Proton - No More Voucher Codes

General
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I went to go purchase a subscription and saw this…

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Guys stop mentioning Protons account the whole time. It looks entitled af.

I also really wonder why there are waves after waves of people trying to delist Proton’s services and bad mouth them the whole time. Yes, it’s by far not a perfect service but no service is.

I’m not complaining that people are sending news about Proton if they’re doing something good or bad but in the last few days everything is about Proton and other interesting posts don’t get much traction in comparison.

I just hope Proton doesn’t become the Nickleback of this forum and people start hating it because they’re successful and it’s just “cool” to hate them.

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I mean, I get what you’re going for here, but I’d imagine people would have the same reactions to Mullvad or IVPN or Tuta treating their customers suboptimally by not updating their documentation to reflect limitations, ghosting their business partners, offering YouTubers paid partnerships, etc.

The way that I see it, saying no service is perfect is just a way to deflect bad behavior.

Trust me, no one hates them because they are successful. People presumably “hate” them because they move at snail speeds when it comes to any form of app development and it feels like the old apps are largely abandoned for new shiny.

I’m saying this as a 10 year user of Proton Mail and as someone that recently switched to Proton Pass. Like, I literally remember when Proton Mail required two passwords to use. Clearly it’s better than going full Google, but there are so many strange limitations about their products that should logically be priority number 1 but for some reason isn’t.

Ghosting a business partner definitely feels like something that needs an explanation in my eyes at least.

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Man you listed Tuta as a good alternative and they’re constantly spreading FUD… Their whole marketing is basically Proton bad, we good and they make similar if not worse mistakes the whole time. Tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if some people behind these discussions are Tuta employees.

The development speed point is legitimate, but I’d push back slightly on the framing. Proton has shipped a lot of products and features in a relatively short window, Drive, Pass, Wallet, Docs, so the issue isn’t really that they’re slow, it’s that they’re choosing what to prioritize in ways that frustrate long-time core users. Yes, they should have Linux support for Drive etc but the most people are just on Windows. Linux users, however vocal, are still a minority. And if you don’t like them just go with alternatives. Nobody forces you to use Proton. You can just cherry pick things you like and the value is still good. Putting all eggs in one basket isn’t the best anyways.

Where I’d push back is on “saying no service is perfect is just a way to deflect bad behavior.” That’s true when it’s used as a conversation-ender, but my comment was more specifically about whether the volume and intensity of the criticism on this forum has become disproportionate. Those are different things. You can think Proton has real, specific problems worth criticizing andat the same time also think the forum dynamic has tipped into something that isn’t fully proportionate to those problems. Especially when services with documented issues of their own (Tutas misleading competitor comparisons, for instance) get significantly less scrutiny and traction here.

Here a short list of things Tuta did that afaik didn’t get as much traction as Proton’s mistakes:

  • Tuta security page (Security at Tuta | Tuta)
    Uses sweeping superlatives like “most secure email provider,” which is a marketing claim. Do discussions about misleading marketing claims ring a bell?

  • Tuta FAQ (Tuta Support | Tuta)
    States no IMAP/POP3/SMTP and no third-party mail client support (hard compatibility limitation). Doesn’t Proton prove that this could be done?

  • Tuta FAQ (Tuta Support | Tuta)
    States Tuta-domain aliases cannot be deleted, only deactivated (“technically not possible”). Why? It could be that this is to link users to aliases for future court orders? Technically it should be possible

  • Tuta post: 48-hour approval can block new-account use
    (What should I do if registering with a Tutanota email address at an online service fails? | Tuta) Onboarding limitation can cause bounced verification flows and usability friction

Surveillance things like this which imo are not their core problem as any service has to comply with the law but people like to shit on Proton for this:

The whole Proton vs Tuta saga where they just behaved childish (especially on social media but you can look that up yourself) :

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Please respect the fact that we are lucky enough to have a representative from Proton on our forum. While we appreciate their presence, we are not entitled to an answer from them here.

This website also doesn’t say Proton has explicitly stopped with vouchers, only that their contact at Proton has stopped responding which could be due to a million unrelated reasons. It’s probably best if someone respectfully reaches out to Proton Support and asks.

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No I didn’t. I said that if they are treating their customers suboptimally I’d imagine people would judge them for that too. So by all means create a thread about them and I’ll bring my pitchfork.

The rest of your post feels like you didn’t even read what I said. Why are you strawmanning me about Tuta in a thread where I’m questioning why Proton does certain things?

Let me be clear. Company A doing shit things is never an excuse for company B to do the same thing. We should judge them all for this. If Tuta is getting away with it, then let’s try to prevent that.

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I also really wonder why there are waves after waves of people trying to delist Proton’s services and bad mouth them the whole time.

I’m happy someone else has brought this up.

If I hadn’t been seeing what look like identical talking points dropping in real time, I’d probably just tell myself I was overthinking it. I’ve been trying to connect the dots on this myself, and while I haven’t tracked down a definitive ground zero, other than some chatter in a few Discords and a Telegram, it feels like we might be looking at a coordinated anti proton push.

To me, it comes across as being driven by a specific source (even if I can’t confirm who is behind it, what their goal is, or why, or if it’s just your garden variety astroturfing), and from there, it just seems to snowball organically.

I can’t speak for this forum and say that it’s happening here. Whenever I see the massive volume of replies in some of these Proton threads here, my brain tunes out with, ‘I ain’t reading all that. Congrats, or sorry that happened to you.’ But looking around elsewhere, it definitely appears that way to me.

Since I’ve been on leave from work for the past three weeks, with one left to go, and I’ve finished RE9, I’ve had the time to be terminally online watching it unfold everywhere else.