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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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remember all the fucking rubes saying Proton’s LLM wasn’t a problem cause only business and visionary accounts had access to it? well, only one month later of fucking course they went back on that and now it’s included with duo and family accounts, and my soon to be cancelled unlimited account just popped an ad for it on the compose window trying to get me to opt into the free trial for the fucking thing (and also the button’s purple just as a last dark pattern to try and fool users into clicking it)
Why do I get the feeling we're gonna see a colossal tech crash
is this the bad place?
Yes.
@self I wonder what "popular demand" and "overwhelming number of requests". Are there actually a lot of people asking for this? Are there more than there are people begging them not to? Maybe I just live in an anti-AI bubble, because I sure don't encounter a lot of pro-AI views.
it’s not just you — I can dig up the posts if you’re curious, but Proton wrote their last user survey so it was impossible to say no to this LLM crap directly, and they still got caught massively fudging the numbers to make this needless bullshit look popular. I can promise you it’s just the same people doing that again, except this time there’s no publicly accessible numbers they can be called out over
@self I can understand Microsoft and Google chasing this fad, but I would expect most of Proton's users to be exactly the type of person who's against this. But of course it's easy to fudge with numbers.
that’s very true! unfortunately, we’ve discovered that a lot of the foundational members of Proton’s board and engineering team are huge LLM fans (and gigantic Bitcoin fans too — that’s why Proton released a Bitcoin wallet, of all things, almost simultaneously with this LLM bullshit)
we’re not sure if something changed that suddenly made them go all in on their bad ideas, but the initial communication around Scribe was how much Proton’s business users wanted it — and the survey was very much crafted to get what looked like a pro-LLM response from that demographic. Proton has essentially admitted that they’re doing this for their tiny number of enterprise whales rather than their normal privacy-conscious users; it’s a shame they’re willing to burn their business down for that kind of short-term gain. I can only imagine them enabling the LLM for all their paid accounts this quickly is either a desperation move because the feature didn’t do the numbers they hoped for, or it’s a sign that Proton’s otherwise compromised.
@self It’s probably the same folks who wanted the Bitcoin wallet.
@self @zogwarg
Ffs I just swapped to Proton for drive and email. Thankfully only done a couple of email migrations.
Who isn't huffing this nonsense?
from the last time this came up, Tuta is of the few that aren't, although there's not really anyone with feature match on some of proton's features afaik
@froztbyte
I forgot I'm using their VPN too, and they accept bitcoin (not a big deal, but useful). I was aware of Tuta and fastmail when I chose Proton.
For now I'll prioritize moving to a self managed domain to make swapping provider easier in future.
I agree; Tuta is the only real replacement, and they’ve promised (for what that’s worth) they don’t have any plans for AI features. I may migrate to Tuta myself, but I can’t truly recommend it — as always, I have to point out that Tuta is still a single point of failure like Proton, and one day I hope we’re able to design a federated, e2e encrypted replacement for email (that crucially isn’t gpg or anything like it — imagine teaching your grandma and your drug dealer (assuming they’re not the same person) to use that kind of thing)
Its worse for me - I've got a metric shitload of emails on Proton. Thankfully, I'm not using them for anything particularly important.
@self @john_chu *sigh* cross another one off the list
@self @zogwarg
This is #TheEnd, my friend.
#Proton
@self @zogwarg highly recommend migrating to posteo
wtf is a posteo
@weirdwriter @froztbyte it’s posteo.net
Posteo is from Germany and they’re reasonably popular here. Their offer is quite different from Proton, though. If you want full E2E encryption you need to use GPG or S/MIME and handle that yourself (and obviously so does your recipient), so it’s not as batteries included as what Proton offered.
I like their focus on green energy and sustainability though.
Another option like that is mailbox.org. They’re presenting themselves as a bit more business-like.
That's significantly less comforting than Proton's Switzerland. It's in 14 Eyes after all.
Switzerland may not be in 14 Eyes, but it's still got its own surveillance apparatus and Swiss companies are still required to respond to lawful requests from the Usual Agencies. It's also a signatory to various mutual aid treaties. So I'm not sure how much difference this actually makes in practice beyond "marketing".