This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Please remember something very important everyone: The company may have changed its policy, but the company that made the policy hasn't changed. The people that made the bad decisions are still in charge, and the priorities that made them make that decision are still the same. They haven't changed.
This is relevant not just for Proton, but about every time company pretends to step back from a bad decision.
Absolutely, these people only care about the "image", they'll say anything without changing anything
Anyone that unironically uses the word "loser" to try to motivate a policy by mocking the opposite, is not mature or responsible enough to be in a position of power.
Also, mocking instead of giving technical reasons only happens when you are not right but want to win the argument anyway.
So yeah, he just outed himself as not fit for any manager position, worst of all a CEO.
People saying they will go back if he steps down, I think this kind of is a wake up call on the company using privacy not seriously but as a marketing gimmick.
I would stay away from them. Surprise surprise, another YouTube advertised product that is shit....
What even is the alternative, I don’t see any other privacy focused company that is directly trying to tackle the g suite with an email+storage+office combo.
Sure we have mailbox.org, cryptpad, and other specific privacy cloud providers, but none of them have them all in combination.
There's an argument to not have an all-in-one provider though: it increases vendor lock-in. If a company turns into a direction you don't like, you'd have to find a suitable alternative to replace all of your services, and that takes a lot of time and effort. If you spread it between multiple companies however, you'll only need to switch a few, maybe even have less work if you use a domain (for example for custom aliases).
Plus, something about Proton I disliked is that their products are missing key features you just expect from your products. For example, every mail provider offers you the option to add todo-lists or even journals, because WebDAV just has it, however Proton still lacks that to my knowledge. Other password safe programs have a folder system to better organise your entries. Proton Pass does not. I'd rather use many companies that each does one thing well than one that does everything rather mediocre.
"We're not making money fast enough so let's alienate our core userbase and create a toxic work environment! That will surely be a success!"
This 100% actually stopped me from moving my mail hosting to Proton. I'm looking at Tuta now and alternatives. And it's not even the AI stuff so much as his insane toxic behaviour towards his people...the AI psychosis is almost secondary...
Protons CEO is a weapons grade assclown.
I swear that money nukes brain cells.
“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.”
What a bunch of imbeciles. People that use Proton are in it because they value security and privacy. Any AI produced code that's not vetted is inherently insecure, and a huge "fuck you" to privacy as a whole.
"We're no tmaking enough money fast enough, let's go the slop-route". Fucking idiot, what do you think is going to happen the moment the security crowd and the privacy crowd hear about this?
I for one have been preparing to jump ship from my family plan subscription the moment it expires, precisely because of this bullshit Yen has been pushing in the last year or so, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
I do believe that Yen started proton from a good place, but as is natural for these fuckers, the sight of money completely replaces whatever working segments of their brains were working with shit.
I swear that money nukes brain cells.
You're not wrong. When people get a sufficient amount of wealth or political power, they end up surrounded by sycophants who want a taste of their sweet lucre, or to have that power directed towards a specific agenda, or just to be adjacent to privilege.
Compare the environment that induces AI psychosis.
The effect happens at small scale too. An experiment involving Monopoly games in which one person (chosen at random) got bonus money and turns, the privileged player would get louder, eat more of the snacks and attribute their victory to their skill rather than their bonuses.
... and it is only in so far as the appropriation of even more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he functions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and endowed with consciousness and a will.
I've been slow to transition away from Google products but I gotta say... to make an effort to ditch Google and then have THIS happen to you? I feel bad for those people. I really do... You do the right thing and get slapped in the face. Not fair.
I'm glad I listened to the People arround here, who said to not lay all of your eggs in a single basket. Thats the reason why I skipped proton and use VPN and Mail from different companies now.
So, funny story that might be related. Engineers directed by their management to tokenmaxx often will just prompt very complex, difficult tasks to drive up their token usage.
Using the metric as the goal is a great way to give perverse incentives. SEE ALSO the US Stock Exchange.
Yeah, getting metrics on software development has always been a problem from the first time people were writing code in the employ of a business.
Businesses love metrics. Put them on spreadsheet makes some graphs, that's what some people do as their job.
The problem is you can't actually measure the productivity of someone that's doing something that's never been done before. Software development is always about doing things that haven't been done before. If you want the same software, you just copy it, you don't need a developer. You only need a developer to make the software do something it doesn't currently do, which means having someone do something they've never done before.
You just can't measure the productivity on that. But businesses want to have some numbers, so they chuck whatever numbers they have into a spreadsheet.
Andy Yen is so desperate to become a tech bro oligarch like all of his role models. You lead a non-profit, dickhead, act like it.
Cancelled my subscription too.
My subscription end in march, and I won't renew it.
Good part, I have 4 months to find an alternative.
I just double checked (while canceling this years subscription) and I’ve been paying for proton for 10 years. I put in my cancellation notes that Andy is the reason I’m canceling and I won’t reconsider until he’s replaced.
same here, just cancelled today with him and his leadership style as the reason
This does very little to convice me to not migrate away.
My #1 issue was them sacrificing Security for Speed and this latest change does jack shit to address it
I canceled my sub today.
Zero interest in using a product voluntarily that's clearly not being tested adequately. I get enough of that having to use MS Teams at work, which has really just become whatever buggy crap MS' vibe coders feel like vomiting into production in a given day.
Dear Proton Engineers,
He means they won't do it yet, because the backlash is causing problems. Either because they fear the loss of customers, or because they fear the engineers leaving before getting their replacements trained.
I suspect some folks would poison the training while looking for another job.
Ahh, here's the largest part of the problem.
They said they felt not much could have happened due to Yen having the majority of Proton’s shares.
So what does that mean going forward? Going forward, I'm still going to push,” he added.
So going forward, I mean to be going forward.
If there was any job LLM AI were best suited to replace, it's these tech CEOs
Damage is already done, though. Get fucked, Andy.
He said it himself: it's important to win on appearances before technical stuff, or something like that. He's definitely going to push that again; or keep doing it even now, but in a more discreet manner.
Is this the same Guy that has already said some Trump aligned stuff? I forget the specifics.
Andy needs to be fired.
I've been using a combination of Google and Microsoft office products since forever, I'd love to switch, but I really don't understand where the hell I'm supposed to go. I can't really self-host (I only have a phone and laptop that I use as mobile devices) and I'd really like to not have to actively think about how my email works when I'm using it. I was sort of hoping Proton would be it, but they just keep sucking harder and harder, they don't seem like a viable alternative anymore.
Does anyone here have some advice?
Look, I am not a tech dynamo, so what can people like me use in place of Proton?
I use and recommend Fastmail.
Proton has always been very sketchy to me even when I first heard about it, glad I'm stick to that idea and never jump on the bandwagon
If you’re looking to switch to a new provider, may I recommend my own service, Port87. We don’t use AI at all:
https://port87.com/2026/10/we-dont-use-ai/
It’s also a good idea to use a custom domain for your email, because there is always a risk that a provider you like today, you won’t like tomorrow. Custom domains make it much easier to switch to a new provider.
Thanks for the link. It looks interesting!
