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Proton Mail goes AI, security-focused userbase goes ‘what on earth’ (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 5 months ago by dgerard@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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we appear to be the first to write up the outrage coherently too. much thanks to the illustrious @self

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[–] mii@awful.systems 32 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Same, tbh. I went on their subreddit expecting a shitstorm but the announcement sits at like 85% upvotes with mostly positive replies.

What kind of bizarro world have I stumbled into?

At least the top-level comments seem to be split.

[–] self@awful.systems 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)

between that thread’s activity pattern and how hard they tried to fudge the numbers on their own survey to make this feature look popular: boy there’s a lot of stank on this one

but hey here’s some worrying shit straight from the Proton team:

Our business audience was the most interested in a writing assistant, this is why we started gradually rolling it out starting with Business and Visionary plans. We will look into making it available to more users at a later date!

so there’s something utterly fucking obvious for the “it’s only for business users” posters to consider; they’re doing the same frog boiling shit that all LLM fuckheads do.

I’m tempted to crosspost David’s article and my mastodon thread to that community, since Proton hasn’t really replied otherwise, and they seem plenty active there answering softball questions and removing posts. I don’t look forward to the Kagi-level shitstorm in my inbox afterwards though

[–] fasterandworse@awful.systems 22 points 5 months ago

the thing about this is a "writing assistant" doesn't have to be integrated into the email product. It could be a product in itself. If the "business audience(?) was the most interested in a writing assistant" you've got a fucken great standalone product opportunity on your hands. A Proton-certified LLM writing assistant that is magically better and more secure than anything else out there is not something you coyly slip into the email client and nudge everyone to use.

It doesn't matter what reasons they have for doing this. Their method of deployment says more than enough to me. They know it's off-script and they know they want their fucken "audience" to do the marketing for them.

[–] gencha@lemm.ee 15 points 5 months ago

Reddit content is paid/generated content. It is literally part of their commercial offering to customers that they can expertly deceive their users. It is an advertising platform and you use it to try and force a public image.