. During the controversy, when people had already expressed disappointment and highlighted the problematic nature of his original statement he doubled down.

[–] huey_m@reddthat.com 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

You can't remove the context this statement was made in though, which was about the appointment. And let's be real here: he is not wrong about corporate capture of the Democrats at all. Yes, saying the Republicans are any better is ridiculous, but this strikes me far more like stroking the ego of a guy that likes having his ego stroked and made a rare decent pick for anti trust. This is no different than what Mamdani did visiting the White House... do we cancel him too for appeasing fascists? Or can we acknowledge choosing to try and engage with and manipulate a guy that's shown to be easily manipulated is probably a strategic choice more than ideological?

And the thing he's praising here is anti trust. Sure, I think it's wrong to say Republicans are better on this issue, but literally the thing he's praising is very much antithetical to fascism. How can we really say he's supporting fascism then? Where are his posts supporting his ICE policies? Where are the comments supporting overturning a democratic election? He makes one comment supporting anti trust efforts and suddenly he must be a crypto fascist because it came from Trump? Not buying it, man.

I really think trying to portray Yang as something like the My Pillow Guy, which is the level of discourse a lot of this has had around it, is really, really disingenuous and I think only serves to make people take these accusations less seriously even when they're levelled against people who truly are fascist sympathizers at the very least.

[–] Mearcfara@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago

I've noticed that there's a peculiarly dogmatic approach to antifascism here, and I think that colors a lot of the discussion around Proton.

[–] Notamoosen@lemmy.zip 15 points 5 hours ago

I know you asked for facts, but as someone who moved from Proton I can at least explain my reasoning. I like to split my services amongst multiple vendors in general. I felt like they were pushing the suite too hard, so I used that as an opportunity to move the couple of services I had with them to different providers.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with proton, but I like being able to move to a different service without having to move the others.

[–] Captainautism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

It’s little things piling up over the years. I was an unlimited user for several years too. They seem to be more worried about expanding than getting their core services right. That stinks of google’s business model.

They are not open source. The video conferencing app they just launched isn’t chock-full of reasons not to use it, its very framework is full of big tech spyware.

Their email encryption can easily be captured and decoded due to them using cloudflare as the man in the middle.

I’m sure others will chime in…

[–] pyramidengine@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 hours ago

Could you expand on what in the Meet stack is spyware?

[–] Captainautism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 hours ago

I meant IS* chok-full…

My app isn’t letting me edit my original comment.

[–] philanthropicoctopus@thelemmy.club 14 points 6 hours ago

Honestly, some people just moan. Nothing is perfect but things can be good

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 5 points 4 hours ago

If we leave some of the more scandalous headline making stories to the side, people on Lemmy tend to be the de-googlers of the world. And when they sign up for Proton, they discover Proton is a quarter Google in a trenchcoat. They want you in their ecosystem and they want you to stay there. So you wake up one morning and you're out of the Google frying pan but into the Proton frying pan. So some of the hate is disappointment.

[–] silentjohn@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 hours ago

At the end of the day, Proton is good enough for 99% of people. If your risk profile necessitates something even more robust, then go find it. I've been generally very happy.

[–] vapor_body@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 hours ago

SILENCE BRAND

[–] Innerworld@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e

[–] WaffleStomper@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

I'm also a proton user, and I like it so far. My only complaint is that sharing my calendar with my wife (also through proton) doesn't work very well. But I am curious what my fellow lemmings would recommend in place of proton. I'm sure there are opinions out there...

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 3 points 5 hours ago

I am curious what my fellow lemmings would recommend in place of proton.

I'd recommend Tuta. (I use Proton myself, but still have a Tuta account as well)

They've got mail, calendar, and Drive coming soon. A good little selection of apps without too much, and their prices are quite reasonable. I will say though, you get less email aliases than Proton, no VPN bundled in, and their user interface is... simplistic, shall we say.

But, if all you really care about is just having an email and calendar, and soon having some basic cloud storage too, their prices are very reasonable and they haven't had any major controversy I've heard of. (other than some people complaining about them allowing LLM-generated code in their repos, which I personally believe is fine as long as it's reviewed by a human, who actually understands the commit, before approving it)

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 hours ago

I don't hate them, but damn are they pushing beyond what any one company should do. The only way a one-stop shop should be used at all is if it's a very well structured, open side law source non-profit. Even then, I'm not sure that biting off as many things as proton is trying to would be for me.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago

I self-host NextCloud myself, which provides shareable calendars, contacts, drive space, photos and collab office suite. It doesn’t do email. For email, I have my own domain and point the MX records at whatever service I currently happen to be using.

Proton seems to be trying to do all of this, but I don’t want one org holding all that personal data of mine, even encrypted. The only people who need access to my NextCloud data are my family, which is much easier to manage than thousands of accounts.