this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 59 points 5 months ago (3 children)

So they're adopting a similar structure to OpenAI, a for-profit company majority controlled by a non-profit organization.

[–] [email protected] 128 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Similar structure, yes, but this is the important part:

Swiss foundations and their board of trustees are legally obligated to act in accordance with the purpose for which they were established

So, just like the Louvre museum in Paris and the Luxor casino in Las Vegas have similar structures, pointing this out doesn’t really contribute much to the discussion.

For all I know, OpenAI’s purpose is to create Skynet and kill all humans. But Proton’s is:

Our legally binding purpose is to further the advancement of privacy, freedom, and democracy around the world.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And this might actually get me to use Proton. I'm currently with Tuta, and the experience there is... just okay. I went with them because they claim to have even less access to my stuff vs Proton, and Proton being private didn't get me to trust them enough to use them instead (I've used them in the past though). But this structural change might convince me that they're trustworthy enough to switch to.

We'll see how it turns out. I'm still giving Tuta a shot because I like the idea of not bundling everything together, but once I get my NextCloud setup working, I'll decide how much of Proton I'll actually need, compare prices, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How is it possible to have less data on your than Proton? I'm not aware of anything Proton has which isn't fundamentally required.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Proton stores email subject lines unencrypted to facilitate search, Tuta does search client-side so everything can be completely encrypted. Both have access to unencrypted email when they receive it, so it's not a huge difference, but given the cost difference, I figured I'd give Tuta a try first.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

i wonder how is the experience of searching between millions of emails client side

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Not great. I have a couple hundred or so, and it's already a bit slow on my phone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

While it does help with search it was required to be compatible with OpenPGP.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I don't think that's true. They can always do PGP on the client after decrypting the email (so double-encrypt). It's also not particularly interesting because almost nobody uses PGP. It's a design decision that I'm not a big fan of, but if they're legally obligated to maintain my privacy, maybe I'm okay with it. I'll give it some time and see how that pans out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

OpenPGP is actively supported by dozens of clients, they cannot and do not encrypt subjects, so Proton chose to be compatible with that. I think dismissing cross-compatibility because of a hand wave “nobody uses it” isn’t very productive either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

AFAIK, PGP is only automatically used in emails to other Proton users, you need to do it manually if you want to communicate with someone else with PGP (or use the secure email thing, which does it on Proton's servers). So the PGP is largely just an implementation detail in how they store it, unless you're communicating with a lot of other Proton users.

Then again, it's been a couple years since I used Proton, so I don't know if things have changed. But since nobody I contact uses Proton or Tuta, it's irrelevant that Proton uses PGP. If I use PGP, I'd do it myself regardless.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Doesn’t Ikea do something like this too?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

The Ikea Foundation of Furniture Lovers

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

And Mozilla/Firefox

Its pretty common.