Yep

Proton’s “paying subscribers” don’t really subsidise the CEO’s pay. They PAY it

Yeah thats my point.

If/when the number of paid users drop, what do you think the CEO will do? Take a pay cut himself? Raise prices? fire other employees? Or look for other ways to make money?

Are you aware you dont need to understand the actual data to build data on a consumer. Even when its end-to-end encrypted proton still know your IP, the IP you’re trying to access, number of packets (data size) your online times etc.

So while they cant read your facebook messages, they know how often, and at what times you use facebook messenger, netflix, youtube etc. And they can turn that into a profile on you that they can sell.

They also subsidise the CEOs salary. And when him, his successor or someone else high up in the company decides that’s not enough for them, that treasure trove of consumer information is going to be awfully tempting to sell if they aren’t already.

Comparing a completely offline software to a VPN that literally routes all your internet traffic through their own servers is completely apples to oranges.

Oh my sweet summer child.

Remember if a service is free then YOU are the product.

Edit: 🤡: no you don’t understand I like this company, so there’s no way they would ever do something underhanded like literally every other company ever 🤡