OG title: We need to talk… about the Proton ecosystem
Ecosystem is a trap. It lures you in with the promise of convenience, only to lock you inside a walled garden. Like Google and Apple. They start with a good product, but then force you to use the whole suite to get the full experience. This is dangerous.
Ecosystems are concentrating all of your data and your digital life in the hands of a single entity. An entity that grows so large and powerful that it will start making compromises against your rights only to find more ways to profit or protect their business. The larger the ecosystem, the bigger data harvester it becomes. It becomes a bigger target for hackers and the more products it offers the more data it has to give to the surveillance state.
We know that the big tech does this, because their only moral value is the shareholder value. [4] But when a private company starts quacking like a duck in the steps of the big tech, it should worry us the same way. That company is Proton. The maker of the most renowned privacy products that have always been meant as ethical alternatives to the big tech.
Today, Proton resembles more and more the ecosystems of Google and Apple than it does its noble origins of fighting the big tech. This is a problem. It’s a problem for your privacy and it’s a problem for the whole community. But you probably never of heard of this perspective, because none of this is talked about enough. There is a reason for this.
You see, most content on Proton you’ll find, is coming from sources that are sponsored or affiliated with Proton. And I know how lucrative Proton’s deals are, because Proton even tried to pay me. Of course, I refused their offer, because taking their money would incentivize me not to recommend against Proton products. I am uniquely positioned to give you a nuanced critique of Proton and how to solve this problem.
Some good points to be said. I find the overall argument a bit weak as it is mainly one of user erorr of sorts. Btw THO has some pretty good back log of videos on privacy; check out their stuff on burners phones and anonymizing yourself at a protest.
I stepped away from Proton as soon as they started pushing more than just mail and VPN and started bombarding me with prompts to subscribe to one of their plans.
I dont appreciate things like my protonmail app icon being changed to say “Black Friday” on it thank you very much.
The average person is not going to sign up and pay for 10 different things, even if it’s slightly more private. Proton is similar to Google in that it’s free and has a lot of things with one account, but vastly different in the way the data is handled, probably the most meaningful difference. I mean the best thing you can do is self host but it’s obviously not something everyone can or wants to do. So there’s nothing wrong with taking the next best thing.
They’ve been known to respond to legal requests to log IP adresses of the users of their VPN. I wouldn’t trust them.
i stopped trusting them when their ceo voiced support for trump.
No matter what any company says if they get an order to log a user’s up they’re following it.
Proton is targetting enterprise who would love a secure alternative to Google Workspace. A normal consumer don’t need to put all eggs in one basket. I don’t think Proton is forcing you either. I just use their paid email service.
You’re not locked in. I can transfer everything in 10 minutes.
Doubt.
Proton export CLI utility takes 13 minutes.
Agree but nobody forces you to use anything except ProtonMail or ProtonVPN. In fact I have a visionary account and I mostly just use ProtonMail. I do use ProtonVPN but I also have WireGuard. Also my ProtonMail addresses are behind domains I host. If tomorrow I decide to switch away from Proton, I can.
So… sure Proton is not perfect and centralization is bad but IMHO it’s like saying Firefox is imperfect so it’s fine to use Chrome or Chromium browsers. Imperfect alternatives to BigTech and surveillance capitalism is better than relying on the things you hate until something “perfect” never comes along.
I don’t disagree, but until I start self hosting, I would rather support the competition.
I would like to see Proton have more support for Linux and Fdroid. It is one reason why de-googling my email has been left to the end.
The Protonmail app works fine for me on PopOS
I’m no power user. The VPN client works fine on Ubuntu. For everything else on Ubuntu I use a web browser.
Some of the proton apps are on f-droid.
For everything else on Ubuntu I use a web browser.
I guess I just care about the desktop app and such. Perhaps I should re-evaluate if I still care.
Yes, yes, and yes. But will it ever happen? 🤔
One big and important difference for Google and other similar ecosystems is that usually they are free and they profit of selling your data and ads. Proton is different since to use their ecosystem you have to pay to get in so they are not as incitevized to sell data since they already have that cashflow. That’s not to say that can’t change as we all know for profit companies tend to try other means of profit if they can.
