I had a big problem with them once I signed up and they shoved their ads down my inbox. Then they created a survey asking what their users would like to see in Proton, and while a majority voted for calendar and email features, they made the AI section biased: you either are interested in AI, never heard of it or won't use but are interested. They purposedly didn't include an option "heard of AI but won't use it" because they know most of their users don't like it.

And now they're launching an AI assistant. How ethical they are proving to be. The company that portrayed itself as privacy-first is showing its true face.

I’m happy with Proton products personally but I see so many feature requests from users sitting for years on their core products. If anything I feel like the effort that goes into this instead could hurt Proton by branding them as “a crypto company”.

We most certainly are not a crypto company. We don't run a crypto exchange, didn't create a cryptocurrency, and don't speculate in crypto. We're an encryption company, but don't lump that in with crypto.

Care to explain how you ignored the results of your survey where most users wanted more email or calendar features and you decided to work on an AI assistant that more than 66% of your user base didn't ask for?

I really like to know this as well. What lack of transparancy indeed.

They clearly already had the features mostly done when they made the survey. I recall the questions being extremely leading to get people to say they would like to use a privacy first AI or whatever. After I took it I immediately told people it was clear they were about to announce some AI bloat.

You surely are turning into one which as a long time paying user, this is a real shame that you're putting most of your loyal users under the bus.

One Bitcoin wallet among a suite of privacy offers doesn't mean they are turning into one and I disagree they are throwing most of their loyal users under the bus.

You ever heard of the word "enshittification"? I'm sure you have.

This is what they're on the road to. AI last week, crypto this week. Maybe NFT next week?

In all seriousness, this has the potential in killing their brand image as a viable alternative to Big Tech and considering there's not much email alternatives aside from self hosting (which is a nightmare in its own right), this is worrying.

One is an AI feature that you have to opt-in to, and includes the option to run locally.

The other is an optional self-custody wallet. They’re not an exchange and your wallet/Funds aren’t locked in with them.

They’re offering alternatives to big tech solutions which is kind of what they do.

The text of the blog post is interesting. Bitcoin does not offer privacy. But the post is written using bitcoin maximalist phrases, not just crypto in general.

So who's the huge HODLer in the company?

Reminds me of Keybase before they were bought out. Shame too. Keybase was really good. I wish they had open sourced it when Zoom bought them out as a part of the buyout deal.

Fastmail is a good choice, they just do the one thing.

No end to end encryption. No thanks.

Plus as an Australian company the government can backdoor it without anyone legally being able to speak about it.

They also got rid of most of their US based unionized employees recently.

https://union.place/@fastmailunited/112672408714595554

That’s a plus for some of us - but I’ll stick with Proton.

How would you "end to end encrypt" an email going from Super Secure Provider A to Outlook or Gmail? The encryption stops the millisecond it leaves Provider A's servers.

With Proton Mail you can send password-protected emails too: https://proton.me/support/open-password-protected-emails

Correction: you can send links to a website where the recipient can see the text you wrote using a password.

Nothing about that is "email" anymore. The same method can be used to make "password protected SMS" for example. Just send a link to a website and a password. Encryption!

What we need is actual public key encryption/signing support on mail services, but that's not going to happen ever.

I'm honestly glad I am not (no longer) seemingly the only one thinking this. When I read the reactions to Scribe, I was a bit surprised there wasn't much skepticism/concern about that.

While I applaud their transition to being a Non-Profit/Foundation, the "tech fad chasing" of the last weeks definitely concerns me about Proton, looking at the backlog of "common sense" additions and even the lack of proper Linux support.

While it will be fine for most users, I'm more leaning to skepticism regarding generative AI and (pushing) crypto by a corporation. The former being due to copyright abuse, with the latter being a weird thing to push for in the current age where usages of blockchain are met with skepticism instead of hope.

I'd recommend looking into Tuta (formerly known as Tutanota). They recently got interviewed by Techlore indicating they wanna release "Tuta Drive". Seems to become a proper replacement for Proton, if you don't care about VPNs, crypto wallets or Cloud password storage.

All in all, Proton's features can be replaced by other services. Mullvad's well known for their straight forward "gold standard" VPN. Crypto wallets can best be held locally. Password storage got Cloud (Bitwarden) or local (KeePass and its derivatives in clients) options. Only "hurting" missed feature is Proton Docs, which launched not too long ago and is also missing quite a few features. Self-hosting or getting a service to host NextCloud is an option, however, but that'll eat into costs.