Every step in the right direction is worth taking. Doesn’t have to be perfect, as long as there’s movement in this direction. Many people seem to miss this point.

It’s really all about proportionate response. You need to do what your situation demands.

People who criticize Proton often have very high standards. Maybe they self-host everything and expect you to do the same. Maybe they live under constant threat of torture or assassination because of their political statements, and they assume you face the same risks. As long as those unspoken assumptions hold true, their advice is actually pretty solid. Next time you see comments like that, try digging deeper to uncover the invisible but foundational assumptions behind them.

Honestly, those are extreme circumstances, and most people don’t need to meet such strict standards. Just check your personal cybersecurity threat model and act accordingly. If you don’t even have one, you’re definitely not in the same boat as those guys.

If you live in a some backwater dictator land stuck in the dark ages, your need to take these things seriously. If your life is at risk, your threat model likely requires you to take security and privacy very seriously. On the other hand, if your threat model is all about giving the middle finger to Big Tech for philosophical reasons, you need something else. For example, switching from being a Google product to paying for Proton products is probably the right and proportionate move, given your your situation and goals.

Security and privacy also involve balancing convenience with your goals. A solution needs to be convenient enough to be practical. Your personal tolerance for inconvenience and your desire for privacy and security should guide your choices. For many people, using Proton for everything is a convenient option, and that’s why it’s the right choice when their threat model doesn’t demand stricter measures.

I’ve also previously written a comment about Proton hate.

I certainly do use Lemmy every day, so it’s definitely attractive. It doesn’t seem to be causing any harm yet, so I guess it’s still far from being addictive in the technical sense of the word.

Just remembered that Reddit has streaks and achievements now. Could you call that a dark pattern? Either way, it’s definitely manipulating the users into spending more time on Reddit than they otherwise would, and that’s the first step towards addiction. IMO that sort of thing is clearly unethical and pretty dark in general. By contrast, Lemmy doesn’t have that sort of “engagement enhancing” corporate cancer.

Can confirm. Those design choices are working.

The fundamentals are still the same, so in that sense you’re absolutely correct.

There are major differences that make Lemmy better though.

• it’s smaller
• the UI doesn’t suck
• you can use whatever client you like
• it’s federated. If you don’t like this instance, make an account in another.

Soo… is that like newest on top and oldest at the bottom or which way does it go?

Anyway, my Madtodon feed is really boring. I don’t really care enough about anyone, so there’s usually nothing worth reading. Following hashtags is a bit nicer, but definitely not addictive in the least. Hence, I don’t really use that account for anything. About once a month I take a look at what’s going on, come to the same conclusion as always, and close the app. Well done Mastodon!

Mastodon was specifically designed to be less addictive than xitter.

Lemmy is a lot like the old Reddit. In the current version of Reddit, there is an algorithm that fills your feed with stupid nonsense that is apparently very popular among the majority. I guess that makes it even more addictive than what it was long ago.

Anyway, comparing modern social media with drugs isn’t far fetched.

Trump deserves one.

That would have been my recommendation as well. It also diversifies the setup a bit.

However, I can also appreciate Proton as a convenient gateway drug that leads people away from Google.

As others have pointed out, having so many Proton apps might be an issue. However, that line of thought only works if you’re really concerned about having a single point of failure. Most people value convenience much more than that.

The way I see it, this setup is somewhat noob-friendly, but relying heavily on Proton makes it a lot more convenient for many people. Using a greater variety of providers would make sense, but you can’t expect everyone to be ready for a hassle like that. People seem to expect you to be a hard-core privacy warrior who is willing to make significant sacrifices for philosophical reasons.

Most people aren’t like that. Just switching to DDG is hard enough for them, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

If you take only 1/10th of this diagram, you get the simplified newbie version. Take all of it, and it’s for a person who is clearly interested in security and privacy. Modify a few things here and there, and you get a version for a serious security enthusiast. Different versions for different audiences.

This code isn’t anywhere near production yet. I’m still going to make a hundred little changes, but an LLM can do all the boring stuff so that I can focus on the interesting bits. There’s also going to be plenty of testing and iterative tweaks, so any major mistakes will be exposed sooner rather than later. Honestly, about half of the errors will be caused by me.

I did that today. It went something like this:

“See the naming conventions at the beginning of the script. Apply all the rules to all the non-conforming variable names and the new custom function we made earlier.“

There were like 100 changes here and there, and I just didn’t feel like doing all that work manually.

LLMs always write with a very dramatic tone. I really hate that high impact language now.