- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Proton: “We’re consolidating our social media presence due to limited resources and no longer posting on Mastodon. Follow us on Reddit for the latest updates”
Proton: “We’re consolidating our social media presence due to limited resources and no longer posting on Mastodon. Follow us on Reddit for the latest updates”
1000% this. It’s easy to mirror, so the idea that “it’s too hard, boo hoo” is cover for something else. Given the recent diatribes by the head, this just seems like more indication that Proton is going to play ball with authoritarians (or at least ultracapitalists, who are bosom buddies with the authoritarians).
It’s not just the resources to mirror posts, it’s also the resources to keep up with communicating with the community, answer questions, maintain a positive presence. It’s not trivial.
I do sort of agree that it’s insane for any privacy company to be emphasizing Reddit over Mastodon. If anything, the limited resources should motivate them shutting down Reddit and keeping Mastodon. But it’s not as totally stupid an explanation as it might seem.
It’s also notable that Reddit’s features make it a lot easier to communicate with tons of people in a genuine way, with minimal effort (since it’s good at surfacing high-voted comments and letting you engage with those people). As well as making it easy to silence anyone who is saying anything you don’t want them to say, of course.
This is a fair point, and I think you came to that thoughtfully. Would that you were in charge of things instead.
Here’s my counterpoint: they aren’t obligated to stop posting on Mastodon to focus on comments on Reddit or BlueSky or whatever. They can still post wherever they want but make it clear that they will no longer respond to comments on Mastodon; I follow several accounts that do this, explicitly or implicitly. That’s not the choice they made, however.
They’re supposed to be governed by the Proton Foundation, with the mission: “Our legally binding purpose is to further the advancement of privacy, freedom, and democracy around the world.” But moves like this don’t seem to be in line with that mission, especially when you look at all the options.
They chose to leave Mastodon and reduce/restrict their online presence, and all the evidence I have seems to point to this being a political move and not merely a strategic one.
Time will tell if that’s true, but this should raise eyebrows for anyone who cares about data privacy.
Yeah. At best, it is clueless.
I think it’s maybe possible that they have a thriving community on Reddit, and not much interaction with people on Mastodon, and they can’t afford to invest the time to pay someone to maintain both, and so some middle-manager who’s not exactly a tech and privacy expert decided to go with the more active one.
You’re completely right though. Even in that super-charitable fantasy scenario, it would have been better to shutter the Reddit community, explain to the thriving community why they would be better served by a different platform, and keep going on Mastodon even if it’s something like 5 people.