I really didn’t have money on Proton crashing and burning as a trusted community partner and company due to leadership AI psychosis this rapidly.
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>Butler said that Proton needs to change in three key ways: accept that an engineers’ job is now to help LLMs write better code, faster; that Proton needs to get to the point where most code is not reviewed by humans but by AI; and to more fundamentally change the company as a whole, and “commit, as an organization, to the transformation that the moment requires.”
I know I'm quoting huge chunks of the article and I apologize for that but it's _so_ mind-bogglingly filled with inanity I... I can't _not_.
These people, the ones _running_ the company, really have lost their minds and gone _all_ in on a technology they fundamentally do not understand.
Someone has convinced them LLMs/AI is _faster_ and _better_. It's... It's not really _either_. And it's being _dumped_ on the market right now.
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If you use and particularly, pay for anything they make, you need to read this. It’s one of the worst I’ve seen even in the 20s.
🫠 I don’t think they’re recovering without the board removing executive leadership. https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
@hacks4pancakes Yikes! Can I please just get a Google-like suite of tools without the AI obsessed techbro bullshit?

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If you use and particularly, pay for anything they make, you need to read this. It’s one of the worst I’ve seen even in the 20s.
🫠 I don’t think they’re recovering without the board removing executive leadership. https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
@hacks4pancakes
The AI use aside, the whole attitude of "ship it, LOL!" on a security focused product is mind boggling! -
I know I'm quoting huge chunks of the article and I apologize for that but it's _so_ mind-bogglingly filled with inanity I... I can't _not_.
These people, the ones _running_ the company, really have lost their minds and gone _all_ in on a technology they fundamentally do not understand.
Someone has convinced them LLMs/AI is _faster_ and _better_. It's... It's not really _either_. And it's being _dumped_ on the market right now.
If _any_ company had to pay _cost_, not market rates but _cost_, they'd immediately drop the AI/LLM nonsense and go back to hiring talent and squeezing the human-shaped machines for more lines of code.
I... I don't actually think I'm being hyperbolic when I say the C-suite at Proton, along with many other companies, have literally lost their minds. They are unable or unwilling to distinguish long-term risk from exponential growth. There's only one of these things at the end of this road.
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If you use and particularly, pay for anything they make, you need to read this. It’s one of the worst I’ve seen even in the 20s.
🫠 I don’t think they’re recovering without the board removing executive leadership. https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
@hacks4pancakes Yikes.
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If you use and particularly, pay for anything they make, you need to read this. It’s one of the worst I’ve seen even in the 20s.
🫠 I don’t think they’re recovering without the board removing executive leadership. https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
after not doing enough research I moved my email to proton a couple of months ago . . . fuck!
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If _any_ company had to pay _cost_, not market rates but _cost_, they'd immediately drop the AI/LLM nonsense and go back to hiring talent and squeezing the human-shaped machines for more lines of code.
I... I don't actually think I'm being hyperbolic when I say the C-suite at Proton, along with many other companies, have literally lost their minds. They are unable or unwilling to distinguish long-term risk from exponential growth. There's only one of these things at the end of this road.
... I finally hit the bottom of the article that I can read without being a paying subscriber to 404media.
There's _plenty_ before the "fold". Take the time to read this. This disease has grabbed a hold of leadership and the C-suites all over the country and, I assume, the world.
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... I finally hit the bottom of the article that I can read without being a paying subscriber to 404media.
There's _plenty_ before the "fold". Take the time to read this. This disease has grabbed a hold of leadership and the C-suites all over the country and, I assume, the world.
Once again the metric unit of the quarter is going to be the death of so many organizations when there's _so_ much at stake.
AI is less a technology and more a snake-oil as sold. Nobody likes admitting they've been taken I suspect a former particle physicist is near the top of that list right now.
They're so far "in" they can't see a way out and are _forced_ to believe forward is the only way in order to maintain their own grip on their reality.
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Once again the metric unit of the quarter is going to be the death of so many organizations when there's _so_ much at stake.
AI is less a technology and more a snake-oil as sold. Nobody likes admitting they've been taken I suspect a former particle physicist is near the top of that list right now.
They're so far "in" they can't see a way out and are _forced_ to believe forward is the only way in order to maintain their own grip on their reality.
We are continually seeing this phenomenon in our societies, our politics, our families, our workplaces.
I don't _really_ wanna switch topics or fall into hyperbole but things like this AI _craze_ when combined with the other issues facing the _species_... This is sufficient to qualify for a Great Filter scale impact.
How's that for hyperbole?
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If you use and particularly, pay for anything they make, you need to read this. It’s one of the worst I’ve seen even in the 20s.
🫠 I don’t think they’re recovering without the board removing executive leadership. https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
@hacks4pancakes did they even consider asking the ai to pentest it lol
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What the above _actually_ means is that Proton's annual recurring revenue target is a total farce, created without reference to reality, or real-world constraints facing any company in the market right now.
They are, in fact, _completely_ full of excrement. What's worse is they know it. I'm assuming the company is _way_ over-leveraged and that's why Yen is losing his ever-loving mind.
@401matthall For me the worst part is where he suggests that code that can't be reviewed by humans is the future, like what... if the output isn't readable by a human, the output is garbage
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If you use and particularly, pay for anything they make, you need to read this. It’s one of the worst I’ve seen even in the 20s.
🫠 I don’t think they’re recovering without the board removing executive leadership. https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
@hacks4pancakes
Well, crud! There goes a decade-long relationship.
Now what? Is there no safe harbor from this plague? Where can we turn for secure services free from AI slopfusion? -
I really didn’t have money on Proton crashing and burning as a trusted community partner and company due to leadership AI psychosis this rapidly. It’s incredibly disappointing and a huge loss.
@hacks4pancakes This really sucks. I've been moving away from Google services as much as possible and purchased a subscription for Proton Unlimited back in March. Guess I need to start looking for alternatives. I have a couple custom domains. Been using Proton Drive for my photo backups from my GrapheneOS Pixel. Use calendar app. Not much else. Any recommended alternatives that are privacy friendly, no AI BS, etc?
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@401matthall For me the worst part is where he suggests that code that can't be reviewed by humans is the future, like what... if the output isn't readable by a human, the output is garbage
Yeah, I don't buy into the idea that a "magic box" that can't be understood by humans and only interacted with by humans through inference is really capable of _serving_ human needs.
I feel like these ideas are not inline with anything approaching reason. There are a number of terms that I think describe what we're seeing: Goal-induced blindness, and escalation of commitment are both pretty accurate.
It's wildly disappointing to see so _many_ people lost to that cognitive space.
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I really didn’t have money on Proton crashing and burning as a trusted community partner and company due to leadership AI psychosis this rapidly. It’s incredibly disappointing and a huge loss.
@hacks4pancakes My family was looking to get off gmail and were considering proton but now that its staunchly pro-radioactive ai slop, I'll keep looking
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@hacks4pancakes Any recommendations you can make on where to look next? I'm literate enough to have my own instance on a managed hosting provider but not much more than that
Always happy to pay for a service so as not to be a product...@Ali @hacks4pancakes email is a real painful one. Self hosting is really questionable (source: I've been bitten doing it at a small company and still do it personally, I can't recommend it if you want things to get reliably delivered. Although that can be broken everywhere).
It would be nice to kill email.
It isn't happening though

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I really didn’t have money on Proton crashing and burning as a trusted community partner and company due to leadership AI psychosis this rapidly. It’s incredibly disappointing and a huge loss.
@hacks4pancakes how little love do they have over doing things right, another Mozilla in our hands
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If you use and particularly, pay for anything they make, you need to read this. It’s one of the worst I’ve seen even in the 20s.
🫠 I don’t think they’re recovering without the board removing executive leadership. https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
@hacks4pancakes I had already planned an exit strategy a couple of years ago after some of his outspoken politics that made the news right after I prepaid years ... but this is just nuts.
Overall I was happy with the service though. Email worked. I had very few people I sent emails to on the service and none that I used keys with outside of it. I also appreciated that they kept expanding their offering. I never used their AI, it felt too gimmicky.
Fastmail is on the short list. For now ...
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We are continually seeing this phenomenon in our societies, our politics, our families, our workplaces.
I don't _really_ wanna switch topics or fall into hyperbole but things like this AI _craze_ when combined with the other issues facing the _species_... This is sufficient to qualify for a Great Filter scale impact.
How's that for hyperbole?
@401matthall 'how's that for hyperbowl?'. Pretty hyper, but I agree.
*edit: I realise the quote should say bole not bowl. I'm not gonna correct it because it made me laugh. -
@hacks4pancakes
Well, crud! There goes a decade-long relationship.
Now what? Is there no safe harbor from this plague? Where can we turn for secure services free from AI slopfusion?@Cotopaxi ditto. Where to go for email and stuff that isn't toxic? Also, I'll need to tell everyone that it's not @proton anymore just like I had to with Gmail and hotmail. Shoulda got my own domain years ago...
@hacks4pancakes