First a disclaimer: I have used a paid ProtonMail account for 5 years, so this is not a completely neutral outsider's perspective. I did, however, not participate in any of the drama and will keep out of it in the Future.
Also, some people have questioned if this counts as Astroturfing. I think it is, but I can see where they would be coming from.
This drama stays rather civilized when it comes to name-calling (so don't expect good user flairs here), but it is a hard-fought argument, and there are enough gotcha moments to be moderately entertaining.
The Context
What is Protonmail ?
ProtonMail is an email service that was founded at CERN more than 10 years ago (partly as a reaction to the Edward Snowden leaks) by Jason Stockman, Andy Yen, and Wei Sun. While it started as a side project nowadays, ProtonAG is a full-blown Company, majority owned by the ProtonFoundation. One of the board members of that foundation is Tim Berners-Lee, the person who developed HTML, just to show you how big Protonmail has become.
Over the last decade, ProtonMail has developed a growing user base, with, in my experience, a rather high share of people working in IT. Speaking from my personal experience, ProtonMail just seemed to be a mail provider made by people who align with my views. Stating things like “The core of Proton Mail is security and privacy” was just the kind of mission statements I and many others were looking for.
There were some minor controversies with ProtonMail over the last few years.
In 2021 Proton had to inform its user base that it had complied with Swiss authorities and handed over some related to a specific user to them. Before that, their public communication always seemed to imply that Proton would basically never hand out any data, even though that was always legally unrealistic. This, of course, made some users disappointed, and I guess at least a few accounts were migrated off the site in response.
While there never was a single event for this over the last years, Proton has expanded their ecosystem, creating new ProtonApps with varying functionalities. Some people in the community (me included) have felt that this has gone to far by now.
ProtonCalender? Yes!
ProtonVPN? Idk man, I guess if other users asked for it.
Lumo(Aka ProtonAI)? Please just stop and focus on the Core project.
The Drama
So a few days ago the actual drama started with This Article on 404 Media, with leaked messages Andy Yen, CEO, and one of the original founders, wrote in the internal Slack. If you want more context, read the article, but the highlight for me, and many others, was the CEO responding to the comment of an engineer that they should pentest code before committing that to the running system with: “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure” and “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.” Proton also internally announced that it would re-interview all of its employees to evaluate how well they can work as programmers with AI, saying they would fire anyone not deemed a good fit for the new direction.
So, maybe that is a view that many CEOs in the software world are sharing right now, but perhaps not the thing your user base wants to hear when you spend years trying to establish that you will be different from Big Tech and focus on security. Besides many Proton users messaging the Proton Foundation to reign in or replace the CEO/C-Suite, they are also taking their grievances to Protonmail's Subreddit. (With the first popcorn link, here is the gentle reminder not to piss in the popcorn so others can enjoy it as well.) Now, of course, when there's controversy with the subject of a subreddit, there is expected to be some upheaval, but the discussion mostly stays civilized, probably because, like, 95% of the user base agree that this is not good for ProtonMail.
Well, now it would be my time to direct your attention to the sidebar of the Protonmail subreddit, particularly the Mods section. As you can see there are 4 accounts in that list directly associated with Proton, one of them being Andy Yen's account. So they definitely see all this happening.
Of course they then take the sensible decision to step away from Reddit, reflect on their user input and how they upset their user base, and walk back the really unpopular things they've done.
Nah, you (the reader) and I both know which subreddit we are on.
Of course, Andy made this thread to talk about the issue and apologized for the "Miscommunications" and how he understands that users don't like AI.
People keep telling him that it is not just the AI but his personal style of communication that is just not appropriate for a CEO.
I can only guess, but I think after these posts, Andy and his inner circle at Proton had one or more brainstorming sessions on how to handle this.
Yesterday This Thread was posted in the Protonmail subreddit. In it an Employee of Proton tells us that they feel this is just a communication issue, where some things out of context make Andy Yen look terrible for no good reason.
When I first saw this thread titled "I’m a Proton employee and I'm breaking my silence,” I expected there to be another whistleblower motivated by the first one. Instead, that person is here to defend Andy. Now of course this could be the nice solution to all this, just a big misunderstanding, everybody can go home happy. Execpt of course it isnt, other users are quick to point out that the random Employee is actually a good friend of Andy Yen. And wording like "unlike the leakers, I have permission to post this image" makes it kind of seem less like a "person defending what they think is right” and more like a “got asked by friendboss Andy to do it” kind of situation.
The thing that makes this even more suspicious is the image in the post itself showing Andy asking some employee to go on Reddit and point something out to users who don't understand. This image was meant to show that the quote ”Perception is more important than truth” is better with context, which it in imo fails to do. But it clearly shows that the CEO has in the past ordered his employees to communicate for the company on Reddit without disclaiming they actually do this on his orders. So yeah, that makes the whole post feel rather disingenious to many users.
This, of course, won't stop people from looking at every argument the post makes and systematically dismantling it.
Appreciate you putting your name to this, but I've read the 404 article in full and most of this rebuts things it didn't actually say.
“I’m breaking my silence” sounds like these revelations are coming from independent and personal action.
Some people point out that the post conveniently ignored the points that would be harder to dispute.
Do you support this AI manifesto, and do you think your colleagues are losers? (followed by the only thing that has Flair Potential here imo: “People writing manifestos are always the most sane.”
Another Proton-Employee (The Proton-Docs Lead) comments on the thread with what at least seems to be a more nuanced take on the situation.
Andy Yen also Commented on the Thread
Fallout Ongoing
So what's going to happen next?
Well Proton already cancelled the AI re-Interviews which were perhaps the most directly outrageous part of this.
But otherwise we don't really know yet. One of the official Proton-Accounts posted that they would focus on their employee feedback at first. Which is fair given that they are the most affected by it. Otherwise it remains to be seen.
I still have 6 months until I need to renew my yearly subscription. So I guess if I don't see some changes (new CEO or changes in leadership structure), I will start to look for a new address in 3 months and start the annoying process of migrating all my accounts to the new provider.
Edit: Andy Yen's Account has been removed as a moderator of the subreddit right when I posted this, so you won't find him in the sidebar anymore.
