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>Given the controversy surrounding Proton's potential political leanings Define the controversy and their leanings

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
noirbot 2y ago
The CEO praised one of Trump's picks for an attorney overseeing internet regulation and then when asked about it, the official Proton account replied with multiple posts about how Democrats were sold out to big business and Republicans were the party of small business. Also about how J.D. Vance was the only person to want to talk to Proton about internet regulation. It's worth noting they also left out that the attorney in question lobbied for multiple big tech companies before being appointed and Proton's whole argument was "democrats are captured by big tech". Then when further asked about it, the CEO essentially said he didn't actually know much about the situation and hadn't meant it as an endorsement despite the original posts essentially being a one-sided attack on Democrats and all praise for the current administration, including @ mentioning Donald Trump. He also kept saying "my comments from last year" when they were from December and the controversy was in Jan. At best it seems quite naive from Proton's side to think the administration where Musk, Zuckerberg, and Cook were front row at the inauguration, and was generally funded by Musk, Thiel, Bezos and a raft of other VC folks is going to be more aggressive at regulating big tech companies and for internet privacy in general. At worst, they're trying to curry favor with/actually in favor of the current administration and don't want to admit it because a lot of their value as a business is for people who don't want the government to see their data.
- aio2 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - noirbot 2y ago
    https://archive.ph/LlbSj https://archive.ph/LlbSj Here's the archive. Do you really think I'd write up all of that just completely making it up? Most of the rest of it is from a reddit thread here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_poli... Throughout, he doesn't really give any actual justification for why he thought the original post was correct or remotely well informed. I haven't seen anything from him that acknowledges that he's praising an ex-lobbyist as being good for antitrust, or any explanation of why he'd think it was actually a good appointment for his asserted values. The only stated reasoning was "democrats bad, republicans good". There's no discussion of the role Musk and Thiel and Bezos played in electing Trump. There's no discussion of any Biden-era anti-trust action and why he'd think Trump's folks would do more. It's hard for me to come away from it with a positive opinion of the CEO's decision making and judgement.
    - illiac786 2y ago
      Tone deaf maybe, but his arguments are solid I find – most of all when compared to the reactions int eh thread. (And I profoundly despise Trump, he’s near the bottom of my scale when it comes to politicians)
      - noirbot 2y ago
        I may have missed it in the thread, but I didn't really ever see an argument. Just a "I trust the republicans and their pick". There was no deeper discussion or assertion of why this was a good pick. All of the followup was about how he disliked the democrats and liked Vance. That's not really a solid argument to me. No part of the original post or the followup helps me understand why he thinks a former lobbyist for Amazon and Google would be for anti-trust action against them. Most of the responses on reddit, while overblown, are generally pointing out that most of big tech was funding Trump and Vance's election. If most of the CEO's argument is how much the democrats are in the pocket of big tech, that seems quite relevant. A pretty substantial percentage of the money spent to elect Trump was from Musk and other VC folks, and Bezos notably killed an endorsement of Harris at the newspaper he ran. As someone said in the thread, it feels like the CEO took a "the enemy of my enemy must be better" in this, when it's entirely correct that both US parties are in the pocket of corporate interests. He's not wrong about the Democrats, but that definitely doesn't mean Trump's appointments are better. He could have just decided to sit this out and say nothing, which makes it all the more objectionable that he decided this was his time to show up and publicly try to get Trump's attention to praise him. As far as I know he wasn't @ mentioning Biden to praise the various anti-trust actions that were taken over the last few years.
- 4ggr0 2y ago
  damn that's extremely disappointing. I use Proton Mail, VPN and Drive and pay quite a bit of money for it. Proton is a Swiss company why the fuck is the CEO glazing an american fascist. Time to look for alternatives.
  - techright75 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - metalman 2y ago
    Early on, the CEO, owner, of proton, ran a self published glam campain for himself,company, and family.So it's easy to see him attempt to do a little , heh heh ;), social mountain climbing. And as a user (less and less) of proton,it's been a slog,with technical problems on an android phone, impossible to resolve, years, multiple different phones, browsers....it's on there end, and there technical support , engages, but does nothing. And the pokbun does not load.
    - lucyjojo 2y ago
      are you aware of good alternatives? i was thinking tuta.com but did not do proper research yet.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - metalman 2y ago
        Having personal/business web space with domain email is reasonable, and the lowest tier prices are very cost effective,simple to use, with clutter free, intuitive UI. Having a domain free's up any possible liability from switching service or hardware providers and also means that anything you build, or pay to have built is your own intellectual property.Tech support tends to be good, as long as the problems are actualy technical, and you can provide relevant details, but the learning curve is steep, and nothing is intuitive on the back end, though it's worth it all, for the " IT WORKED!!, Heeeeeyyyyyy! I'm soooo Cool! " moment.
exac 2y ago
Here is a news article: https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/ https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-tru...
thisislife2 2y ago
It's just American political posturing and cancel culture. It's really annoying how pervasive black-and-white thinking is now in American political discourse that you cannot even say one good or bad thing about some American politician or policy, without every American jumping on you like you have a chosen a side you should be ready to die for! The spillover of American politics to the internet is the saddest thing I've encountered online as a non-American because they are trying to force us into right- and left- echo chambers they've created to make us think about politics like them. Please don't fall for this trap of "us vs them".
- Teever 2y ago
  This isn't just an American issue. I'm not an American and I don't want to trust my email to a company that supports a government that is threatening to annex my country. This isn't culture war stuff it's just common sense. I didn't fall for some us vs them trap, the current US government is frequently and loudly telling me that it's me vs them.
  - thisislife2 2y ago
    Like I said, black-and-white thinking - some company CEO supporting some particular public policy of an administration doesn't make them a part of "their" camp and hence your "enemy". I support the end of the genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, and am happy that Trump as the US President wants to do so too (for his own political reasons, and in his own idiotic political ways). That doesn't make me a Trump MAGA fan or a right-wing supporter of the Republican.
    - Teever 2y ago
      I agree totally with you that it is black and white thinking -- either you're with us or you're against us. Canada's sovereignty is not up for debate and we will not support a country that threatens us. This means that we're not going to be buying nearly as many American goods, not going to be visiting America for tourism and not suffering the fools that you call politicians and diplomats. As far as the average Canadian is concerned America can twist in the wind. The feelings of betrayal are real and won't be going away any time soon. The world is tired of the inane histrionics and is moving on from America.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

The CEO praised one of Trump's picks for an attorney overseeing internet regulation and then when asked about it, the official Proton account replied with multiple posts about how Democrats were sold out to big business and Republicans were the party of small business. Also about how J.D. Vance was the only person to want to talk to Proton about internet regulation. It's worth noting they also left out that the attorney in question lobbied for multiple big tech companies before being appointed and Proton's whole argument was "democrats are captured by big tech". Then when further asked about it, the CEO essentially said he didn't actually know much about the situation and hadn't meant it as an endorsement despite the original posts essentially being a one-sided attack on Democrats and all praise for the current administration, including @ mentioning Donald Trump. He also kept saying "my comments from last year" when they were from December and the controversy was in Jan. At best it seems quite naive from Proton's side to think the administration where Musk, Zuckerberg, and Cook were front row at the inauguration, and was generally funded by Musk, Thiel, Bezos and a raft of other VC folks is going to be more aggressive at regulating big tech companies and for internet privacy in general. At worst, they're trying to curry favor with/actually in favor of the current administration and don't want to admit it because a lot of their value as a business is for people who don't want the government to see their data.

aio2 2y ago
[flagged]
- noirbot 2y ago
  https://archive.ph/LlbSj https://archive.ph/LlbSj Here's the archive. Do you really think I'd write up all of that just completely making it up? Most of the rest of it is from a reddit thread here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_poli... Throughout, he doesn't really give any actual justification for why he thought the original post was correct or remotely well informed. I haven't seen anything from him that acknowledges that he's praising an ex-lobbyist as being good for antitrust, or any explanation of why he'd think it was actually a good appointment for his asserted values. The only stated reasoning was "democrats bad, republicans good". There's no discussion of the role Musk and Thiel and Bezos played in electing Trump. There's no discussion of any Biden-era anti-trust action and why he'd think Trump's folks would do more. It's hard for me to come away from it with a positive opinion of the CEO's decision making and judgement.
  - illiac786 2y ago
    Tone deaf maybe, but his arguments are solid I find – most of all when compared to the reactions int eh thread. (And I profoundly despise Trump, he’s near the bottom of my scale when it comes to politicians)
    - noirbot 2y ago
      I may have missed it in the thread, but I didn't really ever see an argument. Just a "I trust the republicans and their pick". There was no deeper discussion or assertion of why this was a good pick. All of the followup was about how he disliked the democrats and liked Vance. That's not really a solid argument to me. No part of the original post or the followup helps me understand why he thinks a former lobbyist for Amazon and Google would be for anti-trust action against them. Most of the responses on reddit, while overblown, are generally pointing out that most of big tech was funding Trump and Vance's election. If most of the CEO's argument is how much the democrats are in the pocket of big tech, that seems quite relevant. A pretty substantial percentage of the money spent to elect Trump was from Musk and other VC folks, and Bezos notably killed an endorsement of Harris at the newspaper he ran. As someone said in the thread, it feels like the CEO took a "the enemy of my enemy must be better" in this, when it's entirely correct that both US parties are in the pocket of corporate interests. He's not wrong about the Democrats, but that definitely doesn't mean Trump's appointments are better. He could have just decided to sit this out and say nothing, which makes it all the more objectionable that he decided this was his time to show up and publicly try to get Trump's attention to praise him. As far as I know he wasn't @ mentioning Biden to praise the various anti-trust actions that were taken over the last few years.
4ggr0 2y ago
damn that's extremely disappointing. I use Proton Mail, VPN and Drive and pay quite a bit of money for it. Proton is a Swiss company why the fuck is the CEO glazing an american fascist. Time to look for alternatives.
- techright75 2y ago
  [flagged]
- metalman 2y ago
  Early on, the CEO, owner, of proton, ran a self published glam campain for himself,company, and family.So it's easy to see him attempt to do a little , heh heh ;), social mountain climbing. And as a user (less and less) of proton,it's been a slog,with technical problems on an android phone, impossible to resolve, years, multiple different phones, browsers....it's on there end, and there technical support , engages, but does nothing. And the pokbun does not load.
  - lucyjojo 2y ago
    are you aware of good alternatives? i was thinking tuta.com but did not do proper research yet.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - metalman 2y ago
      Having personal/business web space with domain email is reasonable, and the lowest tier prices are very cost effective,simple to use, with clutter free, intuitive UI. Having a domain free's up any possible liability from switching service or hardware providers and also means that anything you build, or pay to have built is your own intellectual property.Tech support tends to be good, as long as the problems are actualy technical, and you can provide relevant details, but the learning curve is steep, and nothing is intuitive on the back end, though it's worth it all, for the " IT WORKED!!, Heeeeeyyyyyy! I'm soooo Cool! " moment.

exac 2y ago

Here is a news article: https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/ https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-tru...

thisislife2 2y ago

It's just American political posturing and cancel culture. It's really annoying how pervasive black-and-white thinking is now in American political discourse that you cannot even say one good or bad thing about some American politician or policy, without every American jumping on you like you have a chosen a side you should be ready to die for! The spillover of American politics to the internet is the saddest thing I've encountered online as a non-American because they are trying to force us into right- and left- echo chambers they've created to make us think about politics like them. Please don't fall for this trap of "us vs them".

Teever 2y ago
This isn't just an American issue. I'm not an American and I don't want to trust my email to a company that supports a government that is threatening to annex my country. This isn't culture war stuff it's just common sense. I didn't fall for some us vs them trap, the current US government is frequently and loudly telling me that it's me vs them.
- thisislife2 2y ago
  Like I said, black-and-white thinking - some company CEO supporting some particular public policy of an administration doesn't make them a part of "their" camp and hence your "enemy". I support the end of the genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine, and am happy that Trump as the US President wants to do so too (for his own political reasons, and in his own idiotic political ways). That doesn't make me a Trump MAGA fan or a right-wing supporter of the Republican.
  - Teever 2y ago
    I agree totally with you that it is black and white thinking -- either you're with us or you're against us. Canada's sovereignty is not up for debate and we will not support a country that threatens us. This means that we're not going to be buying nearly as many American goods, not going to be visiting America for tourism and not suffering the fools that you call politicians and diplomats. As far as the average Canadian is concerned America can twist in the wind. The feelings of betrayal are real and won't be going away any time soon. The world is tired of the inane histrionics and is moving on from America.