First off, sorry if this has been asked a million times in this community already, but the only post I found on this topic when I searched was over two years old.

I’ve been using PIA vpn for the past two years, but my subscription is ending soon and I was thinking about switching providers. I’m a fairly basic vpn user so I’m not overly concerned about advanced features and bells and whistles. I have a limited budget to work with, and I run Fedora os. Does anyone have any recommendations on what vpn I should be using?

I’ve seen Mullvad mentioned frequently, but it’s a touch expensive compared to others. I’ve heard some good things about Proton vpn too, but I know there was a controversy with their CEO not long ago. I’ve also just read something about IVPN and they look good, but I’d like opinions from more sources. I’m open too all other suggestions as well. Thanks for any and all thoughts!

  • Ilandar@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    The Proton CEO thing was vastly overblown. He is a privacy advocate and expressed support for Trump’s appointment for head of antitrust, as well as criticism of corporate Democrats who stand for big business which was misrepresented as a love of the Republican Party. The only mistake he made was to publish those statements using the official Proton account, which he later apologised for.

    Some people, especially the American left, love to virtue signal and predictably they tried to cancel Proton as a result of this pretty minor and irrelevant social media drama. There were some good write-ups at the time which exposed how counterfactual the “pRoToN lOvEs mAgA” arguments were, but I guess feel free to skip over Proton if it really concerns you. It is objectively one of the best choices if you value both privacy and functionality (Proton still has support for port forwarding), which I think are far more relevant areas to be looking at when choosing a VPN for piracy.

    • OccasionallyFeralya@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      10 days ago

      Okay but his criticism makes no sense when the FTC under biden actually started taking antitrust seriously and has since lost its teeth again under trump.

      • Ilandar@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        It makes a lot of sense if you actually take the time to read his explanation of the context behind his position.

        During the Biden administration, the Democrats lead by Schumer (whose family members are lobbyists for big tech) refused to bring antitrust bills Proton campaigned in support of to a vote. Additionally, the only invited senator to show up to a 2024 antitrust meeting was a Republican - Vance. Those are just two examples he cites of Democrats failing in this area and Republicans stepping up in their place.

        The crazy thing is that Yen’s argument, that the Democrats have been captured by the corporate donor class, would be supported in any other context by people on reddit and particularly Lemmy. It’s the same thing you guys constantly complain about everywhere else (i.e. Sanders), yet in this one specific instance you ignore all of that and pretend that the Democrats are the good guys who can do no wrong because the idea that they could be as bad as, or worse than, the Republicans in this very specific area triggers you so hard.