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points by 28304283409234 6 hours ago | 0 comments

Damn I thought these were the good guys.

There have been a number of signs over the past few years that they are very much not the good guys.

Can you reference some? I recall never trusting Proton, but I never had a reason why, just gut feeling. This stuff is vindicating, but I'm curious if I actually had a reason to feel the way I did or was right by accident. I don't have a great track record; I trusted Bitwarden and regret it, and the Mullvad situation is very disappointing (though not really related to the quality of the tech).

[–] phyzome 5 hours ago

Someone in the comments on a previous 404 article listed a few things -- nothing necessarily "cancellable" in its own right, but drawing a pattern:

https://www.404media.co/proton-to-re-interview-staff-about-a...

- Praising the Republican Party and endorsing a Trump appointee.

- Andy choosing a username with 88 in it (a common Nazi dogwhistle) but then claiming it had a different meaning.

- Sponsoring a far-right French YouTuber and claiming they had no idea.

Again, nothing hard and fast. But it meant I was not at all surprised to find out how fucked up the company is on the inside.

[–] NewJazz 1 hour ago

The 88 thing is probably just because he's chinese.

And don't they sponsor like a crap ton of youtubers?

[–] cyanydeez 6 hours ago

yeah, it's the "getting rich" part that...tips you off.

[–] steve_adams_86 6 hours ago

This doesn't make them bad guys, though.

edit: stating this based off of the linked post, but will read the article linked in the post as well.

edit edit: Okay, yeah. This seems like an awful place to work.

[–] meibo 6 hours ago

Being cruel to your employees qualifies, regardless whether they care about the product, IMO. And it seems like those employees did care. Words matter and shape the environment people work in.

[–] steve_adams_86 4 hours ago

I wasn't aware of cruelty; just that they are opting to use AI. The tracking of AI produced code is tough; I have that at my org too, but it's more so to get a sense for who's using it, so we can find out why, help them use it better, etc.

I also only read the initial post and not the entire 404 article. I suppose if I could edit my comment and have it maintain some posterity, I'd say something like "going all-in on AI doesn't make you evil", but I concede that these guys could certainly be assholes if there's more to it (I'll read the nested article).

[–] lifeisloving 6 hours ago

There's a lot of people on this site who think successful tech execs and founders should be able to do whatever they want to anyone and their communities. They all think they'll become one soon enough, so they're protecting their imaginary class interests.

They're sheep being herded by tech billionaires, who've gotten them to think they're pets and that they definately won't slaughter the second they're hungry.

[–] timmytokyo 5 hours ago

They're more like veal calves.

[–] steve_adams_86 4 hours ago

My comment wasn't meant to imply anything of the sort. I think you can adopt AI aggressively without being a total dickhead, more or less. Doing it at direct expense to others' well-being is clearly a problem. I'll read the nested article to see how wrong I am, but the initial post that's linked didn't seem to indicate Proton have gone to the dark side. I'd need more evidence to judge them like that.

[–] CamperBob2 6 hours ago

Failure to take advantage of available tools does not suggest whether you are a good guy or a bad guy, just whether you are a competent guy or an incompetent guy.

[–] selcuka 5 hours ago

Setting up a snitch network to "ruthlessly smash everything that stands in the way" suggests that you are a bad guy.

[–] ehnto 4 hours ago

Tools have no morality but they do have effects and outcomes. That's where we make our judgement call on whether you're good or bad for using them.

[–] lifeisloving 6 hours ago

Whats an example of a company, that existed pre-AI that has so far failed to take advantage of AI and has fallen behind?

I see a ton of examples of companies overusing AI and destroying their brand/image and products, but not many who abstained and are hurting. Using AI does not give you automatic wins, and using it solely because its available does not make you competent.

[–] ehnto 2 hours ago

Its going to be wildly distributed and varied so hard to spot, but look for companies where the main output was commodity B2B assets and you can see a real impact. Marketing copy, images, graphic design in the low and mid tiers. Real businesses supplied that stuff and even adopting AI wouldn't help, since their customers could just do it in house now.

There's heaps of companies between small and conglomerate and the middle area is where the commodity asset companies lived. Generating low stakes copy, art, apps and websites for small companies.

[–] lifeisloving 1 hour ago

Okay I'll conceed there, but I dont think my rule applies to businesses that were already slop factories pre-ai.