Proton is transitioning towards a non-profit structure | Proton
2 years ago by just_another_person to c/technology
I think it might be because AI (aka LLMs) is genuinely useful when used properly.
I use AI all the time to write emails. I give the LLM the email thread along with instructions like “I can’t make it Tuesday ask if they can do Wednesday at 2pm”
The AI will write out an email that’s polite and relevant in context. Totally worth it.
I think the problem is people/companies trying to shove LLMs where they don’t make sense.
I am not a fan of this. I see it all the time at work and it's very obvious when someone has chatGPT write an email for them (it's always such a sterile and yet overcomplicated writing style). If it's a direct email to me, I tend to feel insulted that they couldn't be bothered to write those 4 paragraphs themselves - it would have taken them 2 mins. There is a definite human disconnect going on in society at the moment, and its worrying.
I agree. I actually think it's a net negative as well for friendships. As in the case of OP, I would rather get an original email from the sender saying they couldn't make it, so let's meet the next day, but instead I have to read thru several paragraphs of boilerplate and AI crap instead, which wastes my time, and I know the sender did it, so I'm mad at them for being impersonal. At some point, we're just going to have people's AI responding to each other without any person actually reading it.
We're only doing this because every company doesn't want to be left behind so they go all in. It feels like Ian Malcolm said it best in Jurassic Park
"Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should"
I can understand that. I don’t actually use chatGPT to be fair. I use a locally run open source LLM. This all being said I do think it’s important to fine tune any LLM you use to match your writing style. Else you end up with chatGPT generic style writing.
I would argue that not fine tuning a LLM to match tone and style counts as either misuse or hobbyist use.
Agreed. People are so bad at writing that they struggle to put a few sentences together for an email. Even their prompts lack clear instructions /message. It's astounding when you think about it for a minute.
Then just write that.
I don't understand why we're having AIs verboseify simple information?
Why do many word if few word do trick.
How long until we start using LLMs to summarize messages over-verbalized by LLMs?
And offloading the accounting for context WILL bite you in the ass. If you can't remember what a discussion was about and what needs considering, you're no longer doing the thinking.
Because in my experience some business clients feel offended or upset that you aren’t being formal with them. American businesses seem to care less I noticed but outside of the USA (particularly in Germany) I noticed that formality serves better. Also the LLM uses the thread history to add context. Stuff like “I know we agreed on meeting on Tuesday at last meeting but unfortunately I can’t do that…” this stuff matters to clients.
I don’t offload because I don’t remember. I offload because it saves me time. Of course I read what is written before I send it out.
Non-profit doesn't mean that no one makes money. But it does mean they pay less taxes. If the C suite is full of funders, you can pay them in bonuses.
They have two divisions and only one is "open"
Maybe to keep pace with trends, and be able to put a check in that box amongst competitors
I'm happy to see this announcement. However, just transitioning to a non-profit does not make an organization good. They can still be greedy and take advantage of their user base. That being said, it seems Proton's mission statement resonates with a non-profit type structure. When you are accountable to the shareholders, they become the priority.
"don't let perfect get in the way of good" or whatever that saying is. One step at a time, yeah?
If I remember right, OpenAi started with this model too, and they do lots of shady stuff. Not that this is the plan for Proton, but I completely agree that simply creating a nonprofit that owns the for profit brand doesn't guarantee good behavior.
Bad example. There are plenty of non-profit FOSS services that do well and serve the community.
This is what made me finally completely switch my email and docs to proton. I'm so close to being able to delete my google account now.
Well this and the docs live collaboration feature they recently added.
Switched mail and I'll switch VPN once my old sub expires.
That 90 for Standard Notes is on top of the plan you are on. 90 per year for somethings that is available elsewhere for half that is a non starter for me. I'm on unlimited now, not putting another 90 onto it.
Ya know, you may have just helped me finally make the full switch. Thank you
I wish it worked in the (iOS) app or had its own. A browser only experience isn't good enough for me to use it.
Cool. I switched to Tuta because it fits my use case better (2 domains, one for my personal email and one for everything else). I don't need any of the bells and whistles Proton has, and I also don't want to pay extra to get more domains. The Tuta app kinda sucks, but it gets the job done. I'm hoping my wife and kids will be interested in private email, but they don't seem to care, and I don't think they'd like the tradeoffs.
Now, if Proton revises their tiers, I might be interested. Give me something like the Tuta tiers, and I'll probably switch to it. I prefer the UX of Proton, but $10/month is a bit steep for me, especially since I'm not going to use the other stuff they're bundling in (I use Bitwarden for PW manager, have my own NAS, and I prefer Mullvad over Proton for VPN).
That said, it's super cool that they're going non-profit. When that's done, I'll give it another look.
Yup, but only one custom domain. I really want at least two domains, one with tons of aliases for various accounts, and the other for personal communications. I could use a proton.me address for it, but then it becomes a huge pain to switch to another service should I need to.
Does that include the IMAP bridge and multiple addresses?
Problem with Tuta for me is its too closed off.
Proton at least offers an IMAP bridge, Tuta utterly refuses to let you use your email outside their apps, which makes it more of a messaging app. And the fact there's no way to export everything easily or even forward messages rubs me the wrong way. I tried them and have been using them for about 2 years but I'd definitely love to get away from it.
I'm tired of these walled gardens. I don't give a damn how secure it is, if I can't leave it with my shit, then no thanks.
Yeah, it's annoying, but I honestly don't use any email clients anyway. So whether I use the Tuta or Proton app/website is essentially the same for me.
But you can export your email (select all then click "Download"), but unfortunately forwarding isn't a thing. That does put a bit of a wrinkle into my longer-term use of it, so if Proton can become price-competitive for my use-case (and no, I'm not paying $10/month for email), I'll probably switch. But since I can export them in some way, it's not a deal breaker.
You say you use Bitwarden. Is that self hosted by any chance? If so, how do you handle the potential for an outage or server failure, where you’d presumably need some of the passwords to fix the problem in the first place.
Thanks for the reply! That makes sense. I’m still weary of the client somehow losing the cache while the server is down (two holes in the Swiss cheese lining up) but that is overly paranoid I know that
You should definitely be! I take backups every 6h for my self hosted vaultwarden (easier to manage and to backup, but not official, YMMV). You can also restore each backup automatically and have a "second service" you can run elsewhere (a standby basically), which will also ensure the backup works fine.
I have been running bit/vaultwarden now for I think 6 years, for my whole family and I have never needed to do anything, despite having had a few hiccups with the server.
Don't take my word for it, but the clients (browser plugin, desktop app, mobile app) are designed to keep data locally I think. So the term cache might be misleading here because it suggests some temporary storage used just to save web requests, with a relatively quick expiration. In this case I think the plugin etc. can work potentially indefinitely without server - something to double-check, but I believe it's the design.
I also self host vault warden, it's pretty straight forward. Like the other person said, it caches locally.
Yep, the browser extensions also have an encrypted cache, although it is less consistent imo. I've had times where my server was down and the extension just completely logged out then couldn't authenticate so I couldn't access the cache.
Mine isn't currently, but I'm working on it. The main complexity is that my wife and I share some passwords, and I want to make sure I do it properly so that transition is as smooth as possible. Vaultwarden is what you'd use to self-host.
But as others have said, I'm really not worried about it. Passwords are cached locally and only touch the server when syncing to the server. I want to self-host to protect against breaches, not because I'm worried about connectivity loss.
You can always backup your passwords (there's an export feature) if you're worried about it. I haven't done it, but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to have a KeePass backup or something that you update manually every so often.
Are you me? Lol I feel the same about tuta, yet I such with them. I am waiting for my wife to care for her privacy and switch to a family bundle with tuta.
Got my own NAS and a Bit warden server for PW. I changed Mullvad over AirVPN once they stopped supporting port forwarding, though.
Yup, confirmed, I am you.
The Tuta app kinda sucks, especially for searching, but I do that rarely enough that it's fine. It did annoy me a bit when I was traveling in Canada and needed to find my confirmation code for something (had to connect to their wifi, wait for emails to download, search, etc), but it got the job done. I love that I can just add another person to my plan for another €3 or whatever. I'm going to try to get my kids interested even if my wife isn't, and it's nice that I can just add a little at a time. With Proton, that would jump up to $15 for two users, $24 for my family (three kids). That's a lot more than Tuta, which is just €3/user/month, so my entire family would be €15/month ($17/month), and I don't need to get everyone on all at once (i would probably only add one or two at first).
So Tuta meets my basic needs, is priced very competitively, and the client is FOSS. I'm actually excited about some upcoming updates (looks like having the subject in the notification just landed, but hasn't hit F-Droid yet), and I love how their roadmap is very open.
That said, I do miss the UX of Proton. I just don't think that's worth more for fewer features I actually use. Hopefully that changes.
Your response makes it sound like you're responding some kind of rage-rant. But from my reading, the post you responded to basically just lists a few things they like and dislike - clearly given as personal opinions. So your response reads as unprovoked hostility.
?
I think Proton is a cool project, I'm just a little disappointed at their pricing tiers. It's probably fine for a lot of people, and hopefully becoming a non-profit encourages them to improve the value at each tier.
I actually used to pay for Proton when I was consulting. I think it's a fantastic service, but now that it's not really a business expense, I find it's a little to expensive. So I have my business domain, my personal email domain, and a "junk email" domain all at Tuta, and I like that setup. But it's not worth $10/month for me, it's worth about $3-4/month, so I use Tuta. Privacy is really important to me, but price is also important, and Tuta checks both boxes.
I know I'm an outlier, just giving my 2c that Proton is a good service, and I hope they adjust their pricing with their new non-profit model.
Right, but it only supports 1 custom domain. With Tuta, I get 3 for €3.60, €3 if I pay yearly. I could probably make it work, but why pay more for something that I'd have to make concessions for? If they supported more email addresses, I might just use their proton.me domain or whatever (I like separate email addresses for different services, so I can quarantine a breach; so I'll do <name>-<type of service>@<domain>), and only having 10 is a little limiting.
I know I have specific and kind of weird requirements, but Tuta is currently doing a better job of providing what I want at a price I'm happy with.
what's with the hostility?
I'm sorry I took this username before you got it. Clearly you deserve it more with posts like that.
Touch grass.
This is definitely great news and refreshing to see from a company, but this came out two months ago.
Published on June 17, 2024
Edit: it looks like Proton just recently sent an email about this to their ProtonMail subscribers which is likely why this got posted just now.
Good. Profit and privacy are mutually exclusive in this industry.
Proton is still a for-profit company and has shareholders who expect to to make money. The change is that the largest shareholder of the for-profit company is now a separate non-profit organization. It is still a positive move, but not entirely what the marketing makes it seem.
I would imagine any privacy measures cartels take are seen as overhead more than anything else
Of course it is good news, and I'm an happy Proton customer since over an year, but this Proton blog post dates back 2 months now...
And that makes it irrelevant because...? I'm a subscriber and I wasn't aware of this until this post...
They literally sent the email out within the last 36 hours. My work account got it this morning, and my personal last night.
I've been using Protonmail as my primary address for a few years now. I'm yet to have a single spam email make it to my inbox. In comparison, I use my gmail less and I've had a few blatant crypto scams make it to my inbox.
I'm not saying for certain that it's better than Gmail's, but that's my experience so far.
I've been using proton for a few months now with a yearly Mail Plus subscription and I have yet to receive an actual spam e-mail. Your experience might be different than mine since I take precautions not to invite spam in the first place, but even then, Proton looks to be doing an excellent job
Good for them, I love being able to play Windows games on Linux.
To be honest that's what I thought the post was about until I read this, so thanks.
Just wanted to point out that it does not change anything from privacy and security perspective about their products.
Also they are still operating as a normal company internally (they still offer their vpn through a third party provider and they still work to achieve the highest income from their products).
I switched to Proton Mail in 2019, and recently started switching to their VPN service to use port forwarding. Glad to see Proton is putting their money where their mouth is.
I've been too critical of them in the early days and will admit that many of the issues that plagued their VPN service years ago have now been fixed.
Even if they did, so what? We should not then recognise positive decisions?
If we don't allow companies and people to make any mistakes, for fear of being forever scorned, then we'll end up with either unprogressive risk averse companies that cannot compete against their peers, or a host of good companies that go bankrupt from the slightest misstep.
Personally I'm glad companies such as proton exist, and are prepared to take risks, as they are currently our best hope against the likes of Google and Meta.
Do you understand what enshittification is? It's a slow descent over a long period. You add optional, privacy-respecting AI now, and over time, (like a decade,) it becomes more shitty until eventually all your data is opted in to centralized data harvesting or wherever.
I'm an Unlimited paid Proton user, and these new trend worry me too. Enshittification is a slow process. I watched Google turn from "Do no evil" to what they are today, and I'm too tired to want to watch the same entire process happen again to Proton.
Shouldn't we worry of enshittification when we are on the verge of, or on the descending side of trajectory?
So far they added features in a way that keeps respecting users rights, without changing their business model (which is 90% of the reason why companies enshittify BTW). Just because these products have something in common with products of companies who enshittified doesn't mean the same applies here.
Google's entire brand was built on amazing search, and now their search is awful.
Enshittification isn't a conspiracy and it's not a nefarious end-goal, it's just a descent into shittiness. Proton continuing to sideline Linux (still no Drive support, other apps are second-class, etc) is a great example.
If they were truly focused on the goal of promoting privacy, they would be wanting to prioritise the option for people to leave Windows and Mac for Linux. Instead, it seems like their goal is becoming "Offer all the things that are hot in the market right now."
That's some big slippery slope fallacy. Privacy respecting AI was a highly requested feature, whether you wanted it or not.
Them adding an AI mail assistant that is completely private has nothing to do with them eventually not protecting user privacy. These things have nothing to do with each other.
AI is not inherently a privacy invading tool, its just that the majority of services offering it are free, hence them profiting off data.
If so, will they re-think tiers? Or maybe they could give the option for users to choose what they need exactly and what they're willing to pay? (i.e current Proton plan that costs 8-12€ per month is too much for me, but I would gladly pay like 5€ monthly for little storage, VPN and few email aliases)
Edit: Proton has REMOVED the P2P tick from the VPN on this plan since I took the screenshots below. That sucks.
I would gladly pay like 5€ monthly for little storage, VPN and few email aliases)
Includes VPN with P2P and streaming, Drive with 15GB, Proton Pass, etc.
I don't think this plan supports P2P. You're still on the free plan with the VPN.
Edit: Looks like I was wrong. I remember needing to switch to a better plan to get the P2P but I guess I was wrong.
Edit 2: There is some inconsistent information on the Proton site regarding what is included in each plan and this seems to be the source of our confusion in this thread.
Edit: Proton has REMOVED the P2P tick from the VPN on this plan since I took the screenshot below. That sucks.
Here is a link: https://proton.me/mail/pricing#compare-plans
I have asked. You only get VPN Free: https://mastodon.social/...
This is correct
Update: I have used Mail Plus since before Proton VPN was a thing, and have never been able to P2P download--Proton should make this clearer
Edit: Proton has REMOVED the P2P from the VPN tick on this plan since I took the screenshots. That sucks.
That is incorrect. Here is a link: https://proton.me/mail/pricing#compare-plans
....what?
Then they should transition away from multi-level marketing pyramid Ponzi schemes too. I deleted my Protonmail account when Proton began peddling crypto“currencies”.
Them holding a reserve of a cryptocurrency in case something happens to their financial accounts is not the same as peddling crypto.
They're not trying to sell you any. They're not telling you that signing up to proton gets you "ProtonCoins" or something.
It gives credence to greed incentivizing unethical contraptions.
greed incentivizing unethical contraptions.
Crypto is a tool, just like anything else. Is the internet a greed incentivizing unethical contraption? Because the internet spawned Google, Instagram, Facebook, 4Chan, and various other shady and illicit sites and services. Should we hate the internet because of this?
Crypto isn't inherently bad. It's the people trying to take advantage and duplicate the "success" of Bitcoin that make crypto bad. I'm telling you this as a person who used to believe in "crypto" and was an early adopter.
A hammer is a tool because no one but the hammer merchants gain financially if everyone were to buy a hammer. Crypto“currencies” are not purely tools but instead multi-level marketing pyramid Ponzi schemes because as soon as one has it they have everything to gain the more people buy it after them.
“Thirdly, early adopters mine or buy large proportions of the total supply at negligible costs while late adopters mine or buy negligible proportions at large costs. It follows that holders immediately have every incentive to get as many people to buy after them. Like stocks? Like stocks, but without the dividends or anything tangible in the real world [10]. Congratulations, you got yourself a pyramid scheme †.”
“† The stock market has largely become a pyramid/Ponzi scheme as well since most of the money does not exist and profits come from buyers or new entrants, i.e., the greater fool [16].” —Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely, https://www.cynicusrex.com/...
Immoral baskets that incentivize greed are to be avoided.
This is old news. Why are you posting this just now? I mean I don't really care much. I transitioned to Posteo as soon as I learned that they stored the private key. They don't even let you use your own GPG key, useless honeypot. Their recent bitcoin wallet supports this. If they cared about privacy, they wouldn't go with Bitcoin. They have been ignoring requests for monero since years.
They also are getting into the AI hype, so I can't trust my data with them.
You can use your own GPG key (https://proton.me/... or using the bridge), whatever tool does the signing needs the key (duh) so I am not sure what you mean by "they store your private key" (they stored it encrypted as per documentation https://proton.me/...), their AI was specifically designed as local, exactly to be privacy friendly, plus is a feature that can be disabled (when it will reach general subscriptions).
I don't care about cyptocurrencies, but I suppose they started with the most popular, nothing to do with privacy as they just let you store your currencies.
Anyway, use what you like the most, of course, but yours don't look very solid motivations, quite a lot of incorrect information, I hope you didn't take your decision based on it.
You upload your private key to the cloud. Encrypted or not, this is a bad idea. No thanks. I can do the signing locally and then I'll do the decryption with my own private key locally without them storing it as well.
Edit: mixed public keys with private keys
You upload your private key to the cloud. Encrypted or not, this is a bad idea.
An encrypted key is a useless blob. What matters is the decryption key for that key, which is your password (or a key derived from it, I assume), which is client side.
They can do the signing and encryption with my public key
They can't sign with your public key. Signing is done using your private one, otherwise nobody can verify the signature.
Either way:
and then I’ll do the decryption with my own private key locally without them storing it.
You can do it using the bridge, exactly like you would with any client-side tooling.
It's still insecure. They decryption process is still in the proton company hands and they could add some client specific code to log the password on the fly. Proton is obliged to follow the swiss law and I can imagine situation that police asks proton (+ gag order ) to log certain data for specific clients like passwords and ips. Still private keys are better to be stored separately. You can sync them easily if you with with either rsync or rclone
This is old
"I know this. Why doesn't everyone else know this? They should be me, I'm the smartest man alive."
I really don't care much
proceeds to type an entire paragraph as to why you don't care
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That's refreshing to see in a world of ever increasing enshittification. Wish more companies move in this direction.
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