I really didn’t have money on Proton crashing and burning as a trusted community partner and company due to leadership AI psychosis this rapidly. It’s incredibly disappointing and a huge loss.
0 Boosts
0 Likes
If you use and particularly, pay for anything they make, you need to read this. It’s one of the worst I’ve seen even in the 20s. 😳🫠
I don’t think they’re recovering without the board removing executive leadership. https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
@hacks4pancakes I try to not bash people for how they look but why is this always the case? Where it's one of the frailest looking bitch-made people feel comfortable speaking to their workers like that? A strong gust of wind could ruin this guy's day how have we built a world where we can't bully employers that are so openly bullying others? The paradox of intolerance needs to be decoupled from wealth & power. People are people not numbers in a bank account or investment portfolio.
@hacks4pancakes I've just cancelled my renewal and it turns out that they have a handy little box where you can explain your reason(s) for cancelling. I found it very, very useful 😁
@hacks4pancakes Is Andy Yen buying up old houses exclusively to eat the lead paint off the walls? What an unhinged piece of shit.
I'm glad I never got around to exploring beyond their VPN. Still means I gotta find a new VPN provider that doesn't suck, though, and I've no idea what that is these days.
Anyone have any recommendations?
@hacks4pancakes Yep, I read it. He needs to be removed and is practically going on like a petulant child
@hacks4pancakes That is a damning report. I doubt anyone here could read that and conclude Andy Yen is a good leader for Proton.
I guess that means tutamail is the email provider for tooters. (I actually do not have a tutamail account; but I thought the pun was cute.)
@hacks4pancakes I'm so glad I left a few months ago. It just got to the point where it became impossible to ignore the growing list of problems
@hacks4pancakes at this point I think we’re in a “self preservation” phase where these tech leaders don’t even believe in a benefit that will come from it anymore, but they got duped and wrote big checks so there better be a return on that investment or they’re forsaken to a golden parachute
@hacks4pancakes
Gods, I've been a proton user since 2020 I think.
I wasn't bothered as much by the stupid ass takes on right wingers "pro privacy stance" but calling pentesting loser thought when *the product I am paying for is a security product* is a line.
"I don't care if the helmets work! We just need to get our helmets out there to beat big helmet for selling unsafe helmets!"
Fucking seriously guys?
@nagaram there were red flags. 🚩
I didn’t expect full Idiocracy in one go
But thinking about it, the red flags were there.
@hacks4pancakes Since canceling a sub give you an opportunity to tell them why I’d suggest anyone looking, especially if you have some time before it expires, don’t be shy in telling them why.
@hacks4pancakes your comment about service staff treatment is so underrated! you can learn a lot about one’s character in the first and last minute of a restaurant meal. a truly undervalued litmus test.
@tky I think they're both kind of indicators of the same elements of sociopathy and narcissism.
@hacks4pancakes bruh it’s shreddit 🤩
@hacks4pancakes hm, my subscription isn't due yet, but I am surely switching ASAP if this goes on. @protonprivacy
@hacks4pancakes well deserved
@hacks4pancakes 902 down votes and counting 😬
@Ali but that's the only thing narcissists care about so
@hacks4pancakes I understand that affects his karma or something so it's a potent ratio. I stay away from that place, but it's serving a purpose tonight
@hacks4pancakes Good. But him resigning would be the real win.
@emma narcissists only care about money and downvotes, so
@hacks4pancakes Not to toot *giggle* my own horn, but when I decided to de-Google two years ago, I did in fact consider the then-known, ahem, attitudes of the Proton CEO to be red flags & that's why I decided not to go with Proton, by far the most obvious option at the time.
When people tell us who they are, we should believe them & when a company is run by a person with questionable positions and/or ethics, we should assume that this is what the company stands for. Because it always is.
@hacks4pancakes It tells me how jaded I am that I read the comments he made and had to re-read the article to see what's controversial or out of the ordinary for execs.
@jsmall I mean everything is terrible in 2026 but this is noteworthy ugly.
I really hope they remove him and put in someone sane. He has been nothing but trouble for years. It's really unfair for the company to have to put out the fires he causes every single year.
@hacks4pancakes Andy yen needs to be sacked asap
@winterknight1337 @hacks4pancakes in the balls, right??? or the other sacked?
@hacks4pancakes I had already planned an exit strategy a couple of years ago after some of his outspoken politics that made the news right after I prepaid years ... but this is just nuts.
Overall I was happy with the service though. Email worked. I had very few people I sent emails to on the service and none that I used keys with outside of it. I also appreciated that they kept expanding their offering. I never used their AI, it felt too gimmicky.
Fastmail is on the short list. For now ...
@hacks4pancakes
Well, crud! There goes a decade-long relationship. 😑
Now what? Is there no safe harbor from this plague? Where can we turn for secure services free from AI slopfusion?
@hacks4pancakes did they even consider asking the ai to pentest it lol
after not doing enough research I moved my email to proton a couple of months ago . . . fuck!
@hacks4pancakes
The AI use aside, the whole attitude of "ship it, LOL!" on a security focused product is mind boggling!
@hacks4pancakes Yikes! Can I please just get a Google-like suite of tools without the AI obsessed techbro bullshit? 😫
@hacks4pancakes Wholeheartedly agree, they built a fantastic service to be then forced to compromise their own hard labor in service to someone clearly suffering from moderate/severe AI psychosis
@hacks4pancakes Those quotes from the CEO 😱
@cvwarren about the worst I’ve ever seen
@hacks4pancakes @cvwarren worst leadership model
@hacks4pancakes ...ok what??
looking it up
> “Due to insufficient velocity,” Proton is not on track to achieve its annual recurring revenue target by the end of the year, one internal document obtained by 404 Media reads. Proton’s year-over-year growth is also “far away from what the market today considers to be good,” and, “By all metrics that matter, we’re an underperforming company.”
See... This... This is a total fabrication.
What the above _actually_ means is that Proton's annual recurring revenue target is a total farce, created without reference to reality, or real-world constraints facing any company in the market right now.
They are, in fact, _completely_ full of excrement. What's worse is they know it. I'm assuming the company is _way_ over-leveraged and that's why Yen is losing his ever-loving mind.
>“Your old job is gone,” the manifesto, posted to Slack, told engineers. It laid out a future for Proton that fully embraced AI, and said if the company did not do so, that posed an “existential threat to the success of the mission itself.”
>Butler said that Proton needs to change in three key ways: accept that an engineers’ job is now to help LLMs write better code, faster; that Proton needs to get to the point where most code is not reviewed by humans but by AI; and to more fundamentally change the company as a whole, and “commit, as an organization, to the transformation that the moment requires.”
I know I'm quoting huge chunks of the article and I apologize for that but it's _so_ mind-bogglingly filled with inanity I... I can't _not_.
These people, the ones _running_ the company, really have lost their minds and gone _all_ in on a technology they fundamentally do not understand.
Someone has convinced them LLMs/AI is _faster_ and _better_. It's... It's not really _either_. And it's being _dumped_ on the market right now.
@401matthall the beautiful irony of this is that his comments on AI are what’s going to kill the company.
the userbase absolutely hates this and a large enough chunk will move away.
Nobody’s mad at the employees working there. We’re all super grateful for your efforts and sorry it’s ending like this.