The post is just an ad disguised as a guide

That said:

its obvious they want to be like google but with “privacy” as a gimmic because its only private until they get a government order telling them to do something to unmask a user or monitor an email.

Besides the fact that Proton is based in Switzerland where government warrants aren’t issued willy-nilly, please learn how the mathematics behind encryption works – or, if not, at least trust that it does. For emails that are sent E2EE, Proton can only have garbled data that requires a key they don’t have.

You’re just constantly talking out your ass, and I have no idea why; it’s so unearned. Like I’m not going to debate you on whether ads or corporations are good because a) I broadly agree and b) that’s just, like, our opinions, man, but then you just say shit that’s so demonstrably untrue that all I can think is: “I fucking hate what this decade has done to people.”

Before I address the substance: that’s not what an ad hominem is in the context of an argument. I’d already 100% finished attacking the substance of their argument. An ad hominem would be if I fallaciously appealed to a personal characteristic (real or otherwise) to attack an argument of theirs. “You’re wrong because you’re a dipshit”.

Anyway: man, I dunno. It’s 2026, and I’ve gotten really fucking sick of being unilaterally bound by etiquette when the bullshit asymmetry principle and the Dunning–Kruger effect are being stretched to their limits by insufferable, insolent shitheads who’ve unburdened themselves of critical thinking and assume having a platform to the entire world makes them qualified to say anything about everything (I can fall into this trap too, but holy shit sometimes).

I was still more polite than they were, still exercised more critical thought than they did, and still addressed the substance, and that’s fine enough by me not to tone police myself.

but i guess thats why I don’t work in marketing

Yeah, I guess it is, because this article works in Proton’s favor on multiple levels:

• Plenty of Proton users have switched over from Gmail, still have their old account, and still, even with forwarding, occasionally need to use those old addresses.
• People who search for or are sent a guide who’ve never or rarely heard of Proton might end up on their site and read a guide that lambasts Google and its usage of AI.
• Meanwhile, Proton’s alternative product is being advertised everywhere on the page outside the guide and even is advertised within it.
• These guides are going to exist anyway (many, in fact). You’re acting like this is some extremely niche thing users might want to do. Having your own guide but poisoned with your marketing when you’re the underdog is a sound idea.
• This gives a benevolent image of “Good Guy Proton” who just wants to keep people’s data private regardless of business – and a “Bad Guy Google” image because it’s apparently so dire that their competition has to do this.
• Consumers becoming more privacy-conscious generally is a boon long-term for businesses like Proton.

You’re so smarmy about this but just come off as a complete dipshit who gave this two seconds of thought.

Hey, if you remember, the last time you whined about this, I appended the most recent 2025 position to the bottom of the list – just to soothe your oh-so-good-faith concern that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics might’ve decided between 2016 and now that “actually, modern medical research is bullshit and plant-based dieting is unhealthy”.

Adding to what you said, I’ll just drop this here.

Trade tensions between the US and Europe had eased since the two sides struck a deal at Trump’s Turnberry golf course in Scotland in July.

God, even amid everything else, this sentence is so fucking rancid.

No problem at all. Full disclosure: I’m a longtime member of and frequent contributor to Wikipedia. I have a bias in this. I’ll say, however, that because we’re not a monolith, internal criticism of the project is varied, rampant, and welcomed. It’s no surprise when everyone is a volunteer and the entire draw of editing is “this thing sucks; make it better”. Criticism is so prolific that for the project’s 25th anniversary, the English Wikipedia’s official newsletter, The Signpost, published a dire, 6500-word warning about our trajectory.

We’re constantly looking for criticism so we can improve, and it’s why, if you can believe it, we love seeing new faces and articles published like “I tried to edit Wikipedia for a week; here’s how it burned my house down”. What we don’t value is criticism made in bad faith; there’s nothing to talk about when one side of the discussion wants to just sit around and Gish gallop all day for transparent political ends.

For those out of the loop, this user’s entire purpose on Lemmy is to spread negative coverage of Wikipedia, one of the few remaining strongholds against far-right disinformation.

And yes, that does include signal-boosting criticism from literally anyone who’s against the project, including Israeli courts, US House Republicans…

Effectively, their job is to stir up FUD.

Ah, yeah, I knew what you meant. I just thought it was funny imagining the serious tone of Blade Runner’s replicants pasted onto Reddit bots astroturfing for Burger King.

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a corporate troll manipulating public opinion.

This blog post was plausibly written by AI. Look at the fabricated source on the 2020 study and at the wording.

I don’t think we know what the actual figure is because this blog post ostensibly fabricates this alleged 2020 study.

Edit: But of course this post is taking off anyway because Lemmy users are soooo much more discerning than those dumbass Reddit users.

The study is likely fabricated by this blog post from what I can find.

This person writes an entire-ass blog post titled after this alleged 2020 Computers in Human Behavior study and can’t even be fucked to link it, name its authors, or even say what the title is. I cannot find this paper anywhere. I looked through all twelve 2020 issues of Computers in Human Behavior and could not find this study. I searched keywords. Nothing.

What an obnoxious fucking dipshit and their useless, almost-entirely-unsourced* piece of shit screed. Based on the wording and the fabricated sourcing, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ragebait blog post was generated with an LLM.

* One source to a March 2017 Pew Research article the blog post claims is from 2018.

In an interview with Reuters, AFT President Randi Weingarten said that the site had already been degraded by extremists and trolls since Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover, before which the platform was known as Twitter. But the recent proliferation of nonconsensual images of women and children in bikinis or underwear generated by X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, had made the site unusable, she said.

And here’s your “you helped enable this; don’t expect a pat on the back” trophy.

“Opinion articles may be removed.” What do you think an editorial – “an article or any other written document […] that expresses the publication’s opinion about a particular topic or issue” – is exactly? The Le Monde article even says “OPINION ● IRAN” at the top in case you were confused somehow.

Rule 3, OP. Editorials aren’t allowed.

OP, for the love of fuck, when tensions are this high, please post anything other than an article from the Daily Mail.

Also, this is a repost from earlier.

It’s wiper fluid. De-ices the kidneys during winter.

I mean they were probably equivalent anyway, so I think you were okay.