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?
“Perfect is the enemy of good.”
Bad, also, is the enemy of good…
I think maybe good walked into the wrong damn neighborhood.
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.
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.
That’s refreshing to see in a world of ever increasing enshittification. Wish more companies move in this direction.
Yeah, kinda makes you wonder as to why proton is adding A.I. features though.
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”
Why not just write “I can’t make it Tuesday, can you do Wednesday at 2pm?”
Otherwise we just end up in this world.
You’re not wrong but at least my emails will be taken seriously by some 60 year old company exec that’s still mad his secretary stopped printing his emails for him.
You’re trying to please a boomer that’s still angry that email exists in the first place.
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.
https://www.charitywatch.org/nonprofit-compensation-packages-of-1-million-or-more
It does mean that there are no shareholders and you have to be “limited in powers”.
Good for them, I love being able to play Windows games on Linux.
They’re unrelated to Valve’s Proton
To be honest that’s what I thought the post was about until I read this, so thanks.
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.
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.
They also have mail-only tier at 4.99.
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.
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.
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.
The Bitwarden client has all the data cached, so the server can be down and you still get access to the passwords (same for internet connection).
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.
Yes, I figured the word “cache” was used loosely in this case. But you know, the server is down and/or irrecoverable for a while, and then one’s phone gets swiped. Not inconceivable. So I think I’ll follow some of the advice here about a backup service or password stash
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.
That’s roughly the opposite of what the article says.
Didn’t they get shit recently for AI and crypto related decisions ? Did they backtrack on that ?
How is this related to what the previous person said? Do you understand what “enshittification” is? Proton Wallet is an entirely separate application while the AI feature in Proton Mail is completely optional. Neither of these decisions have impacted the user experience of Proton customers.
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.
Is this going to be the same kind of non-profit as OpenAI? With a mission to improve the world? Yeah, let’s see how that goes. Another Proton marketing play on their set track to enshittification.
OpenAI is now for-profit since they got funded by Microsoft.
It’s not really that simple. They’re both:
Proton is doing the same thing.
This doesn’t sounds good. Thank you for explaining!
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.
I have asked. You only get VPN Free: https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/112988334950564963
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
Yo I see you on your link that you are right. I stand corrected. Maybe. This link says something different and so I’m not actually sure what’s correct. Let me know what you think. It seems like there’s some conflicting information
Interesting. That’s a support article so is less likely to be up-to-date than the pricing page, but that being said I’m on Unlimited and don’t know what the Plus plan provides with certainty.
Yeah you must be right with that pricing page. I think it’s also unclear what is offered in terms of VPN when you actually try to purchase the Mail plus plan. At any rate, lots of ways for people to be confused about what plan includes what.
