this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
518 points (92.0% liked)
Privacy
51888 readers
511 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
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.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
FuckAI and what its doing to our world, economy, and to human beings but... why is Proton getting the hard treatment when so many other "AI first" businesses get a free pass to exploit/consume/destroy? Eli5: What is it about this specific privacy-focused business that has caused it to be so vociferously singled out for punishment? Like, have the people calling for migrating away from Proton stopped using Amazon, Atislan, Facebook, Twitter, Adobe etc?
Imagine you are a vegetarian eating food from a reputable vegetratian food company. One day they start putting meat in the food. The non-vegetarians are not upset with this but you are. Why?
I might be wrong, but they have not done anything to affect the privacy credentials of their privacy-centred vegetable dish. Unless Proton have they previously declared that they would not stuff AI in user and employees faces, I am struggling to understand why Proton specifically has triggered a backlash.
Sorry: I started with vegetable analogy but gave up halfway - the meat of the response is lost without the privacy/AI context.
The "meat" isn't just AI though, that's just a symptom of a CEO who is becoming more right-wing. Right now they're just putting in a little "meat" in the form of sucking up to Trump for whatever reason, pushing a tool that's also being pushed by the right (AI), and pretty soon that bit of chicken broth may turn into nothing but rare steak when their privacy is finally breached in a meaningful way. It's reasonable to jump ship as soon as you think the smallest amount of meat is in your vegetarian dish.
In my specific case I've already emancipated myself from Meta, Amazon, et al so I dont really need to post about it
Main reason this comes up is that Proton has recently eroded their customers trust, it's normal to talk about it, and it doesnt mean people don't care about other companies embedded in AI
If anything you can expect fediverse users to already be a step beyond moving away from those you cited, they're techy enough to know better
In my case, I stopped using Amazon, all meta services, twitter, and all that crap ages ago. Never used adobe except for the pdf reader when I used windows (9 years ago). No fucking idea what "atislan" is.