408
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] galoisghost@aussie.zone 165 points 1 day ago

Um, it’s a public repository. You can view the code that’s been added. Even if it IS AI generated, you can review it yourself.

I’m as anti-AI as anyone but this is misplaced AI-alarmism.

[-] oatscoop@midwest.social 17 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

can review it yourself.

You're a supervisor and you have 2 employees: Bill and Jim. As a supervisor your job is to ensure the work is being done correctly.

Bill is competent and rarely makes major mistakes. Jim does a decent job most of the time ... but he's also a savant at screwing up -- he regularly fucks up in ways that aren't immediately obvious but are guaranteed to cause serious problems days to weeks from the screw up.

You can glance over Bill's work and be fairly certain it's fine. You need to go over every single piece Jim's work to check for problems, and even then some are probably going to slip through.

AI is currently Jim, and Jim has no business writing code for anything privacy or security focused.

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 75 points 1 day ago

Does anyone here actually review code?

[-] CrazyHorse@lemmy.cafe 202 points 1 day ago

Only my own code and so far most of it has been unacceptable.

[-] HakunaHafada@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 1 day ago

Pure, unabashed honesty. I love it. 🫶

[-] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 12 points 22 hours ago

Yes, and it's one of the most important things I do. Given the AI codegen boom we're seeing, it's also the skill I have that is increasing the fastest in value.

[-] rozodru@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

yes as a consultant/freelancer THIS is where the majority of my work is coming from now. if you're good at this SERIOUSLY consider consulting and freelancing for various companies that are now desperately trying to fix their AI tech debt. It's the ONE thing that is completely in demand right now due to the sheer incompetence of all these places that decided vibe coding and AI was the way to go.

you have no idea how much money you can potentially be making right now doing this. I'm booked solid for the rest of the year purely because of this.

[-] hansolo@lemmy.today 13 points 23 hours ago

Does anyone here realize that one person using Cursor doesnt mean "tHeY'rE vIbE cOdInG aCrOsS tHe wHoLe pLaCe!"

[-] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 16 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Then why didn’t they just say that instead of being shady and rewriting history?

[-] hansolo@lemmy.today 2 points 18 hours ago

Because it's also not a great idea to expose your rules files, and tell people first "oh shit, we mentioned rules files. Please don't look!" before

I'll be honest here, I've had less dogmatic conversations with conspiracy theorists about COVID. If you just need to make this a huge problem that later turns out to be a nothingburger and you'll never look back and grow as a human, then hey, you do you. But know that you'll look like a fool to anyone that isn't a goldfish and remembers more than 3 months at a time. Because you clearly don't know what's a big deal and what's not, and this is a Grade A waste of all our time to pitch a fit about.

[-] pennomi@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Uh yeah? You’d be stupid not to review code, whether written by an AI or a human. I don’t trust either.

[-] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 21 points 1 day ago

I'm guessing OP means code you use rather than code you write, in other words auditing. Likely very few of us do that with any thoroughness. IIRC proton does have some independent auditing.

[-] pennomi@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

That’s what I mean too. Y’all don’t just copy-paste from stack overflow praying it works do you?

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 12 points 18 hours ago

That obviously not what they meant. They mean, do you review the code for every open source application you use? Do you review every library you utilize? I'm willing to be it's a no for both of these, because no one has time for that.

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 14 points 22 hours ago

No, like proton mail app. Have you reviewed it? Or Signal or Veracrypt or TheNewHotness.

[-] expr@programming.dev 17 points 20 hours ago

That is pretty immaterial to the issue. The issue is that when it comes to security, it's extremely poor form to rely on unintelligent mimicry.

[-] Kirk@startrek.website 28 points 1 day ago

Probably anti-Proton. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but the amount of pro BlueSky, anti Proton, anti Signal people I see on Lemmy make me wonder sometimes.

[-] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 20 hours ago

It really reminds me of the Mastodon mob mentality that caused so much trouble for fosstodon :/

[-] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 21 hours ago

Genuinely most of the people against bluesky/atproto haven't looked into it further than the blogpost by Christine lemmer-webber, and just want to be eliteist about being on the fediverse.

this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
408 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy

3436 readers
798 users here now

Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.

Rules

PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!

  1. Be civil and no prejudice
  2. Don't promote big-tech software
  3. No apathy and defeatism for privacy (i.e. "They already have my data, why bother?")
  4. No reposting of news that was already posted
  5. No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
  6. No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)

Related communities:

Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.

founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS