this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/50693956

TranscriptA post by [object Object] (@zzt@mas.to) saying: courtesy of @davidgerard@circumstances.run, Proton is now the only privacy vendor I know of that vibe codes its apps: In the single most damning thing I can say about Proton in 2025, the Proton GitHub repository has a “cursorrules” file. They’re vibe-coding their public systems. Much secure! I am once again begging anyone who will listen to get off of Proton as soon as reasonably possible, and to avoid their new (terrible) apps in any case. https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/114961415946154957

It has a reply by the author saying: in an unsurprising update for those familiar with how Proton operates, they silently rewrote their monorepo’s history to purge .cursor and hide that they were vibe coding: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients/tree/2a5e2ad4db0c84f39050bf2353c944a96d38e07f

given the utter lack of communication from Proton on this, I can only guess they’ve extracted .cursor into an external repository and continue to use it out of sight of the public

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[–] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 11 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

God dammit, I wish I could reasonably roll my own email, but noooo, spammers and blacklists had to fucking ruin it. Now I get to research a new provider and change email on a bunch of accounts...

[–] dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Spammers and blacklists may not be as big of an issue as you think, as long as you don't share you real email with untrusted apps (eg: only use email aliases from something like Simplelogin or anonaddy).

Nevertheless you could always setup your own domain with an email service, which lets you more easily migrate platforms.

I believe simplelogin lets you change your mailbox for aliases so in an even that you are changing email address, you can redirect those too.

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

That's not the issue

It's a massive pain to actually get your emails to be received if you use a random self hosted ip

[–] dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 1 points 12 hours ago

Oh i guess thats what they meant by blacklist, was not thinking of ip reputation? If that's the issue, I have never experienced it, I believe there are tools you can use to see if your ip is bad and in that case u can probably ask ur isp for a new one (if u pay for static ip).

My other advice for using your own domain still stands, makes it a lot easier to swap around providers.

[–] jokeyrhyme@lemmy.ml 14 points 23 hours ago

The worrying part is rewriting repository history to cover it up

[–] x1gma@lemmy.world 80 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Just because they are using Cursor, it doesn't mean that they are vibe coding. Anyone grabbing their pitchforks for that and screaming "they are vibecoding" only shows their own incompetence.

If they would be vibecoding, their whole software would've gone to shit long ago.

Just because some random people without an engineering background are using vibecoding to push their broken slop, it doesn't mean that any kind of AI assisted coding is bad.

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If that was the case, maybe they would have responded with that instead of covering up the evidence

[–] x1gma@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

It's definitely badly communicated and suspicious, I just called out jumping to extreme conclusions based on a suspicion alone. There probably will be people who are gonna review the code and see how much of it is probably LLM generated, and then we will know. I still think that it's pretty much impossible to vibe code something on that scale, but I haven't seen their cursorrules either.

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[–] simple@piefed.social 129 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Mastodon at it again with pitchforks and torches for the slightest inconvenience.

Using Cursor doesn't prove anything. Many people use Cursor as an advanced autocomplete, nothing else. It's not like they're hammering random AI-generated code and merging it without thinking. "Vibe coding" means generating barely-working code you don't understand to try and get thinks working.

This shit is why I hate the mastodon community, it's always strawmen and "you're one of THEM" style witchhunts with them

[–] mr_satan@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

Here I am just thinking I'm a better programmer without AI (LLMs).

For me it's just glorified autocomplete. I haven't tried it in any real capacity, but my colleagues did and I've seen some examples. It's all basic shit I already know. In no way I felt compelled or even seen anything really useful. It can give you a head start, but I already have the knowledge to have a head start.

Some colleagues are using it for SQL, because they're unfamiliar with it, and I'm like, it's all good if it works for you, but you're not gonna learn properly if you don't try to write stuff yourself.

This touches on another point I don't see too often — I code because I like solving problems. If I outsource that, then what's the point? And it's exactly this that makes me a competent, and dare I say, good programmer.
Another issue for me is this chat bot format. I don't what a chat bot! If I have to go out of my way to try and coerce a fucking chat bot into being a useful tool then it already lost its usefulness. The only acceptable format for AI coding is better autocomplete, i. e. ability to autofill boilerplate more, better and, most importantly, as seamlessly as current solutions in modern IDEs.

In general I don't feel threatened by AI and when the tools catch up I'll gladly use them or even retire and code just for fun.

[–] kameecoding@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago (7 children)

The anti-AI circlejerk even here on lemmy is now just about as bad as the pro-AI circlejerk in the general public, no room for nuance or rational thinking, just dunking on everyone who say anything remotely positive about AI, like when I said I like the autocomplete feature of copilot.

[–] Chulk@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 day ago

I'm a pretty big generative AI hater when it comes to art and writing. I don't think generative AI can make meaningful art because it cannot come up with new concepts. Art is something that AI should be freeing up time in our lives for us to do. But that's not how it's shaping up.

However, AI is very helpful for understanding codebases and doing things like autocompletion. This is because code is less expressive than human language and it's easier for AI to approximate what is necessary.

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[–] Chulk@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 day ago

Yep, anyone who assumes that the presence of a .cursor directory automatically means that:

  1. Developers are vibe coding
  2. The entire team is using cursor

Is either arguing in bad faith or has no idea what they're talking about.

It could be something as simple as one dev trying out cursor (an editor thats literally just a vscode fork with ai features) and accidentally committing their .cursor directory (really easy to do).

[–] space_comrade@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Also I don't think most people understand just how ineffective true vibe coding is. I tried it a few times and could barely get something slightly more complex than a demo todo app working, and even if it was working it was barely prototype level quality of user experience, there is zero chance somebody is deploying vibe coded features into a large, serious production system and not suffering major and immediate consequences because shit just didn't work at all.

The best you're going to get out of it is it shortens the amount of time wasted on tiny adjustment to the UI or something.

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[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Speaking as someone who hates generative AI but has been forced to adapt to using AI in the programming field to stay relevant, this doesn’t suggest they’re vibe coding. The programming world is the only place AI has actually added value (I should note it’s done some neat stuff helping with diagnoses in the medical world too), but like everything, you get what you put into it.

Feed it enough instruction and context, and it can handle the drudgery of things like tech debt updates and other things a programmer knows how to do, but would rather offload to a tool. I’ve had Claude do refactors like that while stepping through and reviewing every single change. It has saved me hours, spared me from hell, and made me look good at work.

That’s my grounded take as a person that has worked with Claude a ton.

But AI everywhere else? Fucking worthless. The whole point is to do the bullshit mundane tasks so that us humans can do art and passionate work, not the opposite.

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

The programming world is the only place AI has actually added value

I'd say this is mostly because you can immediately test the AI's results and rule out anything it got wrong, and whatever errors you generate can then be fed back into the AI so it can refine what it's already written. You never have to just trust the AI (assuming you yourself still know how to code) like you have to when using it for research or for solving problems where you don't get immediate feedback.

Whether this means programming is actually a viable niche for generative AI or whether this speaks more to the limitations and inherent unreliability of the "knowledge" the AI has, I can't say.

Also, I don't know if it's just me but I'm more scared by how fast AI is advancing rather than looking forward to what it can do for me. That definitely clouds my perception when something is AI generated and makes me a lot more dismissive of any real benefits AI might have brought.

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[–] ObsidianZed@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

For added clarity:

You are an Senior SWE at Proton and make sure you do not send any information that is potentially secure in nature. You specialize in building highly-scalable and maintainable Frontend Systems.

https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients/blob/b4453c3f111d23d44ab96ceda4181812f2abd673/.cursor/rules/proton-inbox.mdc

[–] uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Non programmer here: This is the first time I've seen a cursor file but I genuinely like how it reads. It's like a business analyst wrote a coding requirements doc. I'd be thrilled if my staff asked 4-6 thoughtful questions when given a goal with an open ended approach.

For which LLM are cursor files used?

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Cursor is just an IDE (integrated development environment), you can set it up to use all sorts of LLMs either directly through Cursor, or with your own API keys for the sources.

This file content just goes into the initial context to help the LLM act how you want.

[–] Luci@lemmy.ca 38 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You should jump into the other threads about this before you take out your pitchforks. They’re using cursor, it doesn’t prove they are vibe coding. Visual Studio also has AI features, that doesn’t mean you are vibe coding.

[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Cursor is literally marketed as "The AI Code Editor". I am not sure why anyone would use an AI code editor if they aren't planning on vibe coding.

Proton is, in my opinion, a bad privacy company anyway. Vibe code or not, stop paying them.

[–] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com 2 points 1 day ago

I am not sure why anyone would use an AI code editor if they aren’t planning on vibe coding.

Vibe coding means only looking at the results of running a program generated by an agentic LLM tool, not the program itself - and it often doesn't work well even with current state-of-the-art models (because once the program no longer fits in the context size of the LLM, the tools often struggle).

But the more common way to use these tools is to solve smaller tasks than building the whole program, and having a human in the loop to review that the code makes sense (and fix any problems with the AI generated code).

I'd say it is probably far more likely they are using it in that more common way.

That said, I certainly agree with you that some of Proton's practices are not privacy friendly. For example, I know that for their mail product, if you sign up with them, they scan all emails to see if they look like email verification emails, and block your account unless you link it to another non throw-away email. The CEO and company social media accounts also heaped praise on Trump (although they tried to walk that back and say it was a 'misunderstanding' later).

[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Unfortunately so is Visual Studio and VS Code, yet we don't say anything made with them is 'vibe coded'. The text, big and bold, right the top of the screen for VS Code is literally:

[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

either use vim or bust :)

[–] ShoeThrower@lemmy.zip 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ok, but VS has been around MUCH longer and has been widely used long before any AI features were added. People who have been using VS for years, aren't likely to just switch, especially in professional environments where VS has largely dominated.

Cursor OTOH, was specifically made to leverage AI. You don't just start using Cursor.

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[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Time to migrate my email accounts I guess.

[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Visual Studio and VS Code have an AI assistant as well, yet we don't decree all programs written with them as 'vibe coding'. The presence of an AI assistant in the IDE isn’t evidence of vibe coding.

Proton’s repo here is open source. What portion of it presents issues? Any?

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[–] plm00@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Plug for Tuta. 🤷‍♂️ The user experience isn't the best, but it's as secure as it gets. Small team, no vibe coding.

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[–] 0x520@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 day ago

All the people making excuses for them are basically the same people that made excuses for Meta being on the fedaverse. You people always want to do a wait and see approach, meanwhite these companies run amok. Proton was dead when they started supporting Trump. All you pussies supporting them, keep supporting them. See what you get for it. Just another trash AI company putting out more garbage.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

yes, i'm fucking telling you guys so.

a dude that unironically praises a fascist is either malicious or very dumb. turns out he's ~~just~~ fucking dumb.

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I object to your wording of "just" fucking dumb. They're not mutually exclusive, he's definitely evil as well.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago

thats a good point. fascists are always sus in many ways.

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[–] Soapbox@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 day ago

If they would vibe code a functional Proton Drive Linux client then I might be OK with it.

[–] echedeylr@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 day ago

I mean, they were shit from the beginning promoting walled gardens and focusing on profit as the good shitty company they are

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

What's a good alternative VPN provider in EU, not based in Italy? Mullvad is not an option, port forwarding is an absolute requirement.

Also, is there anything out there that ties password/account management and temp emails together as well as proton pass?

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