- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
When called out on it, they then doubled down on this dogshit take: https://archive.ph/quYyb
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People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.
So shut the fuck up Andy, you’re out of your element.
Trump doesn’t go after big tech to help the little guy. Trump goes after big tech to bring them to heel.
The dumbass CEO has fallen for the MAGA lie that these billionaires are working for the the “little people”. They work for no one but themselves and their loyalists.
What does ths forced backdoor have to do with the text you quoted?
Because Andy was saying something that people forget and OP is pointing out something Andy is forgetting? It is pointing out Andy’s bias or ignorance to make Trump look good
Is it true though? Not sure it’s the case: Lina Khan was nominated by Biden.
Is it true though?
Yes. AG William Barr sought to force backdoors in encryption in 2019. You can read all about it in the article I linked to.
I think they were asking about the actions against big tech starting under Trump. My memory ain’t what it used to be (& it was never very good), but even if something was started under Trump there have been various actions taken against big tech going at least as far back as the Internet Explorer near-monopoly days - so it’s not exactly like they did anything new, special, or unprecedented.
EDIT: Can some kind soul take pity on me and explain why I’m getting downvoted, instead of just a hit & run? What did I get wrong?
donvotes dont mean you’re wrong. they mean you made someone mad. sometimes this is because you said something they know is incorrect. but more often its because what you said may be true, and disagrees with their worldview or ideology.
explain why I’m getting downvoted,
Oh, don’t bother! Sometimes it feels like even asking for people to explain their downvotes invites more downvotes for some inexplicable reason.
Oh, don’t bother! Sometimes it feels like even asking for people to explain their downvotes invites more downvotes for some inexplicable reason.
Without referring to the specific post in question, I have some comments about that.
Different people downvote for all sorts of different reasons. Some downvote if they disagree with a statement, some downvote because they don’t like the way the statement is presented (eg. I often downvote posts with huge embedded memes, even if I like what the meme says); some downvote because they don’t think the context is appropriate (even if they agree with the ideas said, they might be seen as the wrong time / place); some downvote due to a misunderstanding or perhaps an ambiguity in the post. etc. etc. And very often, posts with more than one idea in them are downvoted by people who agree with part of it but disagree with another part (even if the second part is minor and insignificant).
So then, if someone says something like “I’m being downvoted because xyz”, they’ll almost certainly be downvoted by a heap of people who had a different reason in mind. If a person says “show me where I’m wrong”, that apparently ignores the other possible reasons for downvotes - and can sometimes imply arrogance and stubbornness - which of course will invite downvotes. And if someone just asks “why am I being downvoted?” it might be interpreted to mean “I don’t deserve to be downvoted” - which of course will also invite more downvotes.
Yes it’s true. The Trump administration initiated the first major antitrust lawsuit against Google in 2020.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/20/justice-department-antitrust-case-google-430281
But it doesn’t make up for the myriad of other shitty things he’s done.
Mostly I remember him getting angry at all the fact checking bots (election, Russia, etc) that Twitter, Facebook, and Google introduced and that was one of the ways to go after them.
I don’t really care what the reason is, personally.
Well sure, but if he’s going after then because they are big corporations, fine. But it’s another thing if he’s going after certain big corporations because they are an inconvenience/opposed to him. He’s going to stop going after the big tech companies once in they are in line with him… Like stopping fact checking and what not.
Getting real fuckin tired of having to always find ‘alternatives’. Can’t yall rich bastards just stop being weird and be content with making good products. Just cause you have money, doesn’t mean you need to have a public opinion on anything, ever
This is what I feel is the core problem of out-of-bounds capitalism today. 50-80 years ago there were fabulously wealthy people as well, but they were taxed out the wazoo and were still fabulously wealthy. And even though every corporation’s goal is, and always has been, to make profit, it feels as if it’s gone from “profit” to “maximum possible profit at ALL costs, including the damnation of life on the planet”.
We have plenty of examples of hypercapitalism destroying us in fiction (cyberpunk etc.) but our current reality is really really close to that hellscape. In some ways it’s actually worse because of the insidiousness and banality of the evil that lords over us daily.
Sorry im not from the US… what is a “wazoo”?
It’s just a figure of speech to denote “completely”, or “very much”.
wazoo = anus
It’s written as “up the wazoo” or “out the wazoo.” “Wazoo” in this context means “ass” and the meaning as a whole is “in large amounts.”
Where a kazoo goes.
Anyone who becomes rich will work to protect that wealth.
Gotta support FOSS alternatives.
Buy your own domain and use a service like mailbox.org which is in Germany.
Also super easy to move to a new email host later when you have your own domain.
Does posteo support “catchall” addresses?
I corrected my comment, I was thinking of mailbox.org which supports custom domains and catchall too.
They didn’t a few yeara when i looked into it, thats why i switched to proton
Sounds like you might enjoy Apple products.
Welllll Tim Cook did personally donate $1M to Trump’s inauguration fund…
I’d like to know what maga is going to do for the little guy besides more grifting.
Point at different things and try to blame what they’re doing to them on it.
Transfer wealth upwards.
i.e. Take all our worries away by leaving us with nothing to worry about.
Comments like his seriously confuse me. You see the incompetent cabinet picks. You see the richest man in the world buying himself the presidency. You see the talk about annexations and war.
This is gonna be great for the little man, yes sure.
Further disposess and enrage them to uh… ‘build character.’
Here is our official response […] the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
lol
how? explain how you even come to that conclusion. big tech is running the republicans!
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To be fair, they are also running the democrats, the independents, etc, etc.
I mean Elon Musk is the president now, and he wasn’t before. I don’t think it’s exactly the same.
Yeah but we’re talking a different between being on a leash vs a full on, hand-up-the-ass sock puppet.
I could handle it if it was the CEO’s personal position - still gross, but whatever. To have this be the company’s official political position, though, I think I’m out.
Recommendations for alternative email and cloud storage providers? Mullvad seems the way to go for VPN
Tuta seems to be the closest competitor for email.
Check out Posteo. They are awesome.
I’m not good at security stuff but: I use Mullvad since it seems to be the most ethical VPN provider. All the others have advertisements everywhere.
As for emails, I would go with Tuta or Runbox but I’m using Fastmail for the moment and I don’t have time to switch. I would go with Runbox for reasons I can’t explain. Both are like 3 euros per month and have aliases and personal domain support. Anyway, the best is at least to have a paid account to make sure there is some kind of security for the future of the company.
Mullvad for VPN. For drive, mega. For email, disroot.
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Frankly I’d say the virtue signaling is worse. The million sucks ass, but you know why they’re doing it. Used to be a mafia thing in NYC.
This guy is smiling and bending the knee, way too loud for me to feel comfortable relying on their services as I have for more than 5yrs. Is he placating, or is he serious? I’m not trusting my privacy to a privacy-centric org which is potentially corrupted at the top.
Yeah, “abuses” like DEI and other equality, sustainability, etc initiatives.
I’ll be leaving Proton fucking immediately.
just cancelled my auto renew, now I gotta find a way to manage all my custom emails again rip
I’m in the same boat. SimpleLogin is a nice feature, but if this is Proton’s position, they don’t get more of my money.
Firefox Relay seems like a good, free choice?
Another option is anonaddy
Firefox Relay seems like a good, free choice?
Honestly, no. With the recent changes to Mozilla’s leadership, you never know which service is being shut down next. Relay also only offers a very limited free plan. I’d recommend checking out addy.io instead.
How do I actually cancel the auto renew? Couldn’t see a way to do it, just removed all the valid card details in the end
I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to find it in the same page that let’s you change plans
ty
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I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Every time I read this my absolute favorite part is how in all the monetary transactions described, nobody ever pays for anything with bitcoin.
By Tom O’Donnell https://archive.ph/UTYYE
What things did he support Biden doing? If it’s continuing to support Israel’s genocidal war, then that’s not a plus.
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If there’s a way for the rest of Proton to force him out, now would be a good time to save face.
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Porbably not and he doesn’t have the self-awareness to resign, so it’s a real shame. I doubt their “mission” will change from these comments, but it leaves a sour enough taste to force people to look elsewhere, me included.
Mentioning that Democrats are trash on dealing with corporations is just fine. Good, even.
Lying through your god damn teeth that Republicans are going to do anything other than lie to gain more leverage for their jihad to fuck over their fellow man is delusional at best.
I dunno what’s worse. Lying about Republicans being “for the little guy”, or actually believing it. Both point to significant logic, reasoning, and judgmental flaws in Proton’s leadership.
I’ve been calling America a corporate dictatorship for well over a decade, so Yen/Proton realizing the Dem’s are captured is welcomed, but the belief that R’s are better in 2025 is completely insane.
I’ve got 18 months left on my current plan, so that’ll give me time to see how deep this clusterfuck goes and transition away if need be.
Oh Andy, the Republicans won’t think of you as “one of the good ones” and protect you from their white America policies.
Thank you for being one of the saner takes in this thread.
Call out the bad and insane parts of Andy Yen’s comment. Also call out the good. Don’t fall for the same trap that Yen himself got caught in by painting the entire thing as “full MAGA”. The characterization from this post’s title feels similar to me as Yen himself saying “all Democrats bad and care only for the big guy”.
I can deal with Andy Yen being a dumbass in his own time, but the official Proton reddit account doubling down on this shit is over the line for me.
I literally just renewed for 2 years a couple days ago. I will be looking for alternatives and hopefully I can get a partial refund or something.
Was about to pay for proton. Not now
I’m glad I never did. I looked into proton a few months back and was highly suspicious of their non-profit status. I could never put my finger on why but felt off.
Glad I never fully committed to it.
Non-profit is a tax status not a business plan.
There’s Mullvad.
Unfortunately I made the mistake of really digging myself into the Proton ecosystem.
My current plan is:
VPN -> Mullvad
Mail -> Tuta
Pass -> Bitwarden (not sure if I want to host yet)
Drive -> Nextcloud (Self-Hosted)
Calendar -> Nextcloud (Self-Hosted)
Standard Notes -> Memos (Self-Hosted) (already done)
Simple Login -> no fucking clue, I am dreading migrating these.
I was JUST about to take that plunge myself.
I just migrated all of my aliases to addy.io, but I was also fortunate in that all of my aliases were based on a domain that I own. It was a simple as exporting the alias list to a CSV, formatting it a little for addy.io, then importing it!
If all of your aliases are based off of simple login domains, then that’s gonna be a lot harder. You’ll have to change your email on all of your. If that’s the case, in the future, I would definitely recommend getting a second domain for generating these aliases so that migrating is the problem in the future!
As for addy.io, I honestly love the service. The Lite plan is plenty for my needs and only costs $12 a year. That and Bitwarden are a steal imo.
I was also fortunate in that all of my aliases were based on a domain that I own.
I’m in the same boat luckily, so maybe this won’t be as bad as I’m expecting. I’ll take a look at Addy.io as well, thanks for the recommendation!
Is there a reason you’re not planning on migrating both mail and calendar to Tuta?
Do you happen to know any alternatives for their email? Some security guy on YouTube was talking about how their email aliasing is better because if you lose a single email/password combo, you’re not subject to any other breaches.
I mean I already use a password manager since I adopted KeePass like 15 years ago and use Bitwarden now, but I still like that concept.
I have heard Tuta is good.
Posteo or tuta or fastmail.
Depends on if anyone you message uses proton. If they do, you can always get their pgp key and save it to thunderbird. If nobody you know uses proton, there is no benefit to their service over the above.
I can vouch for Mullvad working well on Android and Arch in the past years.
This is one of the reasons I will never fork over so much cash for a yearly subscription to anything. I pay monthly on everything I subscribe to, because you never know when that service decides, “Yeah. Fuck it. Let’s go downhill, full sprint!”
You can generally tell what way someone leans when they say “Dems” but spell out “Republicans”.
What does one call them? Repub’s? Is that a thing? I hope not.
Shorthand for Republicans is usually GOP (grand old party, their own nickname).
I call them repugs, or reich-wing, or nazis, or fascists, etc.
Or MAGAts. There’s no distinction to be made nowadays.
cunts, typically
I go with Nazis. Pretty accurate on their worldview, and less letters to type.
Personally, I go with “Repugnicans” when they’ve really pissed me off.
Repubes is fine
Better that than writing out “DemocRATS,” I guess.
I can’t hate the followup response. It is legitimately more important to support good policy (such as antitrust) than any particular team. Even if Trump and his entire administration are a joke (and they are), that doesn’t mean the Democrats are the good guys here or that we shouldn’t stand up for good policy just because it came from his administration. Praising the actual people who made the actual good policy decisions does not absolve Trump for all his shit and we shouldn’t pretend it’s as cut and dry as that.
All that said, giving Trump any fucking credit does seem ridiculous. The man would fuck over his mother for a dollar. I don’t see why he’d give a shit about antitrust unless it benefited him somehow.
Read the replies. His response is bs
Andy here, since it’s my original post that’s being reposted here, let me comment further.
My post is talking about Gail Slater, who is by all measures, actually a good pick, with a solid track record of being on the right side of the antitrust issue. Yes, she happens to be nominated by Trump, but her record speaks for itself.
This is not going to be a popular opinion, but on the specific issue of antitrust, Democrats fell short. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation. Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidently has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote. In the aftermath of this failure, great people like former Democratic rep David Cicilline left congress, leaving few strong voices for antitrust left in the Democratic party. In the meantime, at a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand. And that’s a missed opportunity for Dems, because by and large, support for cracking down on corporate monopolies is popular on both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, corporate capture of Dems is real and in the end money won. It is hard to see how this changes, and Republicans are likely to lead the antitrust charge in the coming years.
From that perspective, and going back to my original post, Gail is a great pick. One should not equate our support of Gail for Proton not being neutral anymore. We continue to call out bad behavior from both sides, whether it’s Dems or Republicans, on our core issues. Just a few weeks ago, we were called out for being in bed with Soros because we gave money to too many “liberal” organizations: https://proton.me/blog/2024-lifetime-fundraiser-results No, the Proton Foundation isn’t the new Soros either (even if we may coincidentally fund some of the same things sometimes). We simply stick with our strongly held core believes, and leave politics out of it, because the issues we care about, should be apolitical.
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The thing about people like Andy is they see everything through the lens of how it affects their business. Gail Slater could be the most evil person in the world, but as long as she’s “good on antitrust” then he thinks she’s a good pick. Someone not being in thrall to a fascist is more important.
In an updated version of his post he talks about how JD Vance agreed with Lina Khan on tech antitrust. He doesn’t mention (either through ignorance or explicit neglect) that Vance is behind tech antitrust because he believed that they were “woke” and would fact check obvious lies by him and his party. He wants them broken up based on viewpoint discrimination, not because he has a problem with large tech companies spying on us and violating our privacy. Vance probably doesn’t believe that anymore given the right turn the big tech companies have made in the last 2 months. As long as big tech is doing what the Republican party wants, they’re going to get a free hand.
Either Andy is too stupid to understand this or he thinks we’re too stupid to believe him.
I’m having a hard time believing anything they say when the incoming administration they seemingly support is constantly making threats of invading our country.
So he’s walking back and watering down what he said because they’ve gotten so much backlash?
Please just post it here. I can’t access Reddit anymore.
Just get a VPN - I’ve heard good things about Prot… wait… scratch that. 🙄
Unfortunately the VPN is likely the problem. The internet has become increasingly unusable with a VPN. Especially since the rise of all this AI stuff. This particular server frequently blocks my VPN as well. Another reason to keep as many things as possible local.
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What the hell does he mean “we campaigned extensively”? Republicans did? And why is he including himself in that? He’s not an American and therefore shouldn’t be campaigning for a goddamn thing. And if he’s quoting JD Vance then that part should actually be in quotes.
Who do Schumer’s daughters lobby for? What’s the name of the lobby? What have they lobbied for that’s actually passed and was it supported by Democrats and Republicans? Like is he gonna post actual policy or anything that Republicans have put forth for antitrust? Or is he just spouting off and doubling down in order to be defensive with little to no actual facts to back up his claims.
He could have talked about Gail Slater’s track record and why she’s a good fit. Instead he talked some nonsense straight from the mouth of JD Vance and pulled some random whataboutism.
Don’t you have a PR team? Like Proton, as a whole should be trying to fix this.
I also love that a user literally came with receipts and he has yet to respond.
I wouldn’t say he embraced Trump, I’d say he is pro-breaking big tech, since that would probably help Proton.
Bernie Sanders even came out and said “hey, if Trump wants to cap credit card interest rates, I’m with him on that.”
Trump says a lot of shit to appeal to working class people. I don’t disagree with reminding him of what he said and holding him to those things, if he’s now going to be president.
It’s a completely brain-dead assessment. Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg are all Trump supporters.
and hardcore ones at that. it’s a transparent oligarchy
If you think you can stop using products of companies whose executives support the Republican Party, you’re quickly going to find yourself in the Stone Age.
Nearly every corporate executive, for nearly every company, is likely to be a Republican.
Even Tim Cook, an outspoken homosexual who has previously been the target of Trump-led MAGA vitriol, just recently expressed support and donated a million dollars to Trump.
People will just posture and harumph, yet keep buying Samsung, Google, and Apple cell phones, or use Enamel baby formula, or eat meat and vegetables grown using John Deere and Monsanto products…
I could go on, but there is no need to depress myself.
That’s in large part because the market has been engineered to force that on a lot of people. There’s exceedingly few alternatives that aren’t evil, and those few that exist are comparatively quite expensive to choose - especially at a time when much of the public doesn’t get paid enough anymore to be able to afford that choice.
You can add Pichai and Cook to that list too
If they had just said “this is a good selection for AG” and left it at that, I wouldn’t be too upset, but he’s painting broad strokes about the democratic party as a whole.
Trump’s first term, when backlash from the 2016 campaign, Russian interference, and Cambridge Analytica forced Twitter & Facebook to start ‘fact checking;’ when republicans were on a tear about how ‘big tech’ was systematically censoring right-wing speech, they definitely had a ‘break up big tech’ agenda.
Now that Musk bought Twitter and showed us exactly what unfettered right wing propaganda can achieve, now that Zuckerberg has bent the knee and TikTok all but banned, I think all that anti-trust mumbo jumbo will be moving to a back burner.
I can’t catch a break.
EDIT: Nope. It’s my fault. I was warned about Proton, and I didn’t listen. I deserve this.
Warned by, how? A brief sentence with no citations would be enough for me.
There’re plenty of posts on Lemmy about Proton being shady sometimes. No Linux apps, creating a crypto app, and now this.
Damn, disappointing.
That the democrats don’t stand for the little guys anymore is something I agree with, but to then say the republicans do is wild
PROTIP: Canceling your subscription gives you a place to tell them how you feel (even if you don’t end up following through with it).
But damn, where to go from here? Self hosting my own email server and password manager is a little out of my wheel house.
As people become shittier as time goes on (especially people who run businesses), it will be harder and hard to find someone with your values that will provide a service you want.
Don’t self-host email. Find an awesome tech collective and donate money to them. Disroot, systemli, riseup, etc
I wasn’t even aware that was a thing. Thank you! I’ve got some learning to do.
