100%
I didn’t wanna say the quiet part out loud since people have lately been posting “content”-like videos as though they are worth the time, so I’m glad you bring it up.
The only thing that’s consistent in this thread is that it’s obvious there’s no pleasing everyone - but everyone seems to feel entitled to be pleased by everything all the time forever.
Has anyone thought about the halcyon days of like 3 years ago when most DeGoogle efforts pumped up Proton because they had a few features that were easy to get set up and test out for free? “Finally a real alternative!” they said! “Come for the free email, stay for the Drive and Docs!” they said.
NOW they’re too big? Now economies of scale are a crime against which no penance is good enough? Should their data centers be churning butter and growing sage and making sourdough like some homestead trad wife IG account? “Oh, but they need to focus!” on what? Their email works fine, and then y’all launch into a dozen “My baby is the most beautiful,” complaints about how this company is too big but should develop things better faster stronger harder just on the things you use and nothing else. Y’all, Pick. A. Freakin’. Lane.
And no, “I just want, like, artisanal email. You know, just like super authentic, where every E2EE message is sealed in wax and the headers and email are written on vellum in perfumed rose-colored ink by a robot whose memory is wiped after every word.(/s)” is not a real lane. This is what half this thread, and every other thread sounds like any time a Proton hate post happens.
Proton don’t owe y’all a single freaking thing unless you’re a paid customer. Use it or just don’t. Self host and see how that goes for you. Go over to Tuta. Try and use Mailbox.org. It’s not like you don’t have options.
If ecosystem lock in is a concern for you, as it very much should be, then get a custom URL like a grown up adult with big boy/girl pants and $20 of grown up money, and stop whining as if a free email address with the service name as your email domain that remains perfect and lovely and infallible for the rest of your life without problems is an inviolable human right.
The fact that people need to leverage Proton’s apparently ability to not hold on by a shoestring 24/7 with all-caps clickbait AF titles like “THE HATED ONE!” honestly speaks worse of the privacy community to not be able to keep front flying off the handle with the tiniest emotional nudge. Threads like this genuinely make me wonder if Google pays people to farm negative posts about Proton. Which I shouldn’t have to wonder.
I look forward to your thumbs downs, and stilted “Uh, yeah, well, they should just try and be perfect all the time and give this away for free! It’s not hard!” comments.
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I agree, but I wish Proton at a minimum had feature parity with existing ecosystems when it comes to migrating away from them. They require a paid plan to setup email forwarding and their CLI email export tool is incredibly not user friendly. I also don’t believe they have an easy way to export all your data from all their services at once like, for example Google does. These things raise red flags for me to the point where I would struggle to recommend Proton for a beginner now, at least for email, unless they had a custom domain already (which beginners don’t tend to have).
@SwampTrainer not sure who you think you’re responding to. It’s pretty clear you haven’t watched the video
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Their recommendation is to use Proton if you like it but limit your use of it to just a couple of their tools so you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket in case your account gets shut down or Proton gets acquired etc.
People, please watch the video before criticizing it. Far too many of you are just responding to what you imagine they say rather than what they actually say. This goes for news articles etc on this forum as well. It gets exhausting to see after a while.
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I really doubt most find it “very easy” to be highly diversified while spending $360/year on an all in one package. For most, that’s a strong incentive to get as much out of those services as you can. Which is why it irks me and others that you can’t pay just for the products you want.
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I actually like that there’s a half-decent ecosystem like Proton for people who are incredibly stubborn about making any improvements. I know people who definitely wouldn’t be using any alternative to the products they offer if they weren’t conveniently packed into a single unified ecosystem with a free tier.
The issue for me is their customer retention business plan as well as failing to be fully open source. It’s what I’d expect from a business but it sucks for consumers.
He is not as bad as Braxman, that is for sure. However, he has repeatedly both made sensationalist content over non-issues (like this one…) and attacked unfairly other privacy advocates and organizations.
I personally have little respect for him or his content.
Looking at the evenly divided positive/negative reactions to my post demonstrates his divisive reputation in the privacy community.
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So you’re a Proton Visionary member as well? That’s awesome! It’s honestly really cool to know that you have it as well. I only just recently upgraded to Visionary from Unlimited, about a couple of weeks ago through a type of easter egg that I discovered. I know that it’s a hidden tier that Proton doesn’t generally sell publicly to anyone outside of their early supporters anymore.
I agree. It’s a very similar situation for me as well. I’ll likely use Proton as my core with services picked to compliment around it like Notenook and Ente, as well as delving into the self-hosting world when I get the hardware eventually.
I am honestly a pretty big fan of you guys at PG. Thanks for all of the work you and your team has put in. I have used PG as one of my main go-to resources, even back when you guys used to be PrivacyTools.io back in the day.
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True, and I agree. If I remember correctly, I think that it was him and his channel that originally has gotten me into privacy originally. One of the first privacy-related videos I ever watched was his 2019/2020 privacy tutorials, in which I found were both quite good and extensive. It wasn’t until then I further found things like Techlore, PTIO, Naomi Brockwell, PG, Switched to Linux, etc. when I started to dig further down the rabbit hole on privacy and became more aware of things that are going on behind the curtains of governments and large mainstream technology companies. So, I owe THO a lot of gratitude for that. Though, I will say that his latest critique of Proton has struck a bit of a divisive nerve in the community. But, as someone who has no skin in the game, I do at times find THO’s content to be more aimed at those who want to be a bit more extreme with privacy and/or have higher threat models with having specific targets on their back.
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That’s cause it’s not a fair exposition about all that he is trying to preach here with this video. Several things are still unsaid which is lying by omission if you ask me. Also, its a bit on the nose of THO to make another Proton video criticizing ecosystems - we are not obtuse enough to not know why this video now.
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I don’t have extensive experience with THO’s content but from what I have listened to I don’t think this is true. From what I understand, the content is more about exploring the quality standards, knowledge/awareness and choices needed for a world that would make privacy abuses and violations much harder than they are now.
Some in the thread have described it as a bit abstract but I think it is quite a worthy pursuit. I also think this thread is evidence that it is quite hard to do.
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I don’t really see anything wrong with this video and agree with the takes that THO has there.
But I know that Proton is a very good 
topic on here so I’ll opt out from it. 
We could say that it’s speculative for sure, but it’s also a good thing to not be dependent on a company if you can avoid it altogether. 
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That’s a very fair point. Proton benefit immensely from Google’s transition tools, but they don’t give customers the same tratment.
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I’ve yet to see one credible reason not to trust any of Proton’s services. It seems that many in the privacy/security community have trouble holding two truths at the same time - that a company can be successful, growing and profitable, yet also respect user privacy.
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I wish that I could react with a 100, but here is a…
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The whole video seems to miss that you can just use separate accounts? I think it’s good idea to not use password manager, 2FA app, email and VPN from the same company, especially when there’s plenty of very good alternatives. But even if you wanted to, using different accounts negates most of the problems I think.
Then you’d be violating Proton’s terms of service I believe if you’re only creating free accounts to use their services. See Terms of Service | Proton 2.7
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Wow! I did not expect so many responses to my post. I apologize for being MIA after publishing it. Life got in the way. Since I can’t make more than 2 posts in a row, this is going to be long, so buckle up!
ON ECOSYSTEMS
@anonymous484 Everything you just said seems factual. It doesn’t tell me your opinion on the matter, though. I want to reiterate that, unlike THO, I am not against Proton having an ecosystem. I support it. What I am against is coercing and locking users into that ecosystem.
How does Proton fail to retain me if I already pay for one product and wish to pay for a second one instead of the whole suite?
Why force me to pay for Proton Unlimited or create a second account when, in both cases, Proton is getting more money from me?
That doesn’t make sense to me.
The exceptions of Lumo, SimpleLogin & Standard Notes
Moreover, the simple fact that products like Lumo are an add-on for single service subscribers as well as Proton Unlimited subscribers completely contradicts their logic. SimpleLogin also remains a standalone product despite being integrated into the Unlimited suite.
In other words, it’s possible to have Proton Mail Plus and Simple Login Premium with the same Proton account without being on Proton Unlimited. And I am not referring to the $200 lifetime bundle. Lastly, just yesterday, Proton announced that Standard Notes would remain a standalone product.
To me, Proton not allowing multiple subscriptions under the same account for most of their native services shows a lack of confidence. It reveals that they know that some of their products don’t stand strongly on their own, so they want to coerce their paying users into them via Proton Unlimited. I’ve said it before; to me, it’s a dark pattern.
Agreed.
AS LONG AS IT’S IN GOOD FAITH, CRITICISM SHOULD BE WELCOME
I personally haven’t seen this become a trend from creators in the privacy/tech community. You’ll have to enlighten me. I also think there is a difference between criticizing a Big Tech surveillance capitalism company for offering privacy solutions (Apple, Meta, Telegram) vs. criticizing a privacy-first company (Proton, Notesnook, Tuta, etc…) doing the same. As long as it’s done in good faith, both should be welcome.
ON ENSHITTIFICATION
I agree. Some people find it controversial for me to say this, but removing features that were once free or part of a specific tier you pay for, 100% qualifies as enshittification. It doesn’t matter if it’s not on the scale of Google and Meta. It’s still enshittification. And both privacy and non-privacy companies have done this, including Proton.
WE SHOULD ENCOURAGE PRIVACY ADVOCATES TO BE ON PRIVACY FRIENDLY PLATFORMS
To make a bigger point, I don’t understand why a lot of prominent privacy voices are not present or active on privacy-friendly platforms. In my case, I am thinking of Mastodon. It’s one thing for privacy advocates to not be on Twitter or BlueSky. But if they are present there, it contradicts their advocacy to not be on Mastodon.
The Mastodon community is much bigger than I thought. Even if their toots 
have to be automated, there is value in all privacy influencers being there. Those of us who follow them on other platforms should kindly encourage them to join and/or be more active.
Unfortunately, I find there is some truth to this. At least for some of their services.
ON PROTON’S THREAT MODELS
People who become whistleblowers never predicted that they would become whistleblowers. Hence, you want to be able to protect yourself in advance because you never know when you could be put in that position.
No system is perfect. Proton is for regular average people, but also people who work in fields where they could be targeted, like journalism. IMHO, all journalists should use an end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) email provider by default as well as Signal. And you don’t have to be an investigative journalist to warrant this use.
You never know where a scandal might come from. You could be a sports journalist and think to yourself you don’t need E2EE because you’re not reporting on government conspiracies, but scandals have come out of sports many times. Same if you report on farming. That’s why E2EE should be the default in journalism. Hell, the argument of privacy advocates is that E2EE should be the default for everyone, and I agree. I have seen media outlets that still use WhatsApp for tips, which, to me, is unacceptable, as you are jeopardizing potential whistleblowers.
ON PROTON DRIVE & COLLABORATIONS
I don’t use Drive that much, but indeed it is one of Proton’s weakest services in that beyond E2EE it is quite basic compared to other E2EE cloud services. There are so many features I want to see, like having a drop folder so other people can upload files to your account. This is extremely useful, especially when you correspond with people who use Big Tech email providers.
I think it will come eventually. You’ll note that all those companies don’t directly compete with each other. I can imagine that they wouldn’t want to do a collab if their products were similar, like, for example, Proton & Tuta. I really hope Filen sticks around.
What do you think of Proton’s collab with Vivaldi?
I don’t understand Proton’s collab with Vivaldi. Maybe I am wrong, but I don’t see Vivaldi as a privacy browser. I’ve never seen Vivaldi be recommended by any privacy advocate, so I find it extremely weird that it would be the primary browser that Proton recommends.
I know that years back they recommended Brave and Firefox, which are the standard recommendations. But since their collab with Vivaldi, I’ve seen them cite it as their primary recommendation on Twitter, which, to me, doesn’t make sense.
It’s like the Verge promoting WhatsApp on their podcast (sponsored ad) when they know that backups are not E2EE and that they collect tons of metadata. They have reported on it and still promote WhatsApp.
ON ANDY YEN AND PROTON’S STEWARDSHIP
I agree. Overall, I think he’s made some very smart decisions. For example, I completely understand his justification for Proton not accepting direct payments via Monero. It makes sense to me. That being said, there are decisions that Proton made that I don’t understand and that Andy has never been asked about. Like why they don’t accept multiple subscriptions. I’ve had the chance to ask Proton Support about these questions, and I was not satisfied by their answers. I am still in conversation with them about various issues, and I hope to report on them here very soon.
I’m a paying user and I am fundamentally unsatisfied in key aspects. I want to reiterate that I don’t have any issue with Proton having an ecosystem. I think it is ultimately a good thing. I have an issue with Proton coercing their users into a subscription they don’t want.
I am a paying user, and I would like to subscribe to multiple Proton services under the same account. That is mostly not possible. You can only subscribe to one core service or Proton Unlimited. I don’t need nor can I afford the latter. I have voiced this concern to Proton, and they were not moved. My belief is that until a critical mass raises their voice, they won’t care to do anything about it because they don’t want to.
Having the ability to use Proton Pass Plus and Proton Mail Plus under the same Proton account would allow my subscriptions to be in the same Proton ecosystem. But it’s not possible. Not unless I upgrade to Proton Unlimited, which, again, I don’t need and can’t afford.
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Brave (Brave VPN via Guardian) and Firefox (Mozilla VPN via Mullvad) already have business partnerships for VPNs. Proton only have such a partnership with Vivaldi (interestingly after Vivaldi were forced to give up on a better service in INVISV’s Relay) which gets them more exposure with a slightly different audience (Vivaldi users like customisation afaia).
But I don’t know if you should be expecting any kind of strictness and integrity on recommendations from these companies social accounts. I would only expect that from projects like GrapheneOS.
ON THO’S MOTIVATIONS
You could also make the case that Proton refused to do an interview with THO after he respectfully declined their sponsorship offer. I personally believe that even if Proton had granted him that interview, THO would have made this video. THO has never been afraid to voice shortcomings in privacy services, whether they are made by privacy companies or Big Tech (Apple).
Other trustworthy privacy voices like PG, Tech Lore, Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons, etc… have also done it, but they are much softer in their communication style, and hence their criticisms may not be received the same way or be explicit enough for people to catch them.
ON THO’S CRITICISMS OF PROTON
Indeed. There are shortcomings about Proton that most users are not aware of, like the fact that Proton Pass and Simple Login only allow one alias per third party website (2,3,4) and that they are completely separate services. Imagine you have Proton Unlimited, and your entire Proton account gets locked, that means losing access to your emails (Proton Mail), your files (Proton Drive), and all your logins (Proton Pass), all because you created 2 aliases for Instagram.
ON THO’S VALUE TO THE PRIVACY COMMUNITY
I respectfully disagree. I have learned a great deal from THO over the years and find his videos extremely informative. He was the main person who burst my bubble about Apple being private. And what I appreciate about his videos is that he always provides sources for all of his claims. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t make mistakes or that I always agree with him, but overall, it’s unquestionable to me that his voice is a force for good.
APPLE & GOOGLE’S DUOPOLY: THE DANGERS OF ECOSYSTEMS
One could argue that it’s difficult to leave most ecosystems once you’re all in. But yes, I 100% agree with you. I personally find it unacceptable that we can’t easily back up any of our devices outside of iCloud and Google Drive. We should be able to back them up to any cloud services, and single apps should allow that as a way to fight back. For example, if I download an e-book reader, I should be allowed to sync and back up my app data to other cloud services.
ON SIMPLE LOGIN & INTERNAL MIGRATION
Are you 100% sure about that? Have you tested it?
Because I know for a fact that it’s not possible to migrate aliases from one Proton Pass account to another. They have to be done one by one, which takes forever if you have hundreds. Moreover, none of the metadata associated with your aliases are transferred in the migration (e.g. the vaults they belong to). It might be different with SimpleLogin, which is why I am asking if you’re sure, because unbeknownst to most, SL and Proton Pass are separate services.
ON THO’S CHARACTER & CRITICISM OF SPONSORSHIPS
I don’t think the title is misleading. The video is about ecosystems but focuses on Proton. I disagree with THO’s position that ecosystems are inherently bad. At least not in theory. The problem is deliberately locking your users, and yes, even if you don’t lock them, there are vulnerabilities.
Did THO come after PG?
If it’s about accepting sponsors, I can understand the annoyance. I certainly don’t question the value of PG’s work, and I agree that the fact that organizations like Tor and the EFF are willing to work with you speaks volumes. But that doesn’t mean that sponsorships as a financial model are not criticizable.
What sponsorships and lack there of says about creators
There are huge content creators I absolutely dislike and have no respect for who take zero sponsorships. They platform bigots and spread all kinds of disinformation and misinformation. And yet they refuse to take any sponsors because it goes against their values.
Not having sponsors can earn you trust, but obviously on its own, it’s not enough to earn a good reputation. There are also lots of content creators I generally trust who are sponsored. I find their voices extremely valuable, but I also recognize that they could have blind spots when it comes to their sponsors or the industry their sponsors are in.
Sponsorships as a model is worth critiquing
I think it’s unfair to put all YouTubers in the same bag. When I first started hearing critiques about the sponsorship model, it was specifically in journalism, as lots of independent journalists and media outlets are on YouTube and have podcasts.
The criticism I saw came from other journalists, and I think it was warranted. It also makes sense that this criticism would extend to all content creators in general, especially in light of the various controversies there have been with sponsors.
That doesn’t mean that content creators who have sponsors are inherently bad, just that they may have conflicts of interest. And as I’ve stated earlier, creators who don’t take sponsors are not inherently good. Some are, in fact, very bad. A single good decision checks one box, but does not automatically earn my trust.
EVERYBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO CRITICIZE A PRODUCT THEY USE
Most of the people criticizing Proton are paying users, including myself. And free users also have every right to criticize a product that they use. Maybe not to the same extent, but they have that right. I don’t pay for YouTube. That doesn’t mean I can’t criticize some of their decisions. Especially if it affects me.
I agree. Unless I was rich, and even if I wasn’t, I would want to get as much value for my money as I can if I paid that much.
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