149
Proton will no longer post on Mastodon
(discuss.privacyguides.net)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
149 points (97.5% liked)
Privacy Guides
17821 readers
264 users here now
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This is a fair point, and I think you came to that thoughtfully. Would that you were in charge of things instead.
Here's my counterpoint: they aren't obligated to stop posting on Mastodon to focus on comments on Reddit or BlueSky or whatever. They can still post wherever they want but make it clear that they will no longer respond to comments on Mastodon; I follow several accounts that do this, explicitly or implicitly. That's not the choice they made, however.
They're supposed to be governed by the Proton Foundation, with the mission: "Our legally binding purpose is to further the advancement of privacy, freedom, and democracy around the world." But moves like this don't seem to be in line with that mission, especially when you look at all the options.
They chose to leave Mastodon and reduce/restrict their online presence, and all the evidence I have seems to point to this being a political move and not merely a strategic one.
Time will tell if that's true, but this should raise eyebrows for anyone who cares about data privacy.
Yeah. At best, it is clueless.
I think it's maybe possible that they have a thriving community on Reddit, and not much interaction with people on Mastodon, and they can't afford to invest the time to pay someone to maintain both, and so some middle-manager who's not exactly a tech and privacy expert decided to go with the more active one.
You're completely right though. Even in that super-charitable fantasy scenario, it would have been better to shutter the Reddit community, explain to the thriving community why they would be better served by a different platform, and keep going on Mastodon even if it's something like 5 people.