If you’re on a free plan, doesn’t it make sense for them to push their paid plans to you? They don’t sell your data so they need to make money somehow.

You mean they’ve lied all along?

Startpage is basically a different frontend for Google and doesn’t have this

I asked about privacy advocates

Then I misunderstood. If it’s just about privacy advocates, sure, most Proton users are privacy advocates in some form or another, though there are still alternatives to Proton in that regard.

You asked what the Proton users are that don’t use custom ROMs. I replied people that simply want an alternative to Google, Apple or Microsoft services. That does answer your question, with the reasons also in there: anticompetitive practices and privacy concerns, among others.

I’m not sure what you want to hear from me. People don’t all have the same values (or give the same weight to said values) so they don’t all act the same. It’s not a binary where you either care so you go all in or you don’t care.

Some of Proton’s users will use custom ROMs, others won’t (like myself). Reasons for that differ from person to person. Some want to go all in on privacy and get rid of everything Google/Apple, they’ll likely go custom ROM. Others just want Big Tech to not read their emails for advertisments or block your account because you’ve uploaded pictures of your children to your cloud storage. Some just don’t like Big Tech’s tendency to be anticompetitive and don’t want to support it. Some want to use a service not from the US. Some like how Proton looks and feels etc etc. You can switch to Proton for all those reasons and not want/need a custom ROM. And yeah, some only look at what’s free and won’t use Proton.

To take myself as an example, I am one such user that doesn’t have a custom ROM, but uses Proton. Why? I simply wanted to move away from, in my case, Microsoft’s Outlook and Onedrive because I didn’t like them being able to read my emails and use it for ads. That doesn’t justify flashing my phone, which has little custom ROM support btw, with the potential of bricking it.

People that want a different storage/mail provider that isn’t Google, MS or Apple while still using the OS that came with the phone. Be it for privacy reasons or for not wanting to support their anticompetitive practices.

Bit of an odd statement. It’s not as if all Proton users are hardcore privacy fanatics who use custom ROMs on their phone

They don’t quite provide the same service as privacy.com though, do they? I have wise instead of revolut, but I was under the impression that privacy.com had more rigorous privacy protections

A European alternative would be great, since privacy.com only seems to do dollars

If you just want Mail, there’s the Mail Plus plan, which is just the Mail (with a little bit of Drive for mail storage) and cheaper than the Unlimited plan. I see what you’re saying though. I’d like more customisable plans too. I use Drive and Mail, but don’t want the others and the Mail Plus plan doesn’t have enough for Drive (for my usecase), so I have to shell out for Unlimited.

Besides this wallet, what are you referring to with ‘extra shit’?

Sure, so cut government funding for fossil fuel sources.

And what about the water requirements for mining lithium?

Yea, so our focus should be both renewable and nuclear. Why does it have to be one or the other?

Doesn’t energy made out biomass (like wood-fuels) release a lot of CO2 as it’s still a carbon source?

Also, in the same article, nuclear energy seems to be pretty high up too (if not higher) and they’re building a new reactor, showing that it’s not one or the other, but a combination that’s probably the best.