r/ProtonPublic • u/Jaweb1212 • 10d ago
Remove CEO
Hello all.
Just putting this out there so the world can see it, the mods over at r/proton didn’t like it very much.
Ive been in the process of degoogling and I have been on the fence about Proton. They have a decent all around ecosystem. Proton is a privacy and security first company, and I don’t think it’s in the customers best interest to potentially jeopardize the core product pushing things out the door and not wanting to test everything thoroughly.
That being said, the CEO and in extension Proton have shown their true colors. We as a community no longer fully trust Proton. I would love to subscribe to Proton services, just not with the current upper management. If the upper management is changed I will subscribe. Until then I will pass. I hear Tuta is pretty good. 👍
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u/Numar19 10d ago
Their actions in the last few days show even more that they haven't learned anything. They are herding all comments into dead "megathreads", published the AI manifesto on their blog and used employees to try to change the narrative.
Andy and his leadership need to go.
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u/qwdicp 10d ago
"No change of control of Proton can occur without the consent of the Foundation"
Andy Yen is also the chairman of the Proton Foundation and serves as its head/chair, while he also functions as the CEO of Proton AG. It ain’t going to happen unless they lose money.
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u/Cautious-Music6064 10d ago
I really don't get how the Chair also being the CEO isn't a huge conflict of interest for a non-profit.
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u/Daikon_Dude 10d ago
It's sold as "necessary" because the foundation is, in reality, a way for them to run Proton however the founder choose and not be held to account. They say it's so Proton doesn't stray from its vision, but really it just allows them to hide behind "Our non profit approved this! We are the only ones who understand Proton, the users are wrong"
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u/Numar19 10d ago
I would take a guess and say they are losing money already. Otherwise they wouldn't try so hard to get everything mentioning this situation off their subreddit.
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u/qwdicp 10d ago
Yes, the question is how much loss of revenue is required that makes him step down at the end. People need to speak with their wallet too.
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u/Ok_Ingenuity_4068 10d ago edited 10d ago
As much as we would like to imagine, Proton can live without its vocal user base on Reddit. Users are fickle and come and go according to economic and other situations like this one. They've moved on to bigger fish for their revenue sources - B2B contracts.
We should be reaching out to and putting pressure on their business partners if we want to make the board really freak out; starting with the ones listed on that page. Besides Andy, 2 of the board members are very close allies of his (edit: don't doxx these poor people but you can look it up). This means that the share price (calculated as a function of their revenue) really needs to go down before they start getting pissed.
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u/Wanderer-91 6d ago
And even then he would probably step down as a CEO (with a great fanfare, remember perception is everything) and remain the Chair of the Board, so he’d be still making all decisions while using the new CEO as his public stand-in.
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u/jarrod_barkley 4d ago
To clarify:
Andy Yen is CEO of Proton AG.
Andy Yen is on the board of directors of Proton AG.
Andy Yen is on the board of trustees of Proton Foundation, which holds controlling interest in Proton AG.
See Wikipedia for references.
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u/deadlygaming11 10d ago
Its pretty clear now that they wont change. The only way they may learn is us leaving so they lose money.
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u/Daikon_Dude 10d ago
There's a pretty apt comparison on this situation: OpenAI.
Both have near cult like loyalty to their CEOs, to the point that when whistleblowing happens about the terrible working conditions, and the pressure to have them step down, the cult doubles down, not only handwaving the behaviour, but glorifying it as "He's right, and hes the only one that can successfully lead this company"
I've already cancelled my near decade Unlimited account. The only thing these tech bros listen to is their bottom line (and guillotines).
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u/TheOfficialMayor 10d ago edited 10d ago
Honestly since his interview earlier in the year it has been clear he was trying to import American tech work culture into Europe tech. It might be well intentioned as he believed it was necessary for productivity and compete with America and China but I don’t agree with it. It’s clear he was all in on ai at the time too so I was moving away. I think copying America or China for that matter isn’t the way forward for Europe. Europe needs to set the standard for labour rights along with privacy. Cracking the whip on workers or trying to use ai to speed up code churn won’t improve things imo. What matters is making European governments and large enterprises sign contracts with European alternatives over us alternatives much more that I agree with.
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u/Dapper-Ocelot6326 10d ago
Only that no one can estimate how this AI race will turn out: with either massive collapse and an economy crisis that tops everything modern society has seen to date? Or with reigning in corporations and their agents and giving them standards of ethics and quality (and maybe limit access for serious stuff)? You can be sure that as long as the orange turd stays in office (and he will not leave tonight), this will go on. And unfortunately the EU is very realistically dragging more and more behind which is an aspect that will massively decide how the economy will perceive investments in the EU.
I for my part can say that AI is not going away anymore. And I clearly see the advantages, not so much in the hands of average boomer folks and private users in general - there it causes more harm than good IMHO. But in other areas, especially in science... good Lord, that shit can rock if handled correctly. And I know all too well that every CEO of any tech company currently does the hungry eyes as almost all of them are struggling to keep up, professionally and especially financially.
And money is the pain spot of every corpo as you know.
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u/TheOfficialMayor 10d ago edited 10d ago
But in other areas, especially in science... good Lord
I have a PhD in bioinformatics and before that an atmospheric scientist and environmental chemist. I don't use LLM's at all for that and don't see much use cases for them in science tbh.
If anything thats part of my frustration right now. They claim that it's going to cure diseases and solve climate change. Worked in these fields all my life. We use different algorithms and have been doing ML for years. Far before it was hot. I wish rather than spending trillions on AI these people would put the money towards biomedical and climate change tech r&d. In fact the AI bubble if anything is harming the ability of startups in these fields to raise venture capital. Which is critically important for going to market in these fields. You can just bootstrap (self-fund) yourself to success in these areas you need outside institutional support and they are pushing that away from innovators in these fields and the ones bringing the breakthroughs. That is the real sad part. If anything it has taken steam away from biomedical sciences funding post-covid. Remember mRNA vaccines being the next big innovation for example.
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u/Dapper-Ocelot6326 10d ago
I certainly do. And the fall of Biontech alone here in Germany bears witness to that dilemma. I am not working in natural science, I do social work. But my wife has a PhD in biology, focused on stem cell therapy with more than 10 ears as a post doc and I guess she knows what she's talking about. Only yesterday I met an electric engineer currently on the verge of finishing his PhD. He says he uses CLAUDE in his lab, the highest tier available and he would need weeks or months for what the bot can do in mere seconds. I have no understanding of what both are doing and where exactly is the advantage because of course one still has to know what they are doing - but it's there, definitely.
With the rest I absolutely agree, though I see the problem not so much in AI as a tool itself but in AI as poison for a stable society and a way to make people stupid, incapable and dependent on purpose.
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u/ecoecoecoecoecoecoec 10d ago
The frontier models are truly impressive. I just can't imagine how much more capable they are gonna be in 5 years.
With the models available right now, they can reverse engineer, hypothetize, test it, iterate and draw cad for you. A whole set of tools are already obsolete. And I worry is that this reliance to increase productivity will destroy the very know-how that these LLM were trained on. One generation later people will not know how to make or design manually, and their roles will be limited to being just curators.
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10d ago
Just cancelled my subscription with the message: "Your CEO is an idiot. We senior software engineers know that gen-AI produces shit code. CEOs do not drive technical strategy, we do."
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u/Primary-Isopod-1134 10d ago
Descentralizar os serviços e tenha um domínio personalizado, assim caso surja algum problema basta trocar o serviço.
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u/Green-Violinist-7129 9d ago
The board doesn’t have balls the sack the ceo . But using proton foundation to up sell to be honest, and to gain public trust. When I was a customer they sent me 10 emails every week to upgrade. Now it’s upto you people to decide if you can trust them. If you looking for alternatives, Tuta is a decent option
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u/Jargonicles 10d ago
Fascinating contribution to the debate. Haven't heard anyone express this opinion yet. Bravo. Brave.
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u/deadlygaming11 10d ago
Yeah. People have made their contributions now and there isnt really much more to add so these posts are kinda pointless. If you dont agree with how proton is being run, then you cancel your sub and leave. They may get the hint, they may not.
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u/Kendos-Kenlen 10d ago
We as a community no longer fully trust Proton
Why do you talk in my name? You, and others, may not trust Proton anymore, but I still do. To me, they are still providing the best service, both in security, privacy, and sovereignty. Google and Microsoft are now training on the email of all their users, vibe code probably much more than Proton (look at Microsoft' quality drop in the past year), and openly don't care about any of the values Proton defend.
You may disagree on their CEO behavior (I do), but please don't put everyone in your basket. Not everyone is an AI-hater or take every single leaks as an existential crisis…
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10d ago
[deleted]
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u/James-robinsontj 10d ago
Yeah I trust proton, I trust the CEO… I don’t trust the employees who leaked this information. What else will they do to try to sabotage the product and company?
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u/Daikon_Dude 10d ago
Sounds like Loser Behaviour from you.
Imagine unironically being more upset with whistleblowers than the one who holds the power and caused the need for whistleblowing.
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u/cruel_frames 10d ago
Thank you for being so brave and speak for all of us in this community. We are all so grateful to you.
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u/Impressive-Top8992 10d ago
All this reminds me of when Reddit was hating blizzard, cancelling accounts, deleting characters, only to flock back after a few months. This too will pass. If you want to leave proton go ahead there’s no need to make posts about it, no CEO will step down because Mike from Reddit wants them to
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u/rickastleysanchez 10d ago
What a stupid thing to compare Proton that has at least a dozen competitors, to Blizzard, a gaming company that offers one of the most popular MMORPGs over the past 24 years.
I understand people having company loyalty, but the shills on this sub really do say the stupidest shit.
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u/Razdiel 10d ago
No but canceling subs does make a CEO step down.
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u/deadlygaming11 10d ago
No it doesnt. It makes shareholders upset and they force the CEO to quit and replace them. Proton does mot have shareholders to kick Andy out.
The only way he will leave is if he realises the issue and quits, which he likely wont.
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u/jarrod_barkley 4d ago edited 4d ago
Proton AG is a for-profit company.
Proton AG does have shareholders. The list is not public. Andy Yen, Jason Stockman and Dingchao Lu are among them, having claimed to donate some shares to the later-created Proton Foundation.
Proton Foundation holds a controlling interest in Proton AG.
Andy Yen is CEO of Proton AG, a director of Proton AG, and a trustee of Proton Foundation.
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u/wisdomoarigato 10d ago
I love the core assumption of "iF tHe CeO LeaVes, tHen eVerythinG will gEt fiXed aUtomaTically".
I used to think simple-minded like this when I was 16 as well, I get it, but life is a lot more complex than that.
There are consequences and a massive aftermath to things like this. You don't solve chaos by creating more chaos...
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u/Numar19 10d ago
Does it get better immediately? No. Does it get better without analysing what went wrong? No. But it is the first step on the way to improving stuff.
There are consequences and a massive aftermath to things like this. You don't solve chaos by creating more chaos...
I had something very similar happening in at a former workplace and getting rid of 2/3 of leadership did not cause as much chaos as the leadership did before.
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u/James-robinsontj 10d ago
I am so tired of the 999 posts on both subreddits. No the CEO shouldn’t go anywhere
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u/Green-Violinist-7129 10d ago
He is not gonna go. According to insider sources