The CEO of Proton is pro-Trump.
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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Seeing Proton on the list so many times got me thinking. We let Google take over all of our services, and then they got worse and worse. Is there some system in place to stop Proton enshittifying once they've taken over the internet? Especially in light of the CEO apparently being an asswad.
This doesn't change the CEO using an official proton account to praise trump and call him the GOP the party of the little guy. I don't care about their real ideological opinion, but rather whether they're going to gargle fascist balls and betray privacy. Trust is a fragile thing
Edit:a word
fuck
Whether an app/service is EU based should not always be a deciding factor when determining if it should be recommended.
Signal is a great example of that. It is based in the US, but surpasses other mobile messaging apps in terms of privacy and convenience. It is a US-based app you should recommend.
So let's be nuanced and take into account that EU-based products or services may not always be the best choice, even with regards to empowering European citizens. In many cases, you will find that European states seek to disempower their citizens through the use of surveillance. So it is pretty ironic when a team of Americans are empowering you while your own government seeks to take that power away (Chat Control and the likes) to further subjugate you.
While I do agree with the general sentiment, this is NOT a "best product ever" community. Thos community has the explicit goal to provide European alternatives. Otherwise we could just scrap the entire idea and just go back to YouTube, Google and MS Office. Because let's be real for a moment. They are at the top of their respective markets for a reason.
Also, Signal sucks! The only thing it has going for itself is security. Everything else is at best on par with other messengers. Signal has no voting, no tool bots, no topics for group chats, no cloud backup, etc.
No bear in mind, if security is what you want from a messenger, then Signal will do the job. But then again, why not just promote Matrix? It has pretty much the same (lack of) features and it's actually European.
As much as I like matrix it's not an alternative to Signal. Matrix is more akin to discord/slack/teams. The lack of bloat is why people love signal.
For the love of all gods, stop recommending Proton, it's run by a fascist Trump-loving cryptoscammer that hates open standards even more than Silicon Valley tech-bros. You might as well use American companies at that point.
For the love of all gods
That's something a Skyrim NPC would say.
That’s strong accusations and the first I’m hearing of that. Do you have a source? Because the only controversy I know of is that their CEO praised Trump’s pick for attorney general for the antitrust division a bit too enthusiastically. Which is not a stellar look but that does not make him a „fascist Trump-loving cryptoscammer that hates open standards.“
The only place people are throwing up the whole Proton / Trump controversy is Reddit and Lemmy. Lemmy is particularly worse. As bad as the endless scrolling of Linux praise and Windows bashing.
There's an article somewhere where someone did a deep dive and ultimately concluded that the Protons CEO views do not coincide with that of Trump or his party.
There’s an article somewhere where someone did a deep dive and ultimately concluded that the Protons CEO views do not coincide with that of Trump or his party.
Would you have that link by any chance? That would be neat to use as a counter argument.
I am assuming he means this post from the community you linked.
Thanks!
The top comment on that thread seems to counter the arguments quite extensively
Yeah completely omitting Slater's work lobbying on behalf of big tech like Google and Facebook to increase data mining when the whole defense hinged on that she'd be good for little tech made the medium article seem more like it was from a corporate PR stream. So intentionally deceiving playing up identity politics or not doing its due diligence what a quick wikipedia and Google search of the person Yen glazed over would reveal.
Her past is too questionable for a privacy company to endorse. But, move from Google to proton is still an improvement at the end of the day with its country of origin being its strength despite whatever the founder ceo may think.
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It took me a while to understand why some apps/services had a + on top
There’s also Norwegian Jotta Cloud for cloud drive.
These lists are consistently bad. To the extent I'm beginning to think it's intentional so people don't like the alternatives and go back to the worst.
Make a better one
Thats actually good idea, might do
Better yet, make an app
Lol, I barely know how to design a post, let alone an app😆
There is also Aptoide to replace Google's Play Store
That’s how i came and register from reddit just like 5 mins ago and this is my first ever comment.
SAME ! ～(つˆ0ˆ)つ｡☆
OsmAnd is a great map alternative as well, works great for any type of navigation
(there's the open source free full version on F-Droid)
AFAIK HERE WeGo is an European maps app too.
These sharepics are simply not exhaustive. Having example alternatives and then pointing to one of three comparison websites, might be a better approach. But this would also be more convoluted.
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TIL that Bitwarden is an US company. I love the product but thats a risk
It's also self-hostable and FOSS.
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Wtf don't recommend BeReal! They've been bought by Voodoo, a shady company trying everything they can to bypass Android/iOS privacy protection
Magic Earth, unlike Google Maps, not only offers you to show the known speed limits. It shows you radar traps.
Most of Session's developers are Australian.
They moved their product to Switzerland because the Australian government started raiding them.
They seem to be a cool bunch but for some reason don't want to implement some wanted privacy features.
I like so much about it in concept but Oxen feels like a grift, like it's trying to be Onion Routing but by Crypto bros.
Maybe they'll reconsider and switch to a non crypto bro onion network. Or some people take it up and remove it.
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Why does everyone recommend Vivaldi and opera is left out? Genuinely asking 🙏
As of the end of 2023, Opera Software was 72.4% owned by Kunlun, a Chinese public company, making it a subsidiary of that company. Opera CEO Zhou Yahui is a controlling shareholder in Kunlun.
Wikipedia
Gracias
I can vouch for the Kdrive/Kmail from infomaniak. Great service for the price, the switch was almost seamless (with gmail forwarding to my @ik.me mail)
Mapy.cz is an absolute must for hiking in Czechia and Slovakia, Google maps isn't even close. Not sure how the situation is in other countries though
Curently trying it as my daily driver and it does pretty good job too
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