Rambles About Proton's CEO And #FreeOurFeeds
I didn't want to keep making a bunch of Mastodon posts, so I spilled some of my thoughts on a couple recent happenings on here instead.
Rich CEO Of Proton Likes Trump, My Shock Is 7.6 On The Richter Scale!
There's been some buzz about Andy Yen, CEO of Proton, recently voicing support for Trump and American Republicans, and falsely attributing antitrust action to them while claiming they are now the party of "the little guys". I can't say I'm surprised. Rich people like sucking off other rich people, especially those who help them stay rich. Corporate executives can all fuck off to hell, as far as I'm concerned.
I've see some a couple peoeple claiming this isn't that big of a deal because he has also made posts criticizing Trump, but that's bullshit. Proclaiming support for fascists, making false statements to bolster them, repeating their lies, is supporting fascism, regardless of whether you even believe in it yourself or think of yourself as being "rational/neutral". There is no "in between" or "both sides" or "nuanced" angle that makes such behaviour acceptable under any circumstance, period.
I have a few email accounts for different uses related to my internet presence as molytov, one of which is a public contact email that is on Proton. I am considering making a switch to a different provider for public contact purposes. I'm disappointed at seeing more reasons to dissociate with Proton.
Addendum:
Jonah Aragon's post calling this issue out had garnered quite some attention. A reply was made with the official Proton account to defend its CEO's statements before deleting it shortly afterward. This is just... so foul. Its CEO may be using the company's social media to personally spout his incorrect and stupid views, or the company harbours at least a few people with similar views, allowing them to represent the company and its values too. Both of these possibilities are disconcerting.
While it's not clear yet what impact this will have on Proton's reputation, it will absolutely damage that of anyone who has accepted sponsorship/advertising deals or promoted or recommended their services in any way. Jonah assists in maintaining PrivacyGuides, which has Proton listed as a recommended email provider. What the hell is he supposed to do now? If this is enough of a justification to denounce Proton's service altogether and no longer suggest them for the foreseeable future, what are they to suggest in its place? Does allowing such promotion to remain imply agreement with this position and a willingness to support it? Through this behaviour, Proton has thrown its own associates' reputations under the bus to promote fascism, and now they may have to scramble to maintain their credibility or find other sponsorship opportunities.
Utterly disgraceful.
FreeOurFeeds
FreeOurFeeds is an initiative with the stated overall goal of "sav[ing] social media from billionaire capture", but it hasn't managed to exist for very long without already starting to raise plenty of eyebrows. Its website, which bears a soulless and corporate appearance, does not make it clear how this will actually be accomplished; it is looking to collect a hefty $30 million in donations through GoFundMe rather than setting up a proper non-profit entity; perhaps most suspiciously, several of the people heading it are wealthy folks whose hands reach deep in the "AI" cookie jar, such as Mark Surman and Nabiha Syed of Mozilla, as well as executives of other "AI"-focused companies.
The website states that funds will be used to make BlueSky's AT protocol "fully resistant to billionaire capture", host a BlueSky relay, and fund development of applications that presumably support said protocol. Critically, it totally fails to explain how collecting such a large amount of donations to fund the completion of these objectives will actually tackle the core problems. BlueSky was conceived from people and development shaped by capitalist interests and influence, and is doomed to suffer the same fate as any other platform that spits in its own users' faces once it grows big enough to be able to get away with prioritizing profit at the expense of all else.
What surprised me is that Cory Doctorow, someone who has made quite a name for himself for talking about enshittification (a term which he coined) and corporate greed, is supporting and promoting this venture.
In his blog post, 1 Cory vouches for the initiative's promise to "install fire exits" in BlueSky, and in my opinion avoids properly addressing concerns in order to be able to keep looking for reasons to join the platform without appearing like a hypocrite.
Bluesky sure seems like a lot of fun! They've pulled tens of millions of users over from other systems, and by all accounts, they've all having a great time.
... around Mastodon, you'll hear a refrain that reminds me a lot of the Napster wars: "People who are enjoying themselves on Bluesky are wrong to do so, because it's not federated and the only server you can use is run by a VC-backed for-profit. They should all leave... This is the social media version of "To be in our movement, you have to stop listening to popular music."
Many people questioning FreeOurFeeds aren't doing so to be "purists", they're calling out what they see as red flags for it inevitably succumbing to the enshittification that it and Cory claim to be so strongly opposed to. Fediverse platforms certainly have plenty of crazies and elitists, but I find it somewhat disingenuous to not bother engaging with substantive opinions and discussion on the subject to instead focus on remarks that were obviously made with little thought or consideration.
I's all rather puzzling to me.
- How can we know that FreeOurFeeds will actually fulfill their promises? Besides being the current hot new thing, why choose to focus on BlueSky development in particular, and not on improving the already-existing ActivityPub that can certainly benefit from more support?
- What ensures that said development of BlueSky couldn't also include the addition of loopholes that still grant its key developers shogun authority over the protocol's future?
For instance, Bitcoin, and practically all other cryptocoin/blockchain ventures, are prime examples of how "decentralization" is kneecapped by centralized development: a tiny group with access to push and accept changes to the code repositories have the final say over what direction a project goes, and their decisions will be primarily to benefit the wealthy puppeteers that pay them. Such a structure means calls for radical change are smothered by everyone else looking to please the big players in hopes of catching a few more crumbs that fall from their mouths, and those who actually take the plunge to do their own thing end up battling each other for adoption rather than posing any meaningful competition to the old system.
While ActivityPub and the various software projects that utilize and interact with it such as Mastodon are by no means immune to such corruption, FreeOurFeeds and BlueSky appear to have absolutely no attempts at safeguards whatsoever, making them especially vulnerable to capitalist greed and takeover.
I think Tante's skepticism hits the nail on the head: 2
The fact that just running another Relay leads to costs in the millions should make people wonder if this is the right approach for a better social media infrastructure that does not rely on big organizations.
It’s just presented in a weird way with a whole lot of “give us a lot of money and we’ll make amazing stuff happen” and in the end a bunch of AI grifters get some startups “that build upon AT proto” funded.
I'll let one of his posts conclude my thoughts on this topic:
It's the same thing as I keep telling people to do when they see big promises of what Blockchain or AI is gonna do. Ask yourself: Is this actually real?
Has the FreeOurFeeds campaign told you how giving them 4 or 30 Million USD frees anyone (including feeds)? Is that realistic given the information they presented? Or is this just slideware?
Oh and, you're using RSS, right? Riiiiight?