I guess I ultimately feel most/all for-profit companies are probably scum-sucking detriments to society, whether or not there’s been negative media coverage. My solution has been to self-host/FOSS everything I can.
For whatever I decide needs a cloud provider (like email), I evaluate the tool itself, and take great care to separate that evaluation from feelings or bias I have about the business entity (unless the company’s conduct impacts my privacy or security as a user)
I mean, this was an April Fools joke, and again, nowhere did they call it a shitcoin. It is also more recent than the outrage people had following the tweet I linked, someone was also referring to that.
So, the claimed comment must have either happened earlier or based on the tweet I linked, where, in fact, they did not call XMR a shitcoin.
Also, it was obvious trolling, given they mentioned well-known meme-coins DOGE and SHIB, as well as an alleged rug-pulling scheme with TRUMP.
As it stands, there is still no source where they called XMR a shitcoin, or where they have plausibly implied it.
Don’t get me wrong, I could care less if Proton was actually digging their grave, but such claims are a pet peeve of mine.
To answer the original question, I have switched from Proton Mail (I still have like 2 years of a subscription there, though, but it’s an empty, unused account) to Tuta. I can say the UI and UX of the Tuta mail client is worse (slower, more “artifacts” like in-your-face loading and toasts, frequently out-of-sync), but it’s certainly usable and I prefer to support Tuta and not depend on Proton anymore and not give them more money, for many of the reasons you stated.
I feel that Tuta is overall a more respectful brand that makes user Privacy a priority in a way that I feel is no longer present when using Proton services. Proton Wallet in its entirety serves as an example of this.
The comment preceded your linked post, and came shortly after Proton Wallet launch. Proton’s position is that anything else other than BTC detracts from the overall mission of improving adoption.
This proliferation of altcoins and other unsustainable businesses became known as “crypto” and has taken attention and market share away from Bitcoin.
At the time, there was quite a bit of confusion around a company choosing to market itself as “Private by Default” to not support a privacy coin. Considering Bitcoin to be not private is not particularly controversial.
The vast majority of cryptocurrencies operate on a transparent blockchain, meaning that every transaction’s details are public knowledge. This includes most well-known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Transactions with these cryptocurrencies should not be considered private and will not protect your anonymity.Source
I moved from proton to mailbox, simply because i felt like i was getting a bit to into the proton ecosystem. I also felt it was a bit to expensive, and especially the ios app was really bad until recently and imo isnt that much better now. Tuta is fine but i prefer being able to use a email client like thunderbird kmail etc
above and it is the one I mentioned Techlore has used in their video.
Without context, one can misunderstand that (although, one has to want to misunderstand that), but like I said, they responded to being teased by another user and used their word. There was no Monero in that exchange.
To which they would have replied this, then it is valid. But this is not what happened.
The other person said
“currently" here comes the shitcoins
so Protons response must be associated to this context and not a general one.
It also was the only instance where the word came up. In other instances where they talked about Monero, they covered it under altcoins or spoke carefully about Monero, calling themselves cautious with cryptocurrency (in the context of offering additional billing options).
And why they don’t add support for more coins in their wallet, I guess the altcoins share is not worth the development and maintenance resources for them, which is fair.
They essentially have said that. They said they’re Bitcoin-only and then said they’re not adding shitcoins. Meanwhile, they ignored requests on their uservoice page for over a year before making it private.
Yeah I’m not seeing anything that they’re saying Monero is a “shitcoin”, it reads to me like they’re not going to accept Shiba…? “Currently” makes me think they could add ETH/XRP or Monero but idk maybe I’m missing something y’all are seeing.
I agree. I’m reading between the lines. I personally participated in Proton’s uservoice feedback forum and voted/asked for XMR along with BCH and (I think?) ZEC. I believe some of those requests, particularly XMR, were literally the top most upvoted/requested items there. If not, they were pretty close. Proton obviously never implemented any of them, nor did they promise to implement any of them, nor did they (according to my memory, since they’ve now made that portion of the uservoice private) engage with those requests in any way.
I had not seen them call any cryptocurrency a shitcoin directly, but that was certainly the “vibe” I got from how they treated direct user feedback through their most official feedback channel (silence). Having seen them openly refer to an ambiguous group of non-Bitcoin cryptocurrencies as “shitcoins” is pretty strong evidence for me on where they stand on matters, but everyone’s thresholds are certainly different and everyone’s context is different as well.
Like the author of the post, I’m switching entirely to Tuta; I’m waiting for their Drive service to become available so I can finally leave the Proton ecosystem.
I can’t stand Proton any more – it just keeps adding more and more services when the tools already exist. Proton has become exactly what it was supposed to be fighting against: Google.
We don’t need a Proton Chat or a Proton Browser; Proton’s aim is to create a closed ecosystem just like Google’s. Some might say this offers users more choice, but I think it’s a calculated move aimed at eliminating the competition
Signal and SimpleX are already struggling to cope with competition from WhatsApp and Telegram, and the arrival of a third player will only further fragment the messaging market. It’s just like with web browsers: we already have Firefox, which is struggling to gain a foothold, Brave and, soon, Ladybird. We don’t need Proton; I’m doing without Proton as of now
I found a Reddit comment from Proton on the matter, in which they said something like they would be cautious of cryptocurrency (I can look up the link for you if needed) and that their cautious stance is sensible in their industry.
So when they said “currently”, they possibly meant they’d consider other coins for their wallet if they were as well established as BTC.
Fair enough, if that is the vibe (I’m not as experienced with Uservoice, but it also does not bring up anything when I search for the term “shitcoin”).
But even silence could be due to the mass of requests (I found a lot just on Reddit) and they no longer have anything to say. If you ask me, they probably don’t have a lot of resources allocated on Wallet and wanted to add the minimum to justify adding it to their portfolio in the first place. After all, their is already an abundance of wallets and I can see them not wanting to compete where it would get economically difficult.
Proton is also responsible for some FOSS stuff. Authenticator, VPN, and proton pass are even f-droid apps. No one should feel bad about supporting them.
I still think the competition is essential to keep an organization of that scale honest, so projects like tuta are important as well.
I can safely say, on behalf of the majority who don’t want a Proton Chat and Browser, that you should go and have a look at the criticism Proton is receiving on Reddit
Reddit? That’s the most unserious and unbearable platform known to the human civilization, no thank you.
I don’t think anyone cares what Reddit has to say.
Andy puts it best:
Having argued with both people on Reddit and X, leaving the questionable politics aside, from a pure IQ standpoint (reading comprehension, logical reasoning), the average does seem higher on X.
When someone starts making personal attacks. Such as claims about the IQ of the people they’re debating with. I find it’s often because they’ve run out of arguments themselves
and attract flies