https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1bptl3c/shared_...
So does that mean two people using this in the US will both have high latency to another country?
- how do I prove that they are actually not privacy friendly?
But isn’t WebRTC already trivially end to end encrypted?
We built an entire encrypted and decentralized peer to peer videoconferencing and livestreaming system years ago, and made it open source so anyone can host it: https://community.qbix.com/t/teleconferencing-and-live-broad...
I actually appreciate how they balance features and new products. They are becoming more credible MS365/Google Workspace alternatives with every step.
I was shocked recently when I looked into this to find out the number of solutions out there.
Google docs may not be private but it takes <1 second to load when I click the browser bookmark, vs 11 seconds to load a Proton document.
11-second load time for a page is a lot of friction in 2026, no matter how secure your product is.
LiveKit Cloud uses virtual compute and networking across multiple (USA based) cloud providers. DigitalOcean, Google and Oracle at minimum. They each have servers all of the world of course, but the controlling entity(s) parent companies are all based in the USA.
Latency shouldn’t be a problem, it's handled by a global CDN.
Proton including that part about geopolitical instability implies that Meet is does not fall under the USA's CLOUD Act - that would be wrong. The metadata of any Meet call could be handed to USA authorities, for example the participants date & time, source IP and useragent of each member. The call itself should be E2E encrypted.
I also wish I could afford Proton as a non-pro user…
One side is hostile and focused on solely on shareholder profits, while other claims to be privacy-focused and majority owned by a nonprofit foundation.
There are enough public cases of American tech companies seriously violating privacy. I don't see how there can be hope for any privacy while using any of their products even if E2EE is claimed.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/metadata_surv...
I would love to build on proton but Alas the API isn't open source and recently with Proton meet and its controversy, my trust on proton has shifted a bit too which dampened my enthusiasm in all of this.
(To make the API I even used puppeeter instances to do it, and after quite a long time I was able to succeed actually but that's just not scalable)
France’s data protection regulator (CNIL) fined Google €325 million in 2025 for displaying ads between Gmail messages without consent and for placing cookies during account creation without consent. This is on top of prior fines of €100 million in 2020 and €150 million in 2021 for cookie violations, so this is a documented pattern.
The Dutch government commissioned Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) on Office/Microsoft 365. The 2018 report found Microsoft collected 23,000–25,000 different telemetry events from Office and called it “large scale and covert collection of personal data”
The FTC went after Zoom in 2020. The complaint alleged that since at least 2016, Zoom misled users by claiming “end-to-end, 256-bit encryption” when it actually provided a lower level of security, and Zoom saved the cryptographic keys that would allow it to access the content of customers’ meetings.
You could also just go read their own policy documents, or ask AI to explain what is possible under those to you if they are too dense.
I used to analyse PPs to detect usage of data brokers, and I’ll confidently say that these 2 have some of the worst policies out there, although less obvious companies such as Netflix and Spotify also had appalling conditions.
If a policy is compatible with data brokerage, you can very well assume they do it, and that means they’ll share your data and get shared data about you in return. But hey, “we don’t SELL your data!”
No complains from it so far. People get it, book with success, and I run those calls on Proton Meet, which also proved to work pretty well.
proton meet is already targeting a really niche set of customers, and you're taking it to another level.
Proton makes safer, more private (than, say, Gmail) email a possibility for people who don't have much technical knowledge but who know enough to want to keep their emails out of Google's hands.
If you have both the knowledge and time to run a server, by all means, that can make sense (and can be fun!). It's just not as widely applicable.
I do worry about it and I think lots of people will as well for other reasons.
One of them is screen sharing.
May 7th 2020: https://www.zoom.com/en/blog/zoom-acquires-keybase-and-annou...
May 22nd 2020: https://github.com/zoom/zoom-e2e-whitepaper
E2EE seems to be available to free accounts https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_arti...
(opinions are my own etc.)
The point of ownership is having your mails in your hand, on your iron, anything who can talk IMAPs or even POP is ok for that. For voice/chat etc Matrix or XMPP might be yours, so nobody could decide to ban you or shut the service down. You still depend on a ISP ok, but much less dependencies anyway. That's the point IMVHO.
While thinking that company X is better in privacy terms than company Y is honestly meaningless, you can trust them or not, you don't know what happen on their servers or someone else ones where they actually live on (like using Amazon o Microsoft cloud as a backend).
/s
Edit: I thought you were joking and that the answer was more like printing presses and a lack of an official "standard English" in the 1700s/1800s, but it turns out the answer really was closer to what you said. Noah Webster deliberately decided to make American English diverge from British English when he wrote his dictionary.
Business users are their focus and outside select industries, vast majority of businesses don't care if government is spying or not. Heck, most businesses would turn over information to government without any fight. It's just not something they worry about.
When meeting in person isn’t an option, we turn to video calls for conversations too important for email or chat. Whether you’re talking to a doctor, hosting an executive meeting, or checking in with your kids, you expect these interactions to be private and safe — but mainstream video conferencing services such as Zoom, Google, and Microsoft can eavesdrop on your conversations.
Proton Meet gives you back your privacy and peace of mind by protecting your calls with end-to-end encryption, so nobody can listen in or use your conversations to sell ads, conduct surveillance, or train AI.
As more people work, study, and socialize remotely, a reliable video conferencing tool has become as essential as email or cloud storage. But many often overlook the significant data privacy risks of online meetings where meeting metadata, chat histories, and the calls themselves can be intercepted, leaked or exposed.
On top of that, as tech giants pivot to AI, they are now processing your audio, video, or chat data. Depending on shifting privacy policies(new window), this data could be used to train AI models, creating a real risk that fragments of private conversations could leak or resurface in future AI-generated outputs.
Finally, in today’s unstable geopolitical environment, laws like the US CLOUD Act can compel US-owned video conferencing platforms to hand over any data they store, even if the servers reside outside of the United States. This creates serious compliance challenges for organizations bound by GDPR, CCPA, or similar data protection laws.
That’s why we’ve created Proton Meet, an end‑to‑end‑encrypted video calling service designed to protect the conversations that matter most. From critical business decisions to sensitive personal discussions, Proton Meet ensures all your high-stakes conversations stay protected.

Proton Meet gives you a space to host conversations that are as private as meeting in person. With Meet, every call is end-to-end encrypted, so not even Proton can access your audio, video, screen shares, or messages.
All Proton Meet calls are secured with Messaging Layer Security (MLS). Like with everything else Proton does, MLS is an open source, end-to-end encryption protocol which has been independently audited and peer reviewed, so you have strong guarantees about Proton Meet’s privacy promises.
Learn about Meet’s security model
No sign in required. You can create a conference call link and invite anyone with a single click, even if you and others on the call don’t have a Proton Account.
Share your screen, chat in real time, or just talk. Host or join secure video conferences with your desktop or mobile device and enjoy reliable high-definition audio and video, no matter where you are. Chats in Proton Meet are also end-to-end encrypted.
When you schedule a meeting via Proton Meet, you can add it to your Proton, Google, or Microsoft calendar. You can also schedule a meeting directly in Proton Calendar and insert a Meet link with just one click. You can also invite colleagues, clients, and friends to book time in your calendar on a private scheduling page. Once booked, the appointment appears automatically in your calendar with a Meet link.

Anyone can use Proton Meet — it’s free and you don’t need a Proton Account to get started. Just go to proton.me/meet to start your first meeting. You can host calls for free with as many as 50 attendees for up to an hour.
For individuals, teams, and businesses seeking greater usage, meeting capacity and additional features, the Meet Professional plan is available starting at $7.99 per user per month. You can also unlock the benefits of Meet alongside Proton’s other end-to-end encrypted tools with Proton Workspace Standard or Workspace Premium.
Over 100 million people and businesses already trust Proton services — including Mail, VPN, Pass, and Drive — to protect their personal information from Big Tech and data breaches. With Proton Meet, you can bring the same uncompromising protection to your video calls, so you can talk freely, knowing your conversations are secure.