this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 25 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

I can TASTE the prompt from this image

The Proton founder is Pro MAGA that should be the end of it for most of you. I'm never going to leave Njalla for my VPN needs

[–] Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 days ago

While I agree that the response is heavily AI generated, I have to disagree that he's pro-Maga. He reached out to both democrats and republicans to talk about the importance of privacy and the democrats turned him down (or entirely ignored him) while the republicans met with him.

He then went on Xitter to shame the Dems and said that the Republicans seemed to be the party caring about privacy.

He's definitely a dumbass for trying to play it that way, but he did not come out in support of Maga.

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 3 days ago (3 children)

He was not pro maga just because he could gain an audience with GOP members but not dems on a lobbying trip. There has never been a single shred of evidence showing he is pro maga, and at this point I'm just going to assume it's a smear campaign against a Google competitor.

Change my mind. I dare anyone to show the proof.

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[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

unfortunately, a lot of us need more than vpn and proton has a full suite.

[–] cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de 52 points 3 days ago (6 children)

"You are right to raise this and we want to address this directly"

Isnt that how Claude Sonnet or Opus writes?

[–] ytg@sopuli.xyz 51 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I think they’ve just been trained on corporate speak

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[–] Tacky4092@feddit.org 6 points 2 days ago

It's PR language, doesn't matter if this is written by a human or AI. Message is what it is.

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[–] Tieas@lemmy.ml 77 points 3 days ago (20 children)

They screwed up, admitted it, apologized, don't see why people are calling for blood anymore. People are allowed to make mistakes, they owned it and they cut ties with the guy.

[–] amos@slrpnk.net 22 points 3 days ago (5 children)

They keep making right wing mistakes though. I think that points to something.

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[–] Nouvellalia@lemmy.world 42 points 3 days ago (3 children)
[–] jrs100000@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago

They didnt even have a human do an editing pass, just a straight copy paste out of the dialog box.

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[–] manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 days ago

We shouldnt have sponsored a fascist because we son't want to work with ANYONE political

lol okayyyyyy, whatever bro

[–] edel@lemmy.ml 85 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (8 children)

As I mentioned more in detail in other post, Proton is not the pro-MAGA many had misinterpreted. It is just sloppy at the marketing campaign and its leader makes statements that can easily misunderstood too.

That said, Proton has decided to aim for the masses, which has proven to be a winning business formula here. However, in that quest, it's natural that concerns from top-tier privacy users (Linux users, those wanting non-Google push notifications, too-many-eggs-in-a-basket, etc.) get relegated in favor of the bulk of their primary target customers, the regular Joe who simply wants to move away from email and web traffic scraping. We should all applaud that decision, but we also recognize the limitations and big risks of having a single company holding some 80% of this privacy market, both for us and even for Proton. It would be better to foster a healthy, diverse, and more equitable privacy ecosystem.

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[–] roserose56@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago

That's why I'm leaving proton and it's community. Lots of drama and political shit that I don't want to know, not to mention the whole thing where proton from just an email provider, now sells VPN and other services l.

[–] magnue@lemmy.world 57 points 4 days ago (12 children)

"you're right to raise this" really triggers my AI detection Spidey senses. Sounds like Claude, specifically.

[–] lostbit@feddit.nl 13 points 3 days ago

“and thats on us”

AI slop from top to bottom

[–] thedarkfly@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't know how far we can trust that tool, but originality.ai concludes that this has been written by a human.

[–] YawningNostalgia@thelemmy.club 1 points 13 hours ago

I don't believe that it was written by a human, but regardless, it's a shitty way to speak

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[–] NGC2346@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I am out of the loop it seems. What happened ?

[–] LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 2 days ago

Proton sponsored afar-right fascist influencer, then issued apologies and ended the sponsorship after they got found out.

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[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 days ago

They seem to know that the market for privacy is more than people who want just want their private data safe. There are also people that use these services for controversial and or illegal shit. So they use these chuds and reach those spaces.

It's the swiss business model. A lot of controversial and corrupted people, politicians hide their money in privacy oriented banks offshore. They make profits no matter where the money comes from.

A little bad press after the stuff is out doesn't really matter all that much if that drives more profits. The backlash might even get them more exposure.

They apologize and say they'll never do it again and everyone moves on.

[–] DupaCycki@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

I feel like this is a good statement. The one that should have been written immediately after outrage began, and ideally before removing dozens if not hundreds of posts and comments covering this topic.

Some people say it stinks of AI. I don't know. Maybe? PR messages have always been like this, and they seem to be one of the types that chatbots got most of their writing patterns from.

Some people definitely overreacted. Others completely missed the point. Proton is far from a perfect company, and a case in favour of boycotting them could be made. But not because they accidentally sponsored one video of a far-right youtuber.

They're just not as private and secure as they pretend to be or to want to be. Pretty much all alternatives are leagues above. There appears to be no apparent reason why they're lagging behind. I suppose that's where the CIA honeypot allegations may come from.

In any case, if you really care about privacy and security - you probably aren't a Proton user, let alone customer. And if you are - I highly recommend trying alternatives that don't have a long history of working with law enforcement.

[–] dieTasse@feddit.org 13 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Just fyi, every company is legally obliged to work with law enforcement. It's strange that people think that a company can just refuse court orders. The point and benefit of companies like proton or tuta is that there is very little information they can actually give and they are fully transparent with public when and what they were obliged to give. It's funny that when company hides this, like telegram, who worked with law enforcement thousands of times and handed over stuf like non encrypted chat messages, they are seen as private and not disputed by their users. But when company like Proton writes blog posts about the cases to be transparent and what (little meta) data they gave, people are out of their mind calling them out for it.

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[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 37 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This response is unfeeling and reactive Claude slop. Proton doesn't care. They're working to avoid being in trouble.

[–] Summzashi@lemmy.world 40 points 4 days ago (55 children)

What would have been the right response in your opinion?

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[–] fredposner@lemmy.ml 20 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I loved proton years ago... even did a paid account for a while. This isn't their first wtf moment and won't be their last. The problem for me, its that I expect more carefulness and thoughtfulness from a company that promotes encryption and privacy.

Showing me how easily you make mistakes is a quick way for me to question how well you're safeguarding the platform.

I've moved away. Will take some time for them to earn back the trust, but honestly... I don't see a huge need for them anymore. I simply don't consider email secure. If you want real secure communication (that you can host on a server yourself) Matrix and XMPP are a much better choice.

Anyway... the response is nice. Just doesn't fix anything.

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