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by _fw 65 days ago
Absolute insanity from other commenters here. I totally disagree about it being hard to read - it’s fine.

And others bitching about being instructed to read the whole thing, clearly didn’t.

It’s not JUST about Proton Meet. The article goes on to point out that even for Proton Mail, around 10,000 foreign subpoenas were complied with last year.

It draws attention to the STARK contrast between their messaging and their actual culpability when it comes to compliance with foreign powers.

The author also goes on to talk about the hypocrisy in Proton’s use of AWS, Google, DigitalOcean and Google and Apple app stores, which goes to more or less completely undermine Proton’s standing here.

It’s also worth drawing attention to their class action waiver, AND their bizarrely hypocritical ToS which flies in the face of their positioning.

Which, you know, others would have found out if they read before commenting.

Like the article requested.

2 comments

>Absolute insanity from other commenters here. I totally disagree about it being hard to read - it’s fine.

>And others bitching about being instructed to read the whole thing, clearly didn’t.

The problem isn't that it's indecipherable, it's that the reader feels their time isn't being respected. If the author (seemingly) can't be bothered to put the time into writing a blog post, resorting to AI generated slop, why should readers devote time into reading it in its entirety?

>Which, you know, others would have found out if they read before commenting.

Part of your job as a writer is to get your readers to actually read what you're writing. If you want to write about how Trump sucks with the aim of convincing Trump voters to change their minds, but start off with a diatribe about how Trump voters are brainwashed cultists, that's poor writing even if it's theoretically not "hard to read".

Maybe my slop detector isn’t as sharp as yours, maybe the antagonist in me appreciated the author’s tone.

I guess I just liked the article!

It's not hard to find examples, eg. for chained negations:

>California. Not Geneva. Not Zurich. Santa Clara County. Let that land for a second.

>That's not an interpretation. That's not reading between lines. That's LiveKit's own [...]

>Not by breaking Signal's encryption. Not by going to Signal. By extracting [...]

>You don't get notified. You don't get to contest it. You find out [...]

>Not a single anonymous source. Not a single leaked document. Not a single interpretation [...]

>An ordinary person — not an activist, not a whistleblower, not anyone doing anything wrong

“You’re absolutely right! I should have…”

Not sure how those passed me by.

Proton is very active in HN and other sites, and notorious in “debunking misinformation”, at least used to with their official account, so maybe now they went in different approaches of debunking and try to discredit criticism. You also have the fanbase phenomenon, rooted from some denial of active users, so such articles always get attacked one way or another.
It's fair to be suspicious of astroturf. FWIW I am a Proton user, but I get no benefit other than self-soothing from criticizing proton criticism.

My main beef was with the writing style, which is so over the top and repetitive and seemingly AI-generated that I couldn't stand it.

Proton Meet relying on a bunch of US infrastructure is something they should call out themselves loudly when they advertise it, to be sure.