I usually tell people the same, this is a decision I will have to live with. I am happy with Proton and also happy to support their growth, hopefully it will go well for a long time.

From the other services I tried, Filen and Ente deserve an honorable mention. I was close to just go Mail Plus + Filen + Ente. But as soon as you do Proton Mail + VPN, you then go with Proton Unlimited and that is what makes the most sense financially.

And then de-Proton it.

The US DoD uses it

You know our lawmakers have failed when you have to be this concerned about privacy on your own behalf.

it's really shouldn't be this much effort in order to retain your data and I know the argument can be made that you just use services that respect it but without legislation it's incentivized to monetize data which makes it extremely hard to find alternatives that don't.

Apple is the safer alternative vs. anything Google

Not really. Research has demonstrated that iOS and Android send very similar types of data even when users explicitly request to opt out. Apple was even so arrogant as to not bother responding to the authors of this paper when they reached out for comment (unlike Google which did reply).

https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf

iOS is also much more hostile towards 3rd party apps than Android, greatly limiting what they can do. This makes moving to FOSS options harder.

Due to driver inconsistencies, updates breaking things (even the phone part), and the inability to use a lot of "normal" apps

Sounds like you haven't tried modern GrapheneOS with sandboxed Google Play Services. Neither of these are issues for me and I've been using it for years after switching from iOS.

The are a lot more people who want to degoogle vs. the people who understand how to do rom flashing

Flashing GrapheneOS takes like 2 seconds and requires nothing but a desktop/laptop and a browser. If you can read, you can install GrapheneOS with minimal effort.

This sub is strangely pro Google

My personal choices are slightly different than yours, but I appreciate your comment. You’re clearly an ally while not being a clone. I often tire of discussions about security and privacy—mainly because I am very pragmatic.

Unlike OP I don’t use Proton’s suite, but considered it. Most of what I want Apple provides (Advanced Data Protection, Private Relay, etc) in a form that meets my minimum requirements. Other things that I use (Signal especially) are well-supported on iPhone.

I’ll talk down Apple all day long in the correct context, but I still believe it is a good choice today. I may re-evaluate at some point in the future when the landscape or my needs change. For now I am very happy.

Fuck that, next step is linux 🚀

I didn’t know about sink it, will have a look! I currently use hydra to access Reddit on iOS.

A linux phone is on my list, Jolla or similar. One battle at a time.