Yet another Hacker News

141 points cdrnsf 1 hour ago 89 comments

apsurd 55 minutes ago | parent

damn, this guy crashing out live in front of his company and the (tech) world.

AI times are weird. Validates that truism I heard: money (and power and influence and now AI) is an amplifier. It amplifies what you always were.

bombcar 31 minutes ago | parent

AI is what to tech what alcohol is to people

Vaushite 16 minutes ago | parent

> AI is what to tech what alcohol is to people

Was this sentence authored under the influence of one or both?

stavros 2 minutes ago | parent

Eh, it's just an extra "what".

Avicebron 14 minutes ago | parent

It's an excuse for people to strip away the fig leaf of meliorism.

233mhz 24 minutes ago | parent

AI psychosis is real, coupled with the fact that most execs are sociopaths to being with, that's not a good combo

addybojangles 23 minutes ago | parent

Well said.

random_cat_8745 55 minutes ago | parent

makes me sad, I use Proton, time to move away.

apsurd 52 minutes ago | parent

I feel like I got lucky in choosing fastmail. They are always compared. Fastmail gave me a better impression. Maybe there's something to that instinct.

ForHackernews 36 minutes ago | parent

I'm also a happy Fastmail customer, but they are not really comparable: Fastmail is an Australian company with American servers, they are not a privacy-conscious option at all.

ok_dad 28 minutes ago | parent

It’s email. There isn’t much privacy in email other than TLS. Proton encrypting your inbox is basically useless since they could read your email in between TLS termination and encryption. I don’t care how private their fancy Swiss servers are and the NSA doesn’t either.

InsidiousWombat 19 minutes ago | parent

But if you don't care about that Gmail have spotless security record

jcranmer 1 minute ago | parent

To hammer this point home:

The sender and the receiver both have a copy of the email. The receiver's MTA pretty much has to have a copy of the email for sane antispam to work. Email itself intrinsically leaks the sender, recipient, and time as part of the SMTP message, which means anyone with access to email server logs can recover this information no matter how much security and encryption you try to put on top of it, and that means that whatever three-letter agency you care about probably has access to all the information they want anyways.

The only meaningful difference in security is going to be whether or not the outgoing MTA is going to try to use (or even require) TLS on the MTA-MTA connection, and what level of encryption is applied to the at-rest email.

Personally, I'm not too fussed about a mail system administrator being able to read my email because of the BOFH principle... it's not worth the sysadmin's time to read my email, because it's just not interesting.

jordand 17 minutes ago | parent

There's now an EU option in Fastmail for hosting your data

claaams 51 minutes ago | parent

I switched recently. I think the safe bet now is to just use my personal domain and whatever provider I move to next I can just update MX records. Really annoying but it is what it is.

renehsz 44 minutes ago | parent

Exactly! Don't lock yourself in to a single provider, especially for email where it's fairly easy to avoid by using your own domain.

zmk5 50 minutes ago | parent

Thunderbird Pro could be an option.

elpocko 33 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, it's pretty weak from the CEO, bowing down to the morons. I will not move away because I've never used them, just like you, but let me tell you, I'm angry. And I want you people to know it: look at how angry I am. Such a good boy.

fartfeatures 20 minutes ago | parent

I've had their top level personal account for years (visionary or something equally wanky). What are others using instead? I'm not sure I want to continue funding someone that is behaving like this (if it is confirmed).

HelloUsername 54 minutes ago | parent

"Manifestos, Fear, and 'Loser Thinking': Inside Proton's AI Reckoning" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289692 67 comments

"Proton goes all in on using AI" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296602 110 comments

"Proton to 'Re-Interview' Staff About AI to See Who Gets to Keep Their Job" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50251062 48 comments

SapporoChris 16 minutes ago | parent

Thank you for including other reports. However, everything seems to link back to 404. Convo.casa is just quoting 404I'm suspicious that 404 has a grudge against Proton, but I am open minded.

The articles seem damning. However, CEOs jumping on board the AI bandwagon is not particularly rare. I don't see a CEO pushing AI as reason to change my email provider. If it manifests to be a problem, then sure I will switch. So far I haven't seen any repercussions.

frenchtoast8 11 minutes ago | parent

When a CEO calls people "losers" for caring about security, and when the CEO considers it a failure that they don't have hockey stick growth, to me that's absolutely a reason to consider changing for most people using Proton. If someone doesn't care about employees raising security concerns, or a company chasing profits at all cost, then why are they using Proton in the first place?

SapporoChris 4 minutes ago | parent

If all that is true it is a concern. I'm not going to make any changes until I see some validation. Validation from other media, or seeing a decline in quality of product.

jordand 47 minutes ago | parent

I'm looking at alternative email provider options, and I'm struggling to find options that have banned GenAI, and have the features and reliability I need. I will gladly pay a premium for a provider that's not going to let AI creep in gradually, and take a bigger role over data and security

speg 40 minutes ago | parent

I’ve been using Fastmail for years. I haven’t seen any AI fluff yet…

pnw 37 minutes ago | parent

Fastmail uses AI extensively for support and announced an MCP server earlier this year. Their CTO has also posted about using Claude for patches.

https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/16278789555215-A...

https://www.fastmail.com/blog/an-mcp-server-for-fastmail/

toomuchtodo 35 minutes ago | parent

> To be clear about what this isn’t: we have not integrated AI into Fastmail. There’s no chatbot bolted onto the inbox, and your mail isn’t being piped through a model in the background. The MCP server is simply another API endpoint for you to use, if you want to, with the AI client of your choice.

> That distinction matters to us. Our long-term values include “Your data belongs to you” and “We are good stewards of your data”. The pattern we try to follow is: rather than continuously reworking our UI to follow every new trend, we give you the interfaces to use your data however it suits you. MCP continues that pattern. It’s there if you want it, and nothing changes if you don’t.

An MCP Server for Fastmail – National Email Day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870988 - April 2026 (14 comments)

I have had no problem getting a human for customer support in a timely manner.

(fastmail customer)

apsurd 40 minutes ago | parent

I've been happy with fastmail. Their product and UX looks a little dated even - in a good way I realize. It's not trying to be anything its not.

Also iCloud paid accounts allow custom domains for email. The Apple mail product is way worse but it was amazingly simple to set up and I am happy I have my own domain.

RDaneel0livaw 33 minutes ago | parent

As am I. Please let me know if you find any! I will do the same.

coffeefirst 27 minutes ago | parent

Fastmail is excellent. They haven’t banned AI but their approach (set up MCP so AI power users can pull in their email data) is a lot more thoughtful and entirely nonintrusive so far.

InsidiousWombat 21 minutes ago | parent

But gmail have basically spotless security record? If you care about security, gmail is the option that basically had no security incidents in last 10 years (aside from "someone's mail password leaked from somewhere else" which is not gmail fault).

Only problem (and a big one) is just fact it is US company

MeetingsBrowser 14 minutes ago | parent

Fastmail is excellent. They haven’t banned AI, but IMO that would be equally as extreme as what proton is doing just in the other direction

CqtGLRGcukpy 47 minutes ago | parent

When this story goes behind their paywall you can read it (in full) at https://web.archive.org/web/20261030171028/https://www.404me...

Keywords: bypass paywall

itissid 39 minutes ago | parent

Proton engineering culture always got a bad rep pre-AI era as well(per their glassdoor reviews[1]) . Poor engineering directly or indirectly makes them susceptible to data breach because good talent stays away. One reason why I hesitated moved to proton back when a lot of people did. My understanding is that the only reason they are in the game are because send email services are extremely difficult to run.

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/PROTON-Reviews-E13574.htm

woodpanel 39 minutes ago | parent

It’s all fair and square for a Tech CEO to be thinking like that. Morally despicable but totally expected.

It is an entirely different ballgame of idiocy to write something like

> that’s looser thinking

In response to one of his employees in a company wide slack chat. How stupid and unaware of yourself and your surroundings do you have to be?

Put aside that this may even be a legal case in itself, what does this say about his leadership in general?

Zambyte 28 minutes ago | parent

I had to check the spelling - they spelled "loser" correctly at least. Would have been a great irony if they didn't.

InsidiousWombat 19 minutes ago | parent

AI really does a number on some people's brain

efitz 35 minutes ago | parent

Damn. My proton plan just renewed a couple weeks ago.

I have not failed to notice that they’ve slowed focus on security oriented features and are now focused on a lot of things I don’t care about, but I didn’t realize the magnitude of the cultural problem there.

Without the security aspect, Proton is ridiculously overpriced. If they want to compete with GSuite or Zoho, they gotta come down.

I’m willing to pay premium for a niche security focused offering. I’m not willing to pay a premium for AI generated crapware.

dam_jackalopes 19 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, I'll be looking for an alternative. I've already drifted off of everything but the email service. The opportunity to potentially not due business with orgs run by insufferable assholes is all the push I really need to take another look around.

matheusmoreira 15 minutes ago | parent

I became a Proton visionary after I interacted with them here on HN. They took PGP really seriously and addressed my very specific concerns.

I don't care about the AI use bur I'm very sad to learn they won't be "lovingly" crafting their products anymore. Less craftsmanship and attention to detail can't be good.

Thankfully, owning a domain makes switching providers easy.

Y-bar 31 minutes ago | parent

Aw schucks. I moved to Proton half a year ago in an effort to de-Google (and de-US) myself. Now this. Time to write a message to customer service explaining my concerns.

MeetingsBrowser 21 minutes ago | parent

You’re probably better off switching to one of the many good alternatives.

Y-bar 14 minutes ago | parent

I have already begun using my proton-domain email address with real people. They have just started learning it (or have finally updated my contact info). That’s one hurdle.

Another hurdle is I see no other good alternative. I used Fastmail for a while, but it was a bit laggy due to network requests across the Atlantic Ocean. Also it is under US jurisdiction. That company is no longer relevant to me.

I still think it is a valuable use of my time to make my voice heard to the company.

What good alternative can you recommend for me?

nsagent 11 minutes ago | parent

Weird. FastMail is many times faster than Proton ever was for me. FastMail is also headquartered in Australia, not the US. Fastmail also now has European servers.

https://www.fastmail.com/blog/fastmail-offers-eu-data-region...

EDIT: Re-reading your comment, maybe you meant the fact that the servers were exclusively in the US (until very recently).

Y-bar 4 minutes ago | parent

Data regions like these offer no protection, it’s just a feel-good marketing term with no legal basis. Source: I work in this business with multinationals with a similar footprint and we have paid actual lawyers to look at it.

The only thing that unfortunately matters here is that Fastmail has a US incorporation.

Fastmail even writes as such:

> If what you need is a guarantee that your data remains only in the EU, we don’t have that, and we’d rather tell you directly than let you assume otherwise.

NikolaNovak 19 minutes ago | parent

I'm in the other boat, I've been pondering de-Googling to either FastMail or ProtonMail, and struggled to make a decision.

Now it's been made for me and I can plan my migration to FastMail :-).

nsagent 13 minutes ago | parent

I migrated to FastMail from Proton earlier this year (after being with Proton since 2019). So far I'm more than happy with the decision.

repeekad 12 minutes ago | parent

FastMail is great, I'm not sure there's the same expectations around privacy though. I've been using it for years and love my masked emails, but I don't have any expectations that my data is locked down or encrypted, and one legal request would expose my info.

grey-area 8 minutes ago | parent

Fastmail is good, I've used it a few years.

RandallBrown 29 minutes ago | parent

If an employee is getting their work done, with or without AI, why does it matter? Is it just the idea that if an employee is keeping up, without using AI, how much work could they get done if they were?

repeekad 16 minutes ago | parent

If you're a start up especially in silicon valley, it doesn't matter how well something is built if you can't get to market, which creates a toxic culture of build fast at all cost, that small detail will be a "good problem to have", and AI has thrown jet fuel on the dumpster fire.

maerF0x0 14 minutes ago | parent

I've never understood this. SV is full of the corpses of "First mover" advantage. Meanwhile many great companies were third or later to the scene.

tuvix 7 minutes ago | parent

I feel like this is an internal bias I’ve actually built up over time. If I see another company providing a service come out after something I already am using, I subconsciously gravitate toward it.

If they’re coming to market when there’s already a dominant player, they must have improved something, right? Not saying it’s logical.

dearing 7 minutes ago | parent

survivorship bias fo sho

iLoveOncall 13 minutes ago | parent

It doesn't matter but CEOs are dumb fucks. Ask this guy how HE uses AI and you'll see he most likely doesn't. They don't understand how anything their company develops works.

Usually that would be fine if reporting lines were healthy, but in the AI age with top-down mandates they're not.

wuhhh 29 minutes ago | parent

Honestly losing the will over here; I Degoogled and moved to Proton a couple of years ago because they seemed to be a cool company aligned with my values. Is this coming from a “the business is failing and we need to ship faster to stay competitive” angle or is he just a massive ball bag? I mean either way he’s probably a massive ball bag but if he’s trying to save a sinking ship it’s at least somewhat understandable. Otoh if he’s just a massive greedy ball bag then I don’t even know where I go next.

_ink_ 29 minutes ago | parent

Looking at the comments I seem to be the minority, but I appreciated the honesty to say, look we want to use AI and if you don't then this company is not a good fit anymore. Now they will let go these people anyway, but in a less transparent way.

233mhz 26 minutes ago | parent

In what shit hole of a country is this legal to pull lmao

Sharlin 20 minutes ago | parent

“That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August. “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.” Yen added, “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”

I mean, I also appreciate the honesty of the CEO to say that security is not important anymore and if it is to you, this company is not a good fit anymore.

Letting people go for invented reasons isn't something that happens in civilized countries, by the way.

Fabricio20 18 minutes ago | parent

As a customer of a company whose motto was privacy and security i'm extremely concern about this push at the expense of security. In what world is doing a security audit "loser thinking"?? Its not honesty, it's a techbro in ai psychosis running a company completely against it's core values.. Start of enshittification as they call it?

MeetingsBrowser 16 minutes ago | parent

It’s kind of like appreciating the honesty of a CEO telling existing employees they need to start working weekends or find somewhere else to work.

hebleb 5 minutes ago | parent

There are ways to communicate without being rude and treating people with respect.

iAMkenough 28 minutes ago | parent

Like I said earlier this week, this re-alignment of the people that built and maintained their products is also resulting in a re-alignment of their customer base.

Hopefully we’ll see those talented engineers leaving to build an alternative to Proton products now that we know corporate leadership at Proton can’t be trusted.

The board should really oust the “loser thinking” CEO and CTO if they want to minimize the damage to their brand.

The company not providing even a written statement in response to 404 reporting speaks volumes. They don’t see themselves accountable to their customers.

simonw 26 minutes ago | parent

I expect Proton's existing employees may be a particularly bad audience for a "let the AI worry about security" message from the top, given that they are more likely to be a) security experts and b) people who care enough about security to actively seek out a job at Proton.

louwrentius 24 minutes ago | parent

Looking for a different mail provider I passed on Proton because of their support for cryptocurrency and because the CEO politics.

I don’t care you are hosted in Zwitserland, your CEO makes me distrust the company dearly.

softwaredoug 23 minutes ago | parent

Just makes me think how we have encouraged a generation of tech leaders to be complete assholes with no consequences. That “loser thinking” line should never be accepted in any company discourse, even from leadership. If this person wasn’t an exec, they’d be shown the door for that language.

Have people completely lost their humanity? Is winning at whatever you’re doing that important we can’t be equally obligated to show each other decency?

233mhz 20 minutes ago | parent

Techies are getting a glimpse at how other employees have always been treated all along, and they don't like it.

Maybe they'll start unionising more, back in the days as long as they had a coffee and a chair they never complained...

iAMkenough 11 minutes ago | parent

The thing with tech products is they could just leave and start another company. No need to go through union-busting behavior.

Every discussion of Proton leadership shortcomings shows a market of users looking for a better run company.

And if it’s all AI developed moving forward, why not? There’s investors out there that would support Proton’s original engineers to fulfill Proton’s original mission, without the AI psychosis abandoning security as a top priority.

mcmcmc 5 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

verdverm 17 minutes ago | parent

> Have people completely lost their humanity? Is winning at whatever you’re doing that important we can’t be equally obligated to show each other decency?

Pretty much, I found some very helpful words and perspectives on this from Michael Sandel - Tyranny of Merit. The winners begin to think there success is their own doing, forgetting the luck, good fortune, and many people who helped them along the way. They grow arrogant and full of hubris, looking down on and belittling others.

The question is then, how do we get out of this mess? Sandel offers some interesting foundations, along with Acemoglu.

Links to brain food:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50278616

datakan 12 minutes ago | parent

People stand on the shoulders of giants and bitch about the view

verdverm 6 minutes ago | parent

what inspires you to say that here and now?

I'm not making the connection, or can see several interpretations

can you expand?

paimapi 5 minutes ago | parent

I think it also has to be that the more powerful you are, the more likely you are to attract and retain sycophants who do nothing but compliment you and tell you how great your ideas are. It's a tale as old as time since the days of kings and emperors.

Some of the best moments of growth that I've experienced have happened during adversity, when something I said or did was laid bare for me from another perspective, with all of the problems with my approach pointed out. Those moments are intensely uncomfortable in that moment but so valuable for long-run growth (provided you have enough of a check on your own ego and insight to learn from such experiences).

My guess is that this will happen in every hierarchical organization where individuals at the top are able to reshape their social environment to avoid uncomfortable moments that they don't wish to have. I think it takes someone truly exceptional to avoid creating that kind of reality for themselves, and why it's oh-so-common to see hyperinflated egos from the most powerful individuals.

That said, I would read the hell out of a non-fictional expose covering specifically just the sycophants around some of our most notoriously unhinged powerful people, ones that showed exactly who are applauding these Emperors Nero while they play their citharas and let the rest of the world burn.

maerF0x0 16 minutes ago | parent

I blame the steve jobs cult

sp4cec0wb0y 12 minutes ago | parent

This is what the mainstream public considers "tech bro" behavior. Software engineering used to be cool until these kinds of people took the limelight.

argee 6 minutes ago | parent

It used to be cool for nerds. When it became cool for normies is when these people joined in. The latter is what society actually considers cool.

rsynnott 9 minutes ago | parent

Also, seems counterproductive. If you work for proton, you’re probably realistically updating your LinkedIn profile about now.

aanet 6 minutes ago | parent

100% this.

Tech leaders have lost touch with people. And the top leaders — take your pick — have normalized shitty behavior.

I used to think Proton was good.

Not so, anymore.

I’m not supporting their products anymore. Cancelling my subscription

matheusmoreira 21 minutes ago | parent

> stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more

Shocking...

jmuguy 15 minutes ago | parent

All of this has made me really appreciate that the people I work for, and with, aren't childish assholes. People need to realize this is not normal behavior from an executive or anyone in any sort of management position.

frenchtoast8 14 minutes ago | parent

This to me doesn't solve the actual problem. I don't care if engineers at Proton use AI, and I don't care if management makes it a requirement to work there. What I care about is using it as a way to instill fear. Combined with the CEO constantly blowing up on Slack insulting employees, it cultivates a culture of "yes-men" which is not good for a security and privacy minded product.

mostlysimilar 13 minutes ago | parent

I already cancelled my subscription. They've demonstrated far too reckless behavior for me to trust something this critical to them, especially as they present themselves as the private and secure alternative.

iugtmkbdfil834 11 minutes ago | parent

<< “I want to acknowledge myself, personally, that there was a communication failure on my part and there are many things that probably could and should have been communicated differently, and this is something that I’ll have to reflect on and improve over time. So I will do that.”

Note how he says that he wants to 'acknowledge' things. Not apologize. Not that he is wrong about the re-interviews. He says he didn't use nice enough language to soften the blow. Basically, in simple terms, he didn't Lisa it up as temporary refund adjustment.

edit: and the passive voice is a cherry on top

edit2: I gotta say -- all those CEOs are getting a little uppity for people who likely use copilot for summarizing emails.

hgoel 9 minutes ago | parent

I've been torn on Proton for a while, but looks like I won't be renewing my subscription...

davesque 7 minutes ago | parent

This guys sounds like a giant prick.

z3c0 7 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

10111001 7 minutes ago | parent

Is this Proton as in ProtonMail?

podgorniy 6 minutes ago | parent

His words.... He is bulshitting his way out of this situation

symfoniq 5 minutes ago | parent

Wow. Clearly this isn’t a company I should be trusting to keep my email secure.