The journey of tech empowerment and liberation from tech bros can be a long, bumpy road.

[maximum_mew@indieweb.social]

@_elena Thanks for sharing this, Elena. As @Tutanota is considering turning to AI, I hope they see this and reconsider. I use Tuta, and I don't want it to force AI on me.

[mirou@mastodon.social]

@_elena and why not jump to @infomaniak_network and leave #proton ?

[andresti@livellosegreto.it]

@_elena Oh wow, just in time, I was about to switch everything over to a Proton email these next few days, that was a close one

I have a few questions about the custom domain thing since I'm pretty new to this. How does it work if I need to switch providers using my custom domain email? If I were to switch, does it also move all my saved emails/folders/labels over to the new provider? What providers would you recommend?

[burningtyger@nrw.social]

@_elena I'm finding it pretty difficult to select a mail provider for my domain. Going with icloud for the time being but I'm not happy. Also I have a .im tld which is not ideal to say the least. I don't think emails and domains are a good thing altogether.

[naturemc@mastodon.online]

@_elena "so many aliases" ... joke aside: Every time, I want to recommend you here and don't remember your whole name (I'm bad with names), I type @ plus part of your name ... and suddenly the Mastodon automatic completion for accounts runs wild. Too many accounts wirh your name.

[geofcox@climatejustice.social]

@_elena

Yen's use of the description 'losers' about his own colleagues tells me all I need to know about him. Glad I chose Tuta.

[dm29@mastodon.social]

@_elena how deeply disturbing. Proton can't fall

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@andresti if you switch to a new provider you still need to backup / download all your old emails but you won’t have to write to all your contacts to notify them of the change or tweak anything… just change DNS settings (with a couple of hours to propagate the change)

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@NatureMC 🫠

[shanie@mastodon.tails.ch]

@ticho @_elena The problem becomes "who isn't"?

Like, I know Andy Yen is leaning heavily into AI Psychosis which will inherently and ironically make the thing Proton exists on: security, less secure. And WHEN they have an incident due to this, Proton is gone. Over. Done. Andy is an idiot in a suit and it's obvious.

But is there another option? Ironically, handling your own e-mail server is extremely difficult due to the political safety layer and insecure for nearly everyone. What's better?

[ticho@mas.to]

@shanie @_elena As someone who has been running private mailservers for myself, friends and small companies for decades, I feel that I'm a bit too biased to answer this.

[shanie@mastodon.tails.ch]

@ticho @_elena I'm sure, no worries. I'll just share what I found:

I was looking into Proton last year, but I was like "Surely e-mail isn't that hard."

But then when I discovered you need to be on X number of 'good lad' lists to even get your email delivered to most places, I scratched my head and wondered how you even break into this in 2025 without a corporation. Talk about cold feet.

[ticho@mas.to]

@shanie @_elena My servers aren't on any such lists, if those even exist. It's just that thanks to thoughtful and secure setup, they avoid ending up on any of the "bad lad" lists.

[gilraen79@mastodon.social]

@_elena when I was starting my degoogled life this year I had to choose between Proton and Tuta: I am glad I chose the latter, and I do hope that they don't turn out as evil as Proton's CEO did. So far I'm loving Tuta, I hope you join them or find a new, reliable provider soon

[zonntag@mastodon.social]

@_elena I've always had a bad feeling about this company... Glad I never gave them any money, and glad that there are still alternatives to the supposed alternatives.

[gilraen79@mastodon.social]

@wonkothesane @_elena I have seen their replies and people's reactions to them, but I honestly want to believe they will listen to their customers' concerns and rethink about using AI for developing their services. I have always seen them listening to people, while Proton has always been shady to me, so I hope that was just a misstep. We will see in the next months, I suppose.

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@wonkothesane @gilraen79 what makes me really nervous about Proton is (1) how more importance is given to LLMs' coding vs. humans when it comes to security (2) the toxic culture created by AI-pilled management.

It's not just a blanket rejection of AI, it's more nuanced than that. I would trust a real life engineer with qualms and a desire to be prudent over management that pushes speed and genAI code.

I think alternatives to Proton may have better corporate culture... the bar is pretty low

[_elena@mastodon.social]

@gilraen79 @wonkothesane as far as I can tell, Tuta's company culture appears to be healthier than Proton's. I already have a Tuta (free) account and I have made my custom domain the default in Proton. Slowly preparing for a possible switch... but TBH if Yen and the AI-pilled CTO step down I may stick around. Reading between the lines it seems that Proton devs and engineers put an emphasis on human code, slowness, and prudence

[gilraen79@mastodon.social]

@wonkothesane @_elena I hope for all their customers that Proton replaces its CEO: it would be the best solution for everyone.

[pawsplay@dice.camp]

@_elena ugh. I was just thinking of moving to proton, too.