Normally I don’t like to get involved in drama but I’d like to give my opinion on this in case the forward mail team ever comes back to this forum.
You guys have always given me the impression that you saw privacy guides as a marketing opportunity rather than a learning resource. I’ll compare and contrast your behavior with Tuta so you can see what I mean.
Both of you mainly post updates, blog posts, info/corrections regarding your product, and other things designed to “sell” your product. I’ll refer to this content as “marketing content” to keep things simple. It’s understandable that this is your main type of post. You need to get your name out there and assail any fears/concerns about your product to gain and retain your userbase. The thing that sets you apart are your posts that aren’t marketing content. Going through your post history I saw two posts that aren’t marketing content. They are as follows: Questions of reliability of email aliases - #4 by forwardemail
Both of these posts are borderline marketing content. The second one is the one I’d like to touch on in greater depth as it’s the post that cemented my feelings about you guys. One of your only contributions to this forum is to help remove a direct competitor. There’s technically nothing wrong with you having made a PR to remove skiff, but you also using the opportunity to attempt to have the PR for your product merged gives me turf war vibes. You’re attempting to “kill” your competition and move onto their streets.
Now let’s take a look at Tuta. They have three posts that aren’t marketing content.
Before you start screaming about how this is on their site, I’d like to point out that the blogpost is about an open letter signed by a number of organizations. It also explains the issue, provides links for additional information, and doesn’t have anything designed to sell their product as far as I can see.
Post two is much like the first:
And post three is a call to action regarding the fsf: The Free Software Foundation Europe needs your help!
All of these posts are about important issues that impact privacy minded individuals. They could’ve used any of them to try to sell their products. They didn’t. They posted them to benefit the community and to make people aware of things that may impact them. They treated the forum as a learning resource.
You’ve also exhibited a nasty attitude several times in the past which I’d like to highlight as it’s a perfect example of why I find you off putting.
The sarcastic first line is not appropriate for a brand account. You could’ve conveyed all the information without insulting the user.
Same thing here. The phrasing of your first paragraph comes across very hostile. You could’ve explained why that user was incorrect without insulting him by calling his opinion false.
Hopefully this is understandable, I wrote it while half asleep. If there’s anything wrong I will fix it later.