Pretty rich coming from Proton, who shoved a LLM into their mail client mere months ago.

1978 US Automotive Companies: If we make a product that locks our customers in, they'll be our customers forever!

1978 Japanese Automotive Companies: The US gave us their required parameters. If we make a product that works then customers will keep buying our stuff.

2025 US Tech Companies: If we make our products contingent on proprietary software and hardware, we'll lock them in.

2025 Chinese Tech Companies: The US gave us their required parameters. If we make a product that works and they can utilize freely, they'll keep buying our stuff.

Not our first rodeo.

DeepSeek is open source, meaning you can modify code(new window) on your own app to create an independent — and more secure — version. This has led some to hope that a more privacy-friendly version of DeepSeek could be developed. However, using DeepSeek in its current form — as it exists today, hosted in China — comes with serious risks for anyone concerned about their most sensitive, private information.

Any model trained or operated on DeepSeek’s servers is still subject to Chinese data laws, meaning that the Chinese government can demand access at any time.

What???? Whoever wrote this sounds like he has 0 understanding of how it works. There is no "more privacy-friendly version" that could be developed, the models are already out and you can run the entire model 100% locally. That's as privacy-friendly as it gets.

"Any model trained or operated on DeepSeek's servers are still subject to Chinese data laws"

Operated, yes. Trained, no. The model is MIT licensed, China has nothing on you when you run it yourself. I expect better from a company whose whole business is on privacy.

How apt, just yesterday I put together an evidenced summary of the CEOs recent absurd comments. Why are Proton so keen to throw away so much good will people had invested in them?!

This is what the CEO posting as u/Proton_Team stated in a response on r/ProtonMail:

Here is our official response, also available on the Mastodon post in the screenshot:

Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.

Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidently has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote.

At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.

By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.

Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.

Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.

Source: https://archive.ph/quYyb

To call out the important bits:

1. He refers to it as the "official response"
2. Indicates that JD Vance is on their side just because he attended an event that other invited senators didn't
3. Rattles on about "corporate Dems" with incredible bias
4. States "Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses" which is immediately refuted by every response

That was posted in ther/ProtonMail sub where the majority of the event took place: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/so_that_happened/m7ahrlm/

However be aware that the CEO posting as u/Proton_Team kept editing his comments so I wouldn't trust the current state of it. Plus the proton team/subreddit mods deleted a ton of discussion they didn't like. Therefore this archive link captured the day after might show more but not all: https://web.archive.org/web/20250116060727/https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/so_that_happened/m7ahrlm/

Some statements were made on Mastodon but these are subsequently deleted, but they're capture by an archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20250115165213/https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503

I learned about it from an r/privacy thread but true to their reputation the mods there also went on a deletion spree and removed the entire post: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1i210jg/protonmail_supporting_the_party_that_killed/

This archive link might show more but I've not checked: https://web.archive.org/web/20250115193443/https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1i210jg/protonmail_supporting_the_party_that_killed/

There's also this lemmy discussion from the day after but by that point the Proton team had fully kicked in their censorship so I don't know how much people were aware of (apologies I don't know how to make a generic lemmy link) https://feddit.uk/post/22741653

I suspect the enshittification of proton is fast approaching.

People got flack for saying Proton is the CIA, Proton is NSA, Proton is a joint five-eyes country intelligence operation despite the convenient timing of their formation and lots of other things.

Maybe they're not, maybe their CEO is just acting this way.

But consider for a moment if they were. IF they were then all of this would make more sense. The CIA/NSA/etc have a vested interest in discrediting and attacking Chinese technology they have no ability to spy or gather data through. The CIA/NSA could also for example see a point to throwing in publicly with Trump as part of a larger agreed upon push with the tech companies towards reactionary politics, towards what many call fascism or fascism-ish.

My mind is not made up. It's kind of unknowable. I think they're suspicious enough to be wary of trusting them but there's no smoking gun, yet there wasn't a smoking gun that CryptoAG was a CIA cut-out until some unauthorized leaks nearly a half century after they gained control and use of it. We know they have an interest in subverting encryption, in going fishing among "interesting" targets who might seek to use privacy-conscious services and among dissidents outside the west they may wish to vet and recruit.

True privacy advocates should not be throwing in with the agenda of any regime or bloc, especially those who so trample human and privacy rights as that of the US and co. They should be roundly suspicious of all power.

Goddammit I had such high hopes for Proton. Was planning on that being my post-Google main. Now what. 💀

OpenAI, Google, and Meta, for example, can push back against most excessive government demands.

Sure they "can" but do they?

Since ditching Proton for Tuta and Mailbox...I haven't missed anything and I'm saving money.

this is obviously talking about their web app, which most people will be using. In this special instance, it was clearly not the LLM itself censoring the Tiananmen Square, but a layer on top.

i have not bothered downloading and asking deepseek about Tiananmen Square. so i cannot know what the model would have generated. however, it is possible that certain biasses are trained into any model.

i am pretty sure, this blog is aimed at the average user. while i wouldn't trust any LLM company with my data, i certainly wouldn't want the chinese government to have them. anyone that knows how to use (ollama)[https://github.com/ollama/ollama] should know these telemetry data don't apply to running locally. but for sure, pointing it out in the blog would help.

It’s simple: bad.

To be fair its correct but it's poor writing to skip the self hosted component. These articles target the company not the model.

Jesus fuckin Christ, just marry Trump at this point, Mister proton CEO.

I want to preface this question by saying that I'm not trolling and I'm not defending Proton. I'm genuinely confused at the reaction to this article.

I'm also upset with Proton's recent comments, specifically the December tweet and subsequent responses, and I'm evaluating my use of Proton.

Near as I can tell, this article (which I did read) lays out the facts about Deepseek as an LLM originating in China and the implications of that.

Why is this article a reason to pile on proton?

How is this Open Source? The official repository https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 contains images only, a PDF file, and links to download the model. I don't see any code. What exactly is Open Source here? And if so, where to get the source code?