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.

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…

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.

It's a good company now. But that company makes money from its products (and the CEO makes money this way). So they can fund their politics and further it off the backs of consumers.

It's not about the products themselves. It's about voting with your wallet. It's sort of the same as Chick Fil A. People don't hate the food. It's very good quality. They pay their workers very well and the business is fine. But people don't want to fund the political/ideaological leanings and lobbying of the person who owns it.

It's also sort of the same as Harry Potter and JKR. Most people aren't worried about the books. Instead they care about giving JKR money to further her ability to lobby against and help others destroy the rights of LGBTQ people (Trans people specifically).

At the end of the day it was never about their services for some of us and all about the political leanings of the CEO who outed himself and then changed what he said to "fix" the record when presented with proof contrary to his belief. Trying to rewrite history to repair your public image because you said the quiet part out loud isn't okay.

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.

They have sketchy marketing that over promises the idea of privacy without actually providing it and my personal user experience with it was pretty ass.

I don't care too much of them as a product, but when they pretend to care about privacy laws and such, it really bothers me because their actions clearly show that they don't.

Their stupid "muh swiss laws" cop out for everytime they hand over data is especially infuriating because of the many other Swiss based services that did or do not follow such a method of operation.

PirateBay offered more security than these guys and it took the US Government threatning Switzerland before they eventually seized their servers in 2006. It was unsuccessful and the website was back up after 3 days. Even after the court trial against the founders, they continue to run it to this day.

SILENCE BRAND

I've recently needed a "shared" new account and I've tried Proton. I regret it.

• Their calendar will NOT work with open technologies from F-Droid and such. They require the use of their proprietary app, or their web version, or paying. Paying is actually generally fine for me, but not when I have a feeling that I'm just paying for more of their proprietary development.
• Their email system will NOT work with open technologies. Same as above, you won't get it to work with Thunderbird or K9mail out-of-the-box.
• As an implication of the above, paying them will NOT, in any way, help open standards and open technologies. You'll be only helping their business.

On the plus side, they have at least not requested my phone number upon registration. That was the only plus for me.

In total, if you want true ownership, open technologies, distributed technologies where the power and infrastructure is split across great many parties, then you should be against Proton. I personally chose disroot for now.

There are still situations where Proton makes more sense to recommend, such as to a political activist. I believe this group is niche though, as 99% of people really want ownership, freedom to share and less money to pay I think. It's not a business need, it's a human thing.

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.

Because many (most?) Lemmy users prefer to ignore that - if you look too close - most stuff they use was created by people that they would absolutely hate in person.

In my mind the ideal product maintainer for an Lemmy approved product has to be part of the LBTQ+ community, has to be some people of color, atheist, vegan and must subscribe to the EXACT same flavour of leftism the individual Lemmy user has sold his soul to.

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

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...

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.

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.

You friend, are missing the point - or more accurately you are relegating it to a "minor bullet on the list".

It's not the quality of knife produced, it's who the producer is and how he will use the profit if you buy it from him.

You can spin desperately to find a contortion that you can personally abide, but it doesn't change the objective reality.

Because most of what you said is true but Lemmy is, unlike the most popular platforms, full of very selective individual. The overton window is different here than the mainstream. We half very different threshold and here in the Privacy community even more so on that topic. It might be "good enough" for most but if it's not entirely open source, or rather free software, and with reproducible builds, and self-hostable, and federated, and built by people with impeccable background, and.. and... and.... that starts to be quite a bit.

I said this in numerous other posts, IMHO what matters is doing better, not "best" that unattainable. For some people Proton is better than what they had until now, e.g. GMail, but for others who move away from GMail to Proton and now self-host, it's not good enough anymore.

So it depends on where you are on a multidimensional spectrum that is unique to your needs.

People like to hate.

I'm coming from a position and stance similar to yours, a paying customer for many years, etc... I can completely see criticism of the proton platform for various reasons, such as some feature sets, your mentioned slow to market on what seems like priorities to the community, the security stance of eggs in one basket, etc... I think proton deserves honest criticism on many fronts, and also aren't the answer to everybody's threat model. Fine.

The rest? It's hate. It's not even stance or opinion. Its hate. The smallest things are taken and the reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Andy Yens comments haven't been THAT bad compared to the political people he gets associated with. But okay, I can see taking the small concept and saying it's evidence of a bigger picture behind HD scenes. But then there's hate. But proton set up their organization to prevent a single person (like Yen) from dominating and taking them in the wrong direction, but that gets ignored. Just hate. Let's talk about a news article where out of context proton "gave away" user info (when in reality it was all the fault of the user). But we'll ignore all the times proton didn't give up information they were asked for. Because that goes against the hate squad.

Again, if somebody doesn't like proton, good for them. Don't use them. Think they are the devil, good for them advise people as to why and to stay away from their products. But most of the hate comments aren't expressing any of that. Its just hate, and if you don't see it too then you are stupid and deserved to be hated too. That's the vocal majority. That doesn't mean its the majority opinion, it just means the loudest voices are saying that.

Sorry, my answer is a bit of a rant saying I agree with you. I'm sure many will disagree and that's fine. But opinions are allowed to be shared both ways.

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.

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.

I've always been Antiton. /s

I too am not particularly convinced that the CEO is MAGA. Just because he did some lobbying with Republicans, that doesn't actually mean he's conservative at all. When you lobby for a cause, you can approach both, even if you don't agree with one. I know someone who lobbied a republican for LGBTQ stuff. They were unsuccessful, but you get the idea.

I do have other complaints about Proton though.

1. They sent notifications of my proton emails with revealing information to my old gmail account. Had to change alt email in settings, but it still sucks because google can now associate the email content with me, which defeats the purpose of them not having all my data. (This one pissed me off)

2. The ecosystem is nice but I tend to be nervous about using one company for everything because look how google is. Not a complaint I guess but more cautionary.

3. They attempt to force you to import all your gmail spam when you sign up.

4. Warrants happen and they are at risk of retention laws. Don't like retention laws, could be a problem.. Tuta doesn't have retention laws, but I think they're in the 5 eyes or 14 eyes. I guess it doesn't matter if they don't retain data.

That being said, getting away from Google to use Proton is still good because it causes competition. I moved to Proton until I could find my forever email home. Good job degoogling everyone!