Server locations: Riseup is in the US (Washington state), so keep that in mind. Disroot is in the Netherlands (part of the EU).

Governance: Riseup: Look at their “about us” page. Disroot: Look at their “about” page. The terms of service are more detailed. tl;dr: As far as I can tell, these are run by leftists.

Integrity/Transparency: I have no idea how to grade this.

Ease of Use: Subjective. Riseup VPN is just: install the client, turn it on or off. Disroot is much better with a mail client of some kind, so if you already use one, it’s probably a 10, otherwise, the webmail server isn’t that great. Disroot also requries manual encryption (I’m biased here because I use Kmail which makes PGP really easy to use).

Pricing and Links: Free https://riseup.net/en/vpn https://disroot.org/en/services/email

tl;dr: Use collective-run services, not corporate-run services

Wow!

Of all companies, this is one I didn’t expect.

Damn.

I’ve been very happy with disroot.org, but you have to do your own encryption (I use Thunderbird).

I think I pay $10 per year for 5 GB, but they have a free plan.

This may sound drastic but really I think the only move for Proton is fire Andy. They’re a non-profit, the board need to step in. He has single-handedly cost the company both current and potential customers by just not being smart enough to keep his mouth shut. This makes him an idiot, and an idiot as CEO is not a good look (see: anything musk)

The CEO “apologized” this morning (after being duly chastised, I’m sure):

Hi all, last night, a post from last year from my personal X account suddenly became a topic of discussion here on Reddit. I want to share a few thoughts on this to provide clarity to the community on what is Proton’s policy on politics going forward.

First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesn’t serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.

Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.

The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.

The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.

It is also a legal guarantee under Swiss law, which explicitly prohibits us from assisting foreign governments or agencies, and allows us no discretion to show favoritism as Swiss law and Swiss courts have the final say.

The promise we make is that no matter your politics, you will always be welcome at Proton (subject of course to adherence to our terms and conditions). When it comes to defending your right to privacy, Proton will show no favoritism or bias, and will unconditionally defend it irrespective of the opinions you may hold.

This is because both Proton as a company, and Proton as a community, is highly diverse, with people that hold a wide range of opinions and perspectives. It’s important that we not lose sight of nuance. Agreeing/disagreeing with somebody on one point, rarely means you agree/disagree with them on every other point.

I would like to believe that as a community there is more that unites us than divides us, and that privacy and freedom are universal values that we can all agree upon. This continues to be the mission of the non-profit Proton Foundation, and we will strive to carry it out as neutrally as possible.

Going forward, I will be posting via u/andy1011000. Thank you for your feedback and inputs so far, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/

Am I being paranoid when I notice that the binary at the end of his username translates to 88?

Wow, lots of people on Lemmy just look at screenshots of text and dont read anything anymore.

I dont think he said anything controversial. Read what he wrote.

He’s not supporting Trump or the Republican party in general. He is calling them out for selecting someone good on antitrust. That’s not controversial.

I think I would wait for changes in their mission and policies before I start moving anything.

Wow. Sweet tantrum. Hope it pays dividends. I’ve seen enough, Lemmy. G’bye.

If they think Dollar Store Hitler is going to stand up for small businesses then they’re about to have a rude awakening.

Uggghhh I just upped for two years. Fucking asshats are all caving to the orange fuckhead. Probably off to Europe somewhere.

This is amazing. People were perfectly okay with ignoring all the red flags in Proton and their products and really okay with buying all their bullshit, then a tweet saying Trump comes up and that’s it. lol

this idea of if you use a product you have to support every belief the company have is absolutely insane, like why can’t you recognize that a company’s products and it’s beliefs are two separate things? yeah the beliefs do effect the product but not all of them (especially not in this case like bro its ceos personal belief), why are we living in a time where you either have to %100 support something or you have %100 be against it? the fact that even a small political stand that someone dont agree with can turn them against a company or even a person is crazy to me

anyway i understand you made this choice and even tho i dont agree with the reasoning ill also provide 2 alternatives for vpn: mullvad and ivpn, both dont require email for account creation and accept monero payment, you probably heard them before

for email i suggest hosting your own if you have the time, there is this great project named docker-mailserver and its really easy to setup, but if you dont want to go through the effort feel free to check numerous alternatives others provided

Uhg. How much longer until it’s more viable to self host…

I will continue to use Proton and their services, not because I support or endorse any political decisions from the CEO/board members (and I don’t), but because they provide open source, secure, and private software that I love.

This is no different than arguing about using GrapheneOS based on the behavior of the maintainers.

Phew! For a moment I thought you were talking about the steam compatibility thingy.