marialBring popcorn, this is a developing story… 🍿
(From Threads)
(From Threads)
lea
Freya the web scale dog 
@lea @marialeal gotta love drama between the okay browser and insufferable closed source chromium slopware
woe2you@asm @lea @marialeal The Chromium monopoly is easily as big a problem as forcing AI into everything.
hyperrealChromium isn't a monopoly. Firefox and other browsers exist. Chromium does have the majority market share, tho, and I agree this is on par with the forcing AI into everything problem.
IMO Vivaldi gets points for avoiding AI. Only 5% of the code base is proprietary and it's only the UI. 90% is open source Chromium base. Vivaldi is privacy-friendly to the extent that they don't use and sell your data for profit. They've also built ProtonVPN into the browser and users can use the free tier without a ProtonVPN account. I think Firefox is inherently more privacy-friendly because it's not Chromium-based, and has the container tabs feature which Chromium-based browsers sorely lack.
Zen, LibreWolf, and Waterfox are better Firefox skins if you want no-AI and more privacy-by-default settings, but they don't have mobile apps.
@hyperreal @marialeal @asm @woe2you
They've also built ProtonVPN into the browser and users can use the free tier without a ProtonVPN accounti don't think cooperating with fascists is a selling point but you do you ​
​@lea @marialeal @asm @woe2you Proton is audited. They're not fascists. If you are basing this opinion on the Twitter post from the CEO, then you don't understand cryptography lol. They can't access your data.
hearts@lea @marialeal @asm @woe2you @hyperreal i'd imagine the greater point of concern would be monetarily supporting individuals who would contribute to the rise of the modern far-right movement. this really isnt about the encryption
@hearts As I mentioned above, I don't think Andy Yen fits in the category of "individuals who would contribute to the rise of modern far-right movement."
If you show me a pattern of active overt support for fascism from Andy Yen, then I'd reconsider my opinion. The one Twitter post is hardly anything but praising the appointment of Slater, who has a clean track record on anti-trust despite being affiliated with the Republican party, and Yen saying it started under the first Trump admin. Maybe he's even reconsidered his own opinion about that since then.
As far as contributing the the rise of modern far-right movement in a consistent and meaningful way, I don't see that from Andy Yen.
@hyperreal it wasnt one tweet, it was a series of communications including one from the proton brand account
theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
@hearts Addendum (this paragraph): It's still about the same Twitter post and Proton's / Andy Yen's response to backlash against it. Far from a "series" of comments. The way I see it is that Yen / Proton are not claiming allegiance to Republican party for any other reason than the Republican party's record on antitrust. I think this it is a mistake for them to praise Republicans, and I don't agree that any kind of tech can be "politically neutral", but I still think this is far from overt, direct, and consistent defense of fascist ideology.
For what it's worth, and in partial defense of Proton, they would really have no other choice but to comply with the laws in any country they go to. They have fought back against requests for data that they considered unlawful.
The company says it complies with lawful requests for user data but it also says it contests orders where it does not believe them to be lawful. And its reporting shows an increase in contested orders — with ProtonMail contesting three orders back in 2017 but in 2020 it pushed back against 750 of the data requests it received.
They are also still unable to provide the contents of the email, even if they can provide the subject and other metadata of email messages:
Per ProtonMail’s privacy policy, the information it can provide on a user account in response to a valid request under Swiss law may include account information provided by the user (such as an email address); account activity/metadata (such as sender, recipient email addresses; IP addresses incoming messages originated from; the times messages were sent and received; message subjects, etc.); total number of messages, storage used and last login time; and unencrypted messages sent from external providers to ProtonMail. As an end-to-end encrypted email provider, it cannot decrypt email data so is unable to provide information on the contents of email, even when served with a warrant.
I will agree that the logging of IP addresses and the email metadata means that they are not as privacy-centric as they advertise themselves to be, and that's really bad.
But, none of this particularly smacks of "contributing to the rise of the modern far-right movement." They have to comply with Swiss law. Maybe they can do more to encrypt email metadata, or maybe the email protocols just aren't conducive to that, in which case Proton is limited in what they can feasibly or possibly do.
My overall judgment in light of all this is that deciding to use Proton should be based on your privacy threat model. If you're a journalist or fairly high-profile activist then I would caution against it, but I wouldn't know what to recommend instead. Maybe Signal? All email and internet providers have to comply with the laws of the land. If you're, say, a therapist who wants to protect client confidentiality, or a regular citizen (like me) who wants solid encryption, integrity, authentication, and authorization in their digital communications and freedom from Big Tech companies, then Proton is fine.
