this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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I really want to like Proton and all their shit, but they seem to heavily advertise everything they have on every software and product they have in a very intrusive and annoying way.
Simply logging into Proton mail and being bombarded by Proton promotional shit feels like Google all over again.
The app reminds me constantly that I'm a piece of shit for not supporting them by subscribing to their VPN, etc etc.
I would rather they make money from advertising their own pretty awesome services than from advertising unsustainable (environmentally, but also unsustainable for the fucking soul!) bullshit via blood sucking multinational tech companies that prey on the masses with whatever data they can automatically dig up on you. The revenue Proton makes from converting free customers to paid allows them to grow a freely available service that is a user-friendly and is a technical rival of the surveillance capitalists.
My take is:
You’re just going to rub people the wrong way being condescending like that. Find another way to try and bring people to your point of view.
And no, I’m not a shill for Google or Microsoft, I’m a happily paying user of Proton’s products.
People are perfectly within their rights to be rubbed up the wrong way.
Thanks for your great example of condescension for clarity. A little unsolicited feedback though... other people, unaware of your virtuous intent, might view it as a petty attempt to belittle a stranger on the internet. Other than that, a solid comment. B+
... that's condescending.
Except in Florida and Texas. That shit gets you arrested these days.
Or so I hear.
You seem nice. ^_^
Can you give an actual example of this or are you just making a broad accusation against anyone that uses something other than Proton?
The initial point wasn't against supporting these services or them making money, it's the aggressiveness of the advertising. It shows a degree of disrespect for the users when they refuse to leave them alone.
The quote you are referring to is about people who have such specialised security needs that they choose to self-host. i.e. its about people who won't use Proton because it doesn't suit their needs. The only 'accusations' in the post are against Google & Microsoft, who are accused of buying the souls of their users and selling their data - which I think is a fair accusation. No other company or service is referred to, explicitly or implicitly.
No accusations intended. My point is if you're clued up enough to be comfortable making your own decisions then fill your boots. I'm not here to convince you. The "aggressive" advertising is the only way they are able generate revenue. And I'm fine with that compared to the alternatives. I find it far more disrespectful to have my data skimmed and monetised by a system of exploitative consumption.
And yet I missed their announcement about their passkeys. In today's competitive world, I think any company that does not advertise in some way, is really not going to survive (as much as I don't like ads either). Maybe I don't see that much as I am paying.
I was getting these advertisements, even as a paid user, just before Christmas. Multiple other people have complained about it both here and on Reddit too. It seems to have gotten better now, but I know a few people have been quite turned off by this.
You can disable it from proton mail settings
Are you talking about the emails?
Yes
I wasn't 🙃
Oh yeah the UI stuff was a bug, they've fixed it already
I was referring to pop-ups about family plans and black Friday sale button actually. Wasn't possible to remove these, and I was already a paying member.. I have however not seen these in a while, so maybe they took a hint after getting some backlash.
I believe that the pop-up was also bugged and that it was only supposed to show up once.
The family deal and the black friday deal popups were all easy to disable
Do you have emails from them disabled? I got an email about the launch, but yeah, I haven’t seen much mention of it elsewhere.
No just have "Proton for Business newsletter" disabled but I see many of their mails say only once a quarter etc. So seems they don't send out every month.
This is simply not true. If your products are good your customers will do the marketing for you.
True, and the reverse is also true when a product is bad. I blog usually about what I'm interested in testing out, and when I see if may be worth me moving to a different service.
I haven't noticed much beyond emails about general product news.
That's compared to Feedly which actively would popup "hey! have you considered paying us like... 2k/yr (or maybe it was 2k/month) for some service you don't care about that really should be part of our normal RSS product that you're already paying like 200/yr for? Also there's no way to turn these notifications off and we're going to keep sending them periodically. Oh! And we're not going to work on anything you might find interesting or reasonably priced, so ... have fun!"
When I set up my account, then during setup they asked if I wanted to get email notifications about their products and later it is also available and clearly marked in the account settings. I'd assume that if I turned those setting off, I'd stop getting those emails.
That being said, I have gotten 8 notifications from them over the last 3 months. I have all newsletters and promotional content enabled. This isn't much imo
You get ads to subscribe to a service while using the free tier? Huh, that’s weird…
I have both paid and accounts with Proton and I have no idea what you're talking about.
Yes, they make it clear they offer suite of services, and notify you of new services being launched, but my screen isn't saturated, and my workflow isn't negatively impacted.
...and they are nothing like Google in terms of self promotion, to say nothing of Google's business practices.
you're able to unsubscribe from all those protomtions . . . that is in settings. Personally, a once-a-month newsletter of everything that is new is helpful bc I don't need to put in the effort tlinto keeping up