this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
200 points (92.7% liked)

Technology

4856 readers
237 users here now

Which posts fit here?

Anything that is at least tangentially connected to the technology, social media platforms, informational technologies and tech policy.


Post guidelines

[Opinion] prefixOpinion (op-ed) articles must use [Opinion] prefix before the title.


Rules

1. English onlyTitle and associated content has to be in English.
2. Use original linkPost URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
3. Respectful communicationAll communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. InclusivityEveryone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacksAny kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangentsStay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may applyIf something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.


Companion communities

!globalnews@lemmy.zip
!interestingshare@lemmy.zip


Icon attribution | Banner attribution


If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Swiss company Proton is further expanding its productivity suite. In addition to an email service, calendar, VPN, password manager, and drive, Proton Sheets is now available. It is an alternative to Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, an increasingly important advantage as countries take sovereignty more seriously.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] artyom@piefed.social 82 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (15 children)

Why are we linking to 3rd party articles with no sources rather than just the horse's mouth?

https://proton.me/blog/sheets-proton-drive

load more comments (15 replies)
[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Do we like Proton? I never know which VPN company I can truly trust.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 51 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

They're increasingly divisive I'd say. For me the fact that they rage-quit mastodon after a stint of bad publicity is all I need to know. If they were truly dedicated to a better internet they would be committed to stand up against big tech everywhere, not just wherever there's money to be made from it. I'm migrating away from my proton mail account.

I get my VPN from Surfshark. Not because I necessarily trust them, but because it's cheap and they don't insist on doing anything else than just being my VPN provider. And I trust them more than Proton at this point, anyway.

[–] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 16 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Don't let me ruin your good time, but my experience with Surf shark:

Used surf shark for about 3 years around pandemic timeframe. Had no complaints (other than it drained my phone battery super fast - didn't test empirically, but seemed somewhat worse than other VPN providers). I was unemployed for a while, so took the opportunity to cut expenses; tried to drop my surf shark subscription. It was a HUGE pain in the butt. I forget the process, but iirc, you had to use their help chat to get the number for cancellations, they kept me on hold for ~10 min, then had a long winded questionnaire ("were required to ask you these questions before proceeding") asking why I was quitting, then made an offer for discounted months before letting me unsubscribe.

Its my understanding regulations have changed such that that's not allowed anymore and also that most VPN can elations are about that bad anyway, but still, wanted to share my experience. Lol, suppose so long as you never quit, you won't have to deal with all that.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ah, yeah, that sucks. In Europe you can always cancel by just not paying for a subscription, so I've rarely had experiences like this. Only time it happened to me was when I had been stupid enough to have a New York Times subscription (gah) and decided to end it. Huge pain in the ass.

With Surfshark I bought a two-year subscription without automatic renewal, so I get what I paid for and then it's done. But I'm sorry to hear about their bad business practices—it goes well with the overall sleazy look of their website. Hopefully I'll find something better by the time the subscription period is over. :)

Thanks for letting me know! I try to avoid any company that doesn't have open source software as the core of their business strategy, but with VPN that's a bit tricky.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] napoleonsdumbcousin@feddit.org 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

When it comes to VPN my choice is always Mullvad.

[–] Anivia@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] xylight@crust.piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I torrent even without the port forwarding and still get great speeds, and >1 share ratios

[–] Anivia@feddit.org 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Great for you, but most good private trackers will ban you if you aren't connectable. If you're only torrenting English stuff then public trackers are fine, or one's with lax rules like IPT, but for many other languages private trackers are unavoidable.

It's also just against the spirit of the P2P network to not accept connections from others, if your port isn't forwarded then you can only seed to users who have their port forwarded

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] artyom@piefed.social 25 points 1 week ago

I use Proton because they are no longer a "VPN company". They are slowly rolling out a suite of privacy tools that compete with Google's Workspace (or whatever the hell they're calling it these days).

If you want a "VPN company" I would recommend Mullvad.

[–] scytale@piefed.zip 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

If you don’t need port-forwarding, Mullvad is the best choice IMO. Eggs in a basket as well, if you already use other Proton products but don’t want to lock yourself into one vendor for everything.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not even sure anymore. Ceo recently said Trump is great.

[–] illi@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago (6 children)

This is not completely fair or true statement - though it is not too far from truth.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 11 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Proton Mail has long positioned itself as an apolitical company, dedicated solely to safeguarding user privacy. That’s why many were surprised when CEO Andy Yen posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the political landscape in the U.S. had shifted, stating, “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”

This was earlier this year. So sure its up to interpretation.

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago

So... He's an idiot, is what you're saying.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] Thorry@feddit.org 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Libre office is a fine tool, I use it myself. Calc is a somewhat capable spreadsheet application, although it has its fair share of issues and quirks. But that's true for most software these days, although I do wish the windows wouldn't be on a random monitor at a random location and random size all the time.

However in this case they state their solution is a Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel competitor. These are tools one uses online in a browser to access files stored on the server of the provider. That's pretty different from what Libre Office Calc offers. It's a bit confusing because Microsoft calls their app Excel, which can refer to the online service or the offline local app. But with Google sheets it's clear it's the online service they refer to.

So the comparison isn't a straight one. If a local app is an option, I would prefer that over an online service. So Libre office is the way to go. But many people prefer something that's available on any device, including underpowered tablets and phones, and want their files to be accessible everywhere. For those people it's good to have competition to Microsoft and Google.

[–] RiQuY@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Looks to be B2B focused. I don't see a price anywhere, but can request a quote, and their references to data sovereignty makes me think it's "self"-hosted, as opposed to an E2EE cloud solution.

Could be wrong, I was just scanning, but it feels much more focused on big businesses with large dedicated IT departments.

[–] krolden@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

You Stole my comment :D

[–] crazyminner@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

or only office, or crypt pad.

If they actually cared about privacy, they would just contribute to CryptPad and host an instance.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Proton Mail has long positioned itself as an apolitical company, dedicated solely to safeguarding user privacy. That’s why many were surprised when [Jan 2025] CEO Andy Yen posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the political landscape in the U.S. had shifted, stating, “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”

This statement quickly went viral, leading to further controversy when Proton’s official Reddit account reinforced Yen’s sentiment. The now-deleted post suggested that Republicans were more inclined to take on Big Tech monopolies than corporate-aligned Democrats. However, within hours, Proton removed all traces of these remarks from its social media platforms.

Proton? No.

[–] eodur@piefed.social 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, that mess was quite disappointing. I'm still waiting for them to make a clarifying statement on it. I suppose removing it and just not getting further involved in politics is at least "better" than continuing to double down.

[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well, hope you like AI shit too because the people at proton are in love with vibe coding. Get ready for your data to be exfilled by a prompt injection in a spam email.

[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (10 children)

https://lemmy.org/post/1309818

People found AI config files in their public repos. When they were found, Proton deleted all discussion of it and then altered the repository history to pretend the config files were never there.

Shady, scummy behavior. They've tried to do the same 'delete everything and ignore it' when their CEO publicly praised Trump and the Republican party, and then kept doubling down in reddit and mastodon comments until someone on the PR team wrested the account away from him and started mass-deleting all of it.

Unfortunately news reports- and even people- discussing his praise of Trump and the republican party often do not know that there was more than just the 1 or 2 statements he made, so it seems like it was at least slightly successful in that case.

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

I genuinely tried to find the source for this but all I got from google were ads for vibe coding and proton's own AI. So take this half-remembered anecdote with a grain of salt, I guess. Best i've got is this

[–] recklessengagement@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm actually hyped for this. A privacy-first alternative to google cloud. I still prefer to self-host all my stuff, but this is WAY more accessable to my less tech-savvy friends

Now all I need is a way to save stuff to my Proton Drive without it needing to sync to a local device...

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Privacy first, yes, but who are Proton and can they be trusted? The amount of times they have responded with an immature or unprofessional reaction is too many to believe they are not going to sell or fuck with the data.

Privacy first for the authoritarian mindset is a walled garden, like Apple. They want to prevent anything from connecting or working with stuff because "security" and meanwhile harvest data about you.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago

My go-to online suite, but their spreadsheets, documents, and presentations have some big limitations as they use embedded OnlyOffice.

[–] QuestionMark@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

It'd odd that they don't have a Linux version of proton drive.

[–] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Not the exact development route I wanted them to take, but def pleased they're doing something to improve existing services.

Definitely better than the whole (ongoing?) Proton Wallet ordeal.

With Proton Sheets, Proton Drive now becomes a true alternative to Google Drive.

Lol, okay Buddy, y'all still have a long way to go on that point.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›