In my humble opinion, I don’t care what they say now, everything is damage control and they already probably kicked the people who spoke against Andy.

Nah, the CEO’s messaging was full of contempt, first for their employees and then for the people contributing to the backlash they faced. Also reinterviewing people for them to keep their positions is downright disgusting and I cannot imagine the psychological pressure they faced.

But me (and probably other people) switched to proton not only to protect our individual privacy, but also because we care about privacy as a right. I also care about other things in general (for example good working conditions). Thus the company’s CEO coming out and essentially saying “money, money, money, money, money” and “you’ll all be unemployed soon lol”, in my opinion at least, doesn’t make them that much better than any other company. Thus, since I have a choice, I’d rather have my mail elsewhere in December, when my subscription expires.

In addition to what others have already said:

When it comes to a company that handles your data in an unencrypted state, reputation does matter. You have to trust their word when it comes to security and prioritizing your privacy and security.

And if you can’t trust their word because it’s clear their PR is trying to brush things under the rug (as they mostly successfully did in the past with the Trump Administration support), well…

I think what ultimately soured me on Proton was how much it seems like they want to be the new Google by offering a handful of products that lock you in the more you adopt. I dropped them because it seemed like the money I paid for a couple of services, email and vpn, were being used to create new products, not improving the products they currently offered. Obviously I’m biased because if I wanted the newer products, like their storage or 2fa offerings, I’d think it’d be pretty cool. But you know what made degoogling such a pain? That all of my eggs were in the Google basket. And now Proton seems to want everyone to put all of their eggs in their basket. So idk, opinions about AI aside, it seems like Proton’s strategy is to offer more and more products at a faster pace than they were going, which was already kind of eh. And that’s all before you get into the whole security side of rolling out new features and products without them being thoroughly run through their paces.

Idk I’m rambling, but it just seems like it’s that meme from SpongeBob where he’s in the krabby patty making contest against King Trident and SpongeBob makes the one perfect krabby patty while King Trident made a shit ton and they all pale in comparison.

Its’ not about AI, it’s about Andy Yens sledge hammer use of AI. But, to start let Andy tell the story in his own words…

"CEO Andy Yen told staff in an internal Slack message that 2026 “will be the last year that we hire engineers.” From next year, he wrote, the company will instead hire “what we used to call product managers, to build things with AI.”

Now, “product managers” is just word play to make “salespeople without developer skills” sound palatable. Effectively, Protons skilled employees are working to replace themselves, as they surely are well aware of now. Protons one and only agenda going forward under Yen is profit. And then more profit. Everything else — security, values, principles, fall by the wayside in pursuit of profit over all else

Andy Yens viewpoint as CEO is AI gets him to his profit nirvana, employees only show up as liabilities on the spreadsheet. He thinks he’s in the widget building business where none of those other things matter. And it won’t to some. But let’s watch long term how privacy & values focused consumers decide. Andy will show you who he is again… soon enough.

Hey, just my two cents, I’m glad to be a spectator of this sideshow after Andy showed us who he was with his previous fiasco. Good luck,

My thought was “ah fuck, there goes another one”; still better than the likes of Google, but shitting on your employees and chasing buzzwords isn’t what I thought I’d be getting from Proton. I’m not rushing to move away but I’m now actively looking for alternatives, and obviously not recommending them to anyone anymore.

https://cybernews.com/ai-news/proton-cancel-subscriptions/

I stopped using Proton after this, Proton mail faces backlash over claims of political neutrality amid ceos praise for republican party, I am Canadian and Trump had already started with the 51st state stuff so I was starting to move away from US companies, I needed something to replace Apple’s hide my email service and passwords with so I switched to Proton. So a few months after setting up with Proton I was in search for a Canadian host that could do the same thing with email; I settled with HostHero not realizing there where better options for lets say costing magnitudes less but I stuck with them for a few years until I had one two many angry support people answer the phone or email, my current email is hosted with easyDNS. EasyDNS has a wildcard email address so I can come up with a random email address on the fly no need to go into any app or webpage. I have a formula of (service name).(random Saskatchewan slang)(three random numbers)@reannlegge.ca, I can bounce emails I do not want from hosts, I can just auto delete things coming to certain addresses its great. So that is what I am doing for email privacy.

I was cool with using Apple’s keychain because it was not being synced with anything, I would just have to remember which device had which password and manually merge things. This got frustrating really fast, I had pi’s doing things around my home so I thought there must be a better way. I found Vaultwarden and I could use Bitwarden on my devices and have them synced together. I do not use a VPN for anything other than blocking trackers and ads, and my pihole setup does wonders with that. Vault/Bitwarden does most of my 2FA things.

Hey! If you have to read only one statement, make it this one: https://proton.me/blog/how-proton-keeps-your-data-secure

In short: human review is still enforced. Personally, as long as the products work as expected, I won’t worry. The day when I see symptoms of this, I’ll re-assess.