Article: https://proton.me/blog/deepseek
Calls it “Deepsneak”, failing to make it clear that the reason people love Deepseek is that you can download and it run it securely on any of your own private devices or servers - unlike most of the competing SOTA AIs.
I can’t speak for Proton, but the last couple weeks are showing some very clear biases coming out.
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.
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?
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.
Jesus fuckin Christ, just marry Trump at this point, Mister proton CEO.
I cancelled my Proton renewal for January and am very happy with Mullvad VPN.
Mozilla VPN runs Mullvad under the hood as well.
I remember mullvad has less servers than proton and I hear they get blacklisted often. Have you encountered anything like this?
Does Mullvad have “Secure Core” option like Proton does? I’m kinda thinking about switching.
I think maybe Multihop is the Mullvad equivalent?
Goddammit I had such high hopes for Proton. Was planning on that being my post-Google main. Now what. 💀
Tutanota and Mailfence have a free tier.
Anything European-based to recommend? I’d like something as far-removed from America as possible, respecting GDPR, privacy, etc., but with a good-sized free-tier storage. I don’t think I need more than a couple GB for email. Calendar included would be a big plus as well. 😅 Probably asking for a lot here…
Tutanota is gdpr but only 1GB free storage. They do offer calendar for free as well with open sourced apps.
I use Infomaniak Mail or ikmail for short. They give you 20GB free, have a whole suite (calendar and others), and are Swiss based. It can also link to other mail clients under the free tier. Only hurdle is using a VPN or proxy for initial sign up, but that can be turned off for daily usage.
I found this while searching on my own. Might help someone else. 🤷♂️
Since ditching Proton for Tuta and Mailbox…I haven’t missed anything and I’m saving money.
You have two email addresses in both Tuta and Mailbox? Any particular reason for that, that you could share with us? 🙏
I have two domains, one in each of Tuta and Mailbox. It was originally so I could try both out, but now I figure it doesn’t hurt to keep 'em separated. I’m still new to non-proton so I am sort of still feeling things out.
Nothing really too interesting or tricky about it, just bred out of curiosity.
Ah I see. So now to the possibly tough question, if you had to choose only one, or recommend only one of them to someone who wants to make a minimal amount of new email addresses, which one would you recommend over the other? 😅 Or maybe a third option?
I think I’d need some more time to really answer, but on the outset, I find Mailbox.org’s interface more intuitive with more settings and generally feels cleaner and more streamlined. Creating aliases and domain aliases in mailbox seems more proton-like in its simplicity.
Tuta I think is more private and secure, but bits of their interface and app need polish. One reason I think Tuta is more secure despite them both touting security and privacy is that Mailbox search works immediately, whereas Tuta requires you to agree to a permission and states it stores everything locally to you so it may take up space. I think Tuta isn’t doing any server-side indexing of any kind? Unsure.
edit: Mailbox doesn’t have a native app, and Tuta has a native app but I think it’s largely a webview. Notifications work OK but you’ll click on a notification and then have to wait for the app to actually connect and resync before you can view it.
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.
In other words, honeypot. And an US plant in Switzerland…
deleted by creator
Pretty rich coming from Proton, who shoved a LLM into their mail client mere months ago.
wait, what? How did I miss that? I use protonmail, and I didn’t see anything about an LLM in the mail client. Nor have I noticed it when I check my mail. Where/how do I find and disable that shit?
Thank you. I’ve saved the link and will be disabling it next time I log in. Can’t fucking escape this AI/LLM bullshit anywhere.
The combination of AI, crypto wallet and CEO’s pro-MAGA comments (all within six months or so!) are why I quit Proton. They’ve completely lost the plot. I just want a reliable email service and file storage.
what’s a good privacy replacement for email/pass?
After using Proton for a couple years I’ve come around to the POV that private email is a dead end. There was not a single occasion where the sender or recipient of any email was also using encryption. If I want encrypted comms I use Signal. Instead of Pass I went back to using Bitwarden.
Crypto and AI focus was a weird step before all this came out. But now we know Andy is pro republican… completes a very unappealing picture. We should have a database tho, plenty of c level execs and investor groups do far worse and get no scrutiny simply because they don’t post about it on the internet.
I’m considering leaving proton too. The two things I really care about are simplelogin and the VPN with port forwarding. As far as I understand it, proton is about the last VPN option you can trust with port forwarding
Happily using AirVPN for port forwarding.
I’m strongly considering switching to them! How do you like it?
As far as I understand it, proton is about the last VPN option you can trust with port forwarding
Could you explain this part please? What makes them untrustworthy?
I’m not 100% sure if you mean what do I think makes proton untrustworthy, or what do I think makes other vpns untrustworthy?
If you’re referring to proton, some of the statements Andy Yen have made recently are painting proton as less neutral than they claim to be.
I’m also generally aware that a LOT of vpn outfits are just a different company mining your traffic and data, and that there are few “no log” vpns that you can trust.
Despite their recent statements that sour my taste in giving proton money (and the ai bullshit that every goddam company is shoving down our throats), I trust proton when they say no logs. They’re regularly audited for it.
I don’t trust all these other VPN companies that claim to be no log and have nothing to back them up. Especially when several of them have been caught logging and mining/selling the data they claim to not be logging.
Once all that crap came out, I felt incredibly justified by never having switched to Proton.
It was entirely out of laziness, but still
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:
- He refers to it as the “official response”
- Indicates that JD Vance is on their side just because he attended an event that other invited senators didn’t
- Rattles on about “corporate Dems” with incredible bias
- 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
Indicates that JD Vance is on their side just because he attended an event that other invited senators didn’t
🤣
Show up at an event = my best friend and definitely not a leopard ready to eat my face ???
🤔
(What a dumbass)
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
What a fucking dumbass. Yes, dems suck. But at least Lina Khan was head of the FTC and starting to change how antitrust laws are enforced. Did he delete this post after Trump was inaugurated with 3 of the richest tech billionaires?
Did he delete this post after Trump was inaugurated with 3 of the richest tech billionaires?
The nominees were announced long before trump was inaugurated.
Lisa Khan is a hero. This is quite twisted “logic”: this party sucks, so let’s side with Hitler instead.
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.
I think they mean privacy friendly version of the infrastructure could be developed.
To be fair, most people can’t actually self-host Deepseek, but there already are other providers offering API access to it.
There are plenty of step-by-step guides to run Deepseek locally. Hell, someone even had it running on a Raspberry Pi. It seems to be much more efficient than other current alternatives.
That’s about as openly available to self host as you can get without a 1-button installer.
You can run an imitation of the DeepSeek R1 model, but not the actual one unless you literally buy a dozen of whatever NVIDIA’s top GPU is at the moment.
A server grade CPU with a lot of RAM and memory bandwidth would work reasonable well, and cost “only” ~$10k rather than 100k+…
I saw posts about people running it well enough for testing purposes on an NVMe.
Those are not deepseek R1. They are unrelated models like llama3 from Meta or Qwen from Alibaba “distilled” by deepseek.
This is a common method to smarten a smaller model from a larger one.
Ollama should have never labelled them deepseek:8B/32B. Way too many people misunderstood that.
I’m running deepseek-r1:14b-qwen-distill-fp16 locally and it produces really good results I find. Like yeah it’s a reduced version of the online one, but it’s still far better than anything else I’ve tried running locally.
Have you compared it with the regular qwen? It was also very good
The main difference is speed and memory usage. Qwen is a full-sized, high-parameter model while qwen-distill is a smaller model created using knowledge distillation to mimic qwen’s outputs. If you have the resources to run qwen fast then I’d just go with that.
I think you’re confusing the two. I’m talking about the regular qwen before it was finetuned by deep seek, not the regular deepseek
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.
Unfortunately it is you who have 0 understanding of it. Read my comment below. Tldr: good luck to have the hardware
I understand it well. It’s still relevant to mention that you can run the distilled models on consumer hardware if you really care about privacy. 8GB+ VRAM isn’t crazy, especially if you have a ton of unified memory on macbooks or some Windows laptops releasing this year that have 64+GB unified memory. There are also websites re-hosting various versions of Deepseek like Huggingface hosting the 32B model which is good enough for most people.
Instead, the article is written like there is literally no way to use Deepseek privately, which is literally wrong.
So I’ve been interested in running one locally but honestly I’m pretty confused what model I should be using. I have a laptop with a 3070 mobile in it. What model should I be going after?
Is it Open Source? I cannot find the source code. The official repository https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 only contains images, a PDF file, and links to download the model. But I don’t see any code. What exactly is Open Source here?
I don’t see the source either. Fair cop.
Thanks for confirmation. I made a top level comment too, because this important information gets lost in the comment hierarchy here.
Obviously you need lots of GPUs to run large deep learning models. I don’t see how that’s a fault of the developers and researchers, it’s just a fact of this technology.
There are already other providers like Deepinfra offering DeepSeek. So while the the average person (like me) couldn’t run it themselves, they do have alternative options.
Down votes be damned, you are right to call out the parent they clearly dont articulate their point in a way that confirms they actually understand what is going on and how an open source model can still have privacy implications if the masses use the company’s hosted version.
OpenAI, Google, and Meta, for example, can push back against most excessive government demands.
Sure they “can” but do they?
They cannot. When big daddy FBI knocks on the door and you get that forced NDA you, will build in backdoors and comply with anything the US government tells you.
Even then the US might want to you to shut down because they want to control your company.
TikTok.
“Pushing back against the government” doesn’t even make sense. These people are oligarchs. They largely are the government. Who attended Trump’s inauguration? Who hosted Trump’s inauguration party? These US tech oligarchs.
Why do that when you can just score a deal with the government to give them whatever information they want for sweet perks like foreign competitors getting banned?
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?
Open-Source in AI usually posted to HuggingFace instead of GitHub: https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1
In deep learning generally open source doesn’t include actual training or inference code. Rather it means they publish the model weights and parameters (necessary to run it locally/on your own hardware) and publish academic papers explaining how the model was trained. I’m sure Stallman disagrees but from the standpoint of deep learning research DeepSeek definitely qualifies as an “open source model”
Just because they call it Open Source does not make it. DeepSeek is not Open Source, it only provides model weights and parameters, not any source code and training data. I still don’t know whats in the model and we only get “binary” data, not any source code. This is not Libre software.
There is a nice (even if by now already a bit outdated) analysis about the openness of different “open source” generative AI projects in the following article: Liesenfeld, Andreas, and Mark Dingemanse. “Rethinking open source generative AI: open washing and the EU AI Act.” The 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. 2024.
So “Open Source” to AI is just releasing a .psd file used to export a jpeg, and you need some other proprietary software like Photoshop in order to use it.
What other proprietary software is necessary to use model weights?
It’s simple:
bad.CHYNA
Well you just made me choke on my laughter. Well done, well done.
🤣
To be fair its correct but it’s poor writing to skip the self hosted component. These articles target the company not the model.
