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The founder and CEO, Sridhar Vembu, is very much publically aligned with right wing extremists in India, where he lives. https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.thewire

The founder and CEO, Sridhar Vembu, is very much publically aligned with right wing extremists in India, where he lives. https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.thewire.in/article/economy/accenture-zoho-rss-event-twitter/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.thewire.in/article/economy/ac... Vote with your wallet and your conscience

sgjohnson 4y ago
> Vote with your wallet and your conscience What alternative mail hosting provider do you recommend? Google? Microsoft? Google, in my humble opinion, is the single biggest evil in the digital world today.
- kube-system 4y ago
  It’s not a contest, but there are plenty of companies that are more evil. Besides companies that are straight up criminal, my vote would go to traditional data brokers. Google might abuse their wealth of data, but at least they won’t happily sell it on the street corner.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    > but at least they won’t happily sell it on the street corner. what do you imagine targetted advertising is? they will sell everything they know about you to basically anyone willing to pay in the form of "I'd like to target these particular audiences in my ad campaign", and then when you get conversions from that particular campaign, it's not exactly rocket science to dereference the click to a particular individual, provided that there's a conversion. and if you're a bit more nefarious than that, you don't even need a conversion.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Yeah, I understand the privacy concerns with targeted advertising, and agree that it is a concern, but it’s once-removed from the type of data you can get from a dedicated data broker. At a data broker you can simply ask for the data you want and they’ll directly provide it. If Google is a chartered fishing expedition, a data broker is a fish market.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      > it's not exactly rocket science to dereference the click to a particular individual How?
- jacooper 4y ago
  Email; ProtonMail, Tutanota
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    ProtonMail is known for completely arbitrarily closing user accounts with 0 recourse. > Tutanota Never heard of them.
    - shakna 4y ago
      Tutanota have been around for a bit over a decade. They close unused free accounts after six months inactivity. Their main focus is end-to-end encrypted email. When sending encrypted emails outside of their ecosystem, they used to send a link to a temporary account, so as to reduce the chance of a leak. They've never been hugely popular, but their name pops up a fair bit in circles where legality of things might be a bit gray. Like countries where certain human rights are suppressed, or where Tor is needed to workaround only getting government approved sites, etc.
    - jacooper 4y ago
      > ProtonMail is known for completely arbitrarily closing user accounts with 0 recourse Never had an issue with them personally.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > Google, in my humble opinion, is the single biggest evil in the digital world today. Palantir? Facebook? Google abuse user data for profit, but at least: a) their goal is only money b) they don't leak that data left and right, and don't leave themselves way too easy to be used for inciting genocides Facebook is by far worse.
srk_hn 4y ago
So India is a population of over 1B, and the US+UK is about 400m. Why should I assume I know better what the solution is for the problems plaguing a country in a completely different part of the world housing 1/8th the world population while living in the comforts of a 1st world country? Is the CEO advocating for genocide? Or perhaps we should get off our high horse and shouldn't judge other people for things we cannot possibly understand anything about?
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Experts have been warning about genocide in India[1][2][3] because Hindu nationalists and right-wing extremists in power have been persecuting minorities and stoking anti-Muslim sentiment. This has directly led to violence and death, as well[4][5]. RSS, the party that held the event the CEO was going to go to, has also be directly attributed to violence against Muslims[6]. Exactly what problems are plaguing the country where the solution is discrimination, violence, death and potentially genocide? Here's what the political rhetoric looks like, from an article titled "India's Hindu extremists are calling for genocide against Muslims"[3]: > At a conference in India last month, a Hindu extremist dressed head-to-toe in the religion's holy color, saffron, called on her supporters to kill Muslims and "protect" the country. > "If 100 of us become soldiers and are prepared to kill 2 million (Muslims), then we will win ... protect India, and make it a Hindu nation," said Pooja Shakun Pandey, a senior member of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha political party, according to a video of the event. > Her words and calls for violence from other religious leaders were met with a roar of applause from the large audience, a video from the three-day conference in the northern Indian city of Haridwar shows. Here's what the actions that stem from the persecution and politics look like[5]: > The 2020 Delhi riots, or North East Delhi riots, were multiple waves of bloodshed, property destruction, and rioting in North East Delhi, beginning on 23 February 2020 and caused chiefly by Hindu mobs attacking Muslims. Of the 53 people killed, two-thirds were Muslims who were shot, slashed with repeated blows, or set on fire. The dead also included a policeman, an intelligence officer and over a dozen Hindus, who were shot or assaulted. More than a week after the violence had ended, hundreds of wounded were languishing in inadequately staffed medical facilities and corpses were being found in open drains. By mid-March many Muslims had remained missing. > Muslims were marked as targets for violence. In order to have their religion ascertained, Muslim males—who unlike Hindus are commonly circumcised—were at times forced to remove their lower garments before being brutalised. Among the injuries recorded in one hospital were lacerated genitals. The properties destroyed were disproportionately Muslim-owned and included four mosques, which were set ablaze by rioters. By the end of February, many Muslims had left these neighbourhoods. Even in areas of Delhi untouched by the violence, some Muslims had left for their ancestral villages, fearful for their personal safety in India's capital. [1] https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/india-genocide-emergency https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/india-genocide-eme... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/1/16/expert-warns-of-possible-genocide-against-muslims-in-india https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/1/16/expert-warns-of... [3] https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/14/asia/india-hindu-extremist-groups-intl-hnk-dst/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/14/asia/india-hindu-extremist-gr... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Jawaharlal_Nehru_University_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Jawaharlal_Nehru_Universi... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Delhi_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Delhi_riots [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_India#Causes_and_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_In...
wzy 4y ago
Where do I go to vote for them since I have already been a customer of theirs for 10+ years?
stereoradonc 4y ago
I thought these loonies were on Reddit; HN has also seen an influx of them. What has the political affiliations of an individual got to do with a product? The discussion is about Zoho Office Suite. How does the "right-wing" feature in here? Please keep the discussions on course.
- mms__ 4y ago
  I for one like to know what I'm supporting when I buy a product or a service.
  - CWuestefeld 4y ago
    But the argument isn't "this company supports/promotoes/whatever something bad", but rather, "someone important in this company supports something bad", and that's a very different thing.
fooker 4y ago
> vote It seems like people are doing exactly that, just the results are not to your liking.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  Everyone that says “vote” as some action that will definitely all your ailments really just means “I’m an ideologue and you had better join me”. They don’t actually care about voting participation.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
aravindet 4y ago
This is relevant information. IMO the secondary consequences of buying a product are important to discussions of that product: e.g. effects on the environment, climate, labor conditions, human rights and society. Closer to this thread: Any discussion of a MyPillow product is incomplete without a mention that part of the purchase price might go into undermining democracy in the US. The parent's argument seems similar: the founder/owner participates a hindu-supremacist organization known as the RSS, which has been implicated in religious violence; part of what you pay for a Zoho subscription may therefore go into funding these activities. p.s. perhaps the parent could explain it better: the link is broken for me on Firerox, perhaps use a non-AMP URL?
- tsurkoprt 4y ago
psuresh 4y ago
Lol. The Wire!

sgjohnson 4y ago

> Vote with your wallet and your conscience What alternative mail hosting provider do you recommend? Google? Microsoft? Google, in my humble opinion, is the single biggest evil in the digital world today.

kube-system 4y ago
It’s not a contest, but there are plenty of companies that are more evil. Besides companies that are straight up criminal, my vote would go to traditional data brokers. Google might abuse their wealth of data, but at least they won’t happily sell it on the street corner.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > but at least they won’t happily sell it on the street corner. what do you imagine targetted advertising is? they will sell everything they know about you to basically anyone willing to pay in the form of "I'd like to target these particular audiences in my ad campaign", and then when you get conversions from that particular campaign, it's not exactly rocket science to dereference the click to a particular individual, provided that there's a conversion. and if you're a bit more nefarious than that, you don't even need a conversion.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Yeah, I understand the privacy concerns with targeted advertising, and agree that it is a concern, but it’s once-removed from the type of data you can get from a dedicated data broker. At a data broker you can simply ask for the data you want and they’ll directly provide it. If Google is a chartered fishing expedition, a data broker is a fish market.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    > it's not exactly rocket science to dereference the click to a particular individual How?
jacooper 4y ago
Email; ProtonMail, Tutanota
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  ProtonMail is known for completely arbitrarily closing user accounts with 0 recourse. > Tutanota Never heard of them.
  - shakna 4y ago
    Tutanota have been around for a bit over a decade. They close unused free accounts after six months inactivity. Their main focus is end-to-end encrypted email. When sending encrypted emails outside of their ecosystem, they used to send a link to a temporary account, so as to reduce the chance of a leak. They've never been hugely popular, but their name pops up a fair bit in circles where legality of things might be a bit gray. Like countries where certain human rights are suppressed, or where Tor is needed to workaround only getting government approved sites, etc.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    > ProtonMail is known for completely arbitrarily closing user accounts with 0 recourse Never had an issue with them personally.
sofixa 4y ago
> Google, in my humble opinion, is the single biggest evil in the digital world today. Palantir? Facebook? Google abuse user data for profit, but at least: a) their goal is only money b) they don't leak that data left and right, and don't leave themselves way too easy to be used for inciting genocides Facebook is by far worse.

srk_hn 4y ago

So India is a population of over 1B, and the US+UK is about 400m. Why should I assume I know better what the solution is for the problems plaguing a country in a completely different part of the world housing 1/8th the world population while living in the comforts of a 1st world country? Is the CEO advocating for genocide? Or perhaps we should get off our high horse and shouldn't judge other people for things we cannot possibly understand anything about?

heavyset_go 4y ago
Experts have been warning about genocide in India[1][2][3] because Hindu nationalists and right-wing extremists in power have been persecuting minorities and stoking anti-Muslim sentiment. This has directly led to violence and death, as well[4][5]. RSS, the party that held the event the CEO was going to go to, has also be directly attributed to violence against Muslims[6]. Exactly what problems are plaguing the country where the solution is discrimination, violence, death and potentially genocide? Here's what the political rhetoric looks like, from an article titled "India's Hindu extremists are calling for genocide against Muslims"[3]: > At a conference in India last month, a Hindu extremist dressed head-to-toe in the religion's holy color, saffron, called on her supporters to kill Muslims and "protect" the country. > "If 100 of us become soldiers and are prepared to kill 2 million (Muslims), then we will win ... protect India, and make it a Hindu nation," said Pooja Shakun Pandey, a senior member of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha political party, according to a video of the event. > Her words and calls for violence from other religious leaders were met with a roar of applause from the large audience, a video from the three-day conference in the northern Indian city of Haridwar shows. Here's what the actions that stem from the persecution and politics look like[5]: > The 2020 Delhi riots, or North East Delhi riots, were multiple waves of bloodshed, property destruction, and rioting in North East Delhi, beginning on 23 February 2020 and caused chiefly by Hindu mobs attacking Muslims. Of the 53 people killed, two-thirds were Muslims who were shot, slashed with repeated blows, or set on fire. The dead also included a policeman, an intelligence officer and over a dozen Hindus, who were shot or assaulted. More than a week after the violence had ended, hundreds of wounded were languishing in inadequately staffed medical facilities and corpses were being found in open drains. By mid-March many Muslims had remained missing. > Muslims were marked as targets for violence. In order to have their religion ascertained, Muslim males—who unlike Hindus are commonly circumcised—were at times forced to remove their lower garments before being brutalised. Among the injuries recorded in one hospital were lacerated genitals. The properties destroyed were disproportionately Muslim-owned and included four mosques, which were set ablaze by rioters. By the end of February, many Muslims had left these neighbourhoods. Even in areas of Delhi untouched by the violence, some Muslims had left for their ancestral villages, fearful for their personal safety in India's capital. [1] https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/india-genocide-emergency https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/india-genocide-eme... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/1/16/expert-warns-of-possible-genocide-against-muslims-in-india https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/1/16/expert-warns-of... [3] https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/14/asia/india-hindu-extremist-groups-intl-hnk-dst/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/14/asia/india-hindu-extremist-gr... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Jawaharlal_Nehru_University_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Jawaharlal_Nehru_Universi... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Delhi_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Delhi_riots [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_India#Causes_and_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_In...

wzy 4y ago

Where do I go to vote for them since I have already been a customer of theirs for 10+ years?

stereoradonc 4y ago

I thought these loonies were on Reddit; HN has also seen an influx of them. What has the political affiliations of an individual got to do with a product? The discussion is about Zoho Office Suite. How does the "right-wing" feature in here? Please keep the discussions on course.

mms__ 4y ago
I for one like to know what I'm supporting when I buy a product or a service.
- CWuestefeld 4y ago
  But the argument isn't "this company supports/promotoes/whatever something bad", but rather, "someone important in this company supports something bad", and that's a very different thing.

fooker 4y ago

> vote It seems like people are doing exactly that, just the results are not to your liking.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
Everyone that says “vote” as some action that will definitely all your ailments really just means “I’m an ideologue and you had better join me”. They don’t actually care about voting participation.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

aravindet 4y ago

This is relevant information. IMO the secondary consequences of buying a product are important to discussions of that product: e.g. effects on the environment, climate, labor conditions, human rights and society. Closer to this thread: Any discussion of a MyPillow product is incomplete without a mention that part of the purchase price might go into undermining democracy in the US. The parent's argument seems similar: the founder/owner participates a hindu-supremacist organization known as the RSS, which has been implicated in religious violence; part of what you pay for a Zoho subscription may therefore go into funding these activities. p.s. perhaps the parent could explain it better: the link is broken for me on Firerox, perhaps use a non-AMP URL?

tsurkoprt 4y ago

psuresh 4y ago

Lol. The Wire!