These are my thoughts on the matter:
I applaud the employees that pushed back and have spoken out. You guys/gals Rock!! Thank you so dang much!!!
To Andy Yen, you obviously have no flipping clue who your actual customers are. Your views are incompatible with what I thought Proton was. I don’t care how inconsequential of a decision you thought it was. That attitude over anything, especially security!?, is the exact opposite of what I thought Proton was when I signed up in 2020. I especially did not expect something like this when I became a buisness level subscriber in 2022. For me to continue using the services of Proton, you need to resign from Proton in any and all capacity.
Furthermore to Proton as an entity. Any and all who shared in this kind of mentality and disregard needs to be scrutinized and removed if necessary. Don’t be crazy about it, but you know who NEEDS to go I think.
Look, we all are seeing that AI is here to stay. And it has gotten incredible at coding if I am to believe what I have read. The world is abruptly changing, but that is why now more that ever we need you to move as securely as you possibly can. Yes that still means using every tool at your disposal, but with the utmost concern and scrutiny supporting security and privacy. Even the crazy conspiracy/science fiction would never happen stuff, we’re counting on you guys not being susceptible to it. We want privacy and security, not features and shinn-shi-curity.
If that is not the company Proton is striving to be, I will be taking my business elsewhere. I expect many others will be doing so as well. Imagine the fash.crud on top of all this. Don’t know why I was sticking around truthfully.
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Wow, there are 18 pages of 20 comments per, all made in less than 48 hours, all with the same conclusion.
Damage control on this is going to have to be fast and decisive or it may kill the company rather abruptly.
Even if you aren’t considering leaving because of the AI use, the push to rush implementation at the cost of quality testing, or the abusive behavior of Andy Yen toward his employees, you should still be making plans to migrate because this situation could end with Proton collapsing.
Long-term subscribers are leaving. Businesses that have been paying for reliability and stability with Proton are re-evaluating their contracts. If the company leadership doesn’t respond adequately very quickly, they’re going to hemorrhage users and then hemorrhage money, and then their assets start going on sale.
Outside of the fediverse and the magazines reporting on this, I doubt it will impact Proton that much. If they actually make the CEO step down, they’d need someone with a focus on community and Doing The Right Thing, whatever that means in practice. Maybe a social contract, Debian style?
This is the reason we shouldn’t have bosses. If 99% oft a company disagrees with a tactic that the CEO wants, one person can destroy everything. It’s statistically speaking likely a more narcisstic/psychopathic person at the top.
We need workers cooperatives instead, where decisions are met based on consensus of employees
We need workers cooperatives instead, where decisions are met based on consensus of employees
Something like that, yes. Need to figure out a way so people who know what they’re talking about have a voice.
If simple majority at my job made decisions, they’d still be editing python2 directly in production.
That’s where concepts like rational authority come in handy.
For example:
the coop votes on who is in what role. People explain their education, credentials, or experience, and the coop determines who should have authority over which roles. They are then responsible for the choices pertinent to that role because they are likely the most qualified to decide them.
If somebody disagrees with the role holder’s decisions then they can challenge it and get the coop to vote on it, but that causes a lot of tension and scrutiny so you’d have to be sure you’re challenging for legitimate reason lest you make a fool of yourself. Generally the role holder is left to make decisions because the coop has entrusted them to do so, and they’re likely the best person for that role. But it also allows accountability if they make poor decisions.
Right. I think there’s an unavoidable risk in that someone’s political skills can carry them further than their practical skills would justify. Like I’ve known a lot of people at work who make solid engineering decisions, but aren’t as well liked as the suck ups.
Damn right!
I’d argue these are the places Proton subscribers found out about Proton and became convinced to trust it.
If the board acts swiftly and decisively with absolute transparency this could be just a “small” bump to a healthier and more trust worthy company on the other side. There can’t be any more BS from them though. Are they a privacy company or a profit company? They need to pick now and fucking prove it if they want to be a security company.
I also see a possible path forward, this “bump” being what sets the course. I am a paying Proton subscriber, and the important thing for me is how this gets resolved. What they learn. If they say “this or that feature won’t be implemented any time soon, we’re going to focus on QA and cleaning up our repos for a while” then that is exactly the type of thing that I’m willing to pay for, for example.
Yep, if Proton plays its cards well, this could be a positive thing in the end. If they dump Yen quickly enough and replace him with someone who doesn’t suffer late-stage AI psychosis, it could be seen as a sign that even a brainrotten CEO can’t sink this ship because corporate culture is strong enough to fix things like that.
And I do not think Yen has as much staying power as the “usual suspects” in the AI frenzy.
Are they a privacy company or a profit company?
For those who aren’t already aware: Proton AG (all of their services like Mail, VPN, etc) is a for-profit company, while the non-profit Proton Foundation retains majority ownership.
It’s the same structure that Mozilla uses.
I don’t think it’s that serious for them.
I guarantee 95% of their revenue base is unaware of this.
Of the remaining 5%, the number that will actually cancel will be tiny.
All they have to do is not do any additional fuckups for a few weeks.
95% of their user base is probably free accounts. Us users serious enough to pay are watching much closer and mean more to their bottom line
I think so too - people who pay for Protons services are keenly aware of such situations, because these things are the reason they signed up with Proton in the first place.
Noone cares much if the free account users switch, but the paying fractions opinion (like me) will have significant weight.
2 ways forward: go with Yen and observe Protons decay (which will also help physics!), or dump him and show the people that actually pay for the services that you still care.
I said revenue base, not user.
All these comments are on Proton’s customer service website, not some random social media. And this discussion has more interaction than any of the other discussions there, in a very short time. That’s a lot of attention in a hurry, all from Proton’s userbase.
imagine not being able to keep your mouth shut
the nerd reich is so fucking stupid
They’ve been told how brilliant and amazing and better than everyone else they are because they have money.
Then they cook their brains with AI psychosis and it’s just goodbye reality.
They actually think they are geniuses on par with scientific paradigm creators like Newton and Einstein.
I for one am glad they verbalize their psychosis.
The worst part of all of this is a lot of people these days are pulling away from Google, and a lot of people - including myself - pushed them towards Proton as an alternative.
So we’re left to pester those people to change yet again. Many will just throw up their hands and say it’s not worth the trouble and go back to Google.
Fuck Andy Yen.
I have cancelled my automatic renewal and made sure to give a detailed reason in their feedback box as to why.
I do like the service and I’m not yet ruling out I won’t still renew after my current period is up, but not with the current CEO and CTO at the helm.
Write to the board to ask for changes
i’m also holding out hope for leadership change… email alternatives are hard to build… it’s not like forking software when the leadership goes nuts…
Well said.
My family plan renewal is coming up. I’m going to switch to monthly to get the migration to my own domain.
I have the $300 yearly subscription because I bought into security and a true zero trust platform.
I tried to let Andy’s remarks from the past slide. But the perception of security isn’t security.
If they oust Andy and bring back a true security and quality focus, I legitimately would stay and pay. They can keep the “perception” of my subscription without the money.
Please help me make this actionable for moving away from Proton.
5 users. Email - getting my own domain. Tuta mail for hosting?
I like the email alias functionality, but I could live without it.
VPN replacement is needed. I used ExpressVPN before.
Password management integration and sync maybe to Home Assistant? LastPass is out from their prior debacles. 1Password was good but expensive.
Then there’s cloud storage. I use it for my off premise copy of data. What do you recommend? Some s3 storage and sync thing wouldn’t be too hard, but I’d prefer a different cloud solution.
Vaultwarden, Ente, NextCloud, MullVad
Ente is very cool! New to me thank you! Appreciate the suggestions.
KeePass + Syncthing
Thank you for the recommendation!
CEOs exist to do the bidding of do-nothing greedy shareholders who expect infinite growth because they are deluded and uninterested in the details of their product. The fight is always with the shareholders, the CEO is just their avatar, but in this case he is particularly aggressive. Ironically the shareholder interference is the biggest risk to long term profits because they constantly fuck up the quality of the product and destabilize their market share pushing dumbfuck ideas like these cause they don’t actually care how Proton works, or what the goals of the product are as advertised, which is why they’re directly stepping on their customer base here. Could be they only want a short term return and they think sacraficing Proton at the altar will give them the biggest quickest buck, and they’ve told lil’ Yen there he’ll get his slice if he makes it happen.
The trendy answer today continues to be magical thinking regarding AI, that will somehow increase profits (ciataion needed), and eliminate labour costs. It’s inherently anti-worker and it’s just for a few extra bucks from what are over-glorified landlords. There used to be a think callled stakeholding, where your investment in the outcomes of a company are tied to its continued existence so you have to actually consider how the operations are affected by decisions like there, cause you can’t just take your part and walk away when it fails. I don’t know what happened to that model… Maybe worker action involving suing the shareholders for meaningful threats to their livelihood could gain some traction in changing the relationship.
The real villain here is as always capital/capitalism.
Proton is run by a non-profit foundation. It’s not a publicly traded company
Please contact the foundation board of trustees to ask for change
The only thing I’m using Proton for is so I can pretend to be British and watch Taskmaster. If I used it for anything supposed to be secure, I’d nuke it immediately.
There are better alternatives for VPN anyway. I switched over from Mullvad to IVPN a couple of months back and it’s been fine for evading geo restrictions.
I moved away from proton years ago when the crazy started to show. Anybody now being surprised by this didn’t pay attention. A change in leadership, although welcoming, isn’t going to change much. Also, what severance package is this guy getting?
I think a change in leadership would show that a single unstable CEO can’t sink this ship, and it would be a very positive sign in general (depending on who they replace him with).
I am aware that AI integration in everything coding is not going away. My main gripe is that Yen creates an hostile work environment and will absolutely murder the institutional knowledge the engineers facing the chopping block embody.
I’d say: go ahead and go AI first (you will pay dearly for that sooner or later), but don’t be an asshat to the people who actually built the thing you are selling.
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