Yeah Proton already burned that bridge. "Politically Neutral" is no longer an option for them.
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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When I first saw the headline, I thought it sounded like one of those stories about how many Nazis are at the table or at the bar.
When you exist in a 2-party system, and one of those parties are mask-off fascists, and people suspect you of supporting them, saying you’re neutral isn’t a good look.
Wow. There's a whole lot of people here reacting to the headline, and not actually reading the story. That's important, because the journalist's headline is (shocker) a huge overstatement.
I was concerned as I'm a Proton user and have been for years, and hard left politically, and despise Trump. But maybe lets just read it before reacting?
Here's what the CEO posted on Xitter:
10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.
Yep. That's a bad look. Doesn't make a lot of sense either because the Republicans are very much the party of big business and corporate handouts and deregulation in oil, gas, energy, mining, manufacture, industrial farming etc.
Then here's what Proton's team said on Reddit as an explanation and expansion of the CEO's post (and then later deleted):
Here is our official response, also available on the Mastodon post in the screenshot:
Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.
Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidentally has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote.
At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.
Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
First off, I feel like I've read from hundreds of Lemmy users total agreement that the Democratic party is captured by corporate interests, so I really doubt any disagreement with that section of Proton's post. My reaction to the remainder is that it's not at all praise for the Republican party, just the factual statement of the sad reality that Republicans with their very hard-on-Silicon-Valley rhetoric are more likely to actually reign in the big tech companies than the Democratic party - and Proton is in a good position to have seen this first hand. Zero of the statement praises Trump or praises Republicans, and there is in fact lament that the Democrats didn't stick harder with their left-wing candidates, even highlighting Bernie. I can see why they deleted it though, it's office chatter than never should have left the cubicle.
TL;DR: storm in a teacup, I'll be keeping my Proton mail account.
p.s. yes this is my first Lemmy post. I'm a longtime lurker though. I felt strongly enough about this to make an account to post, as nobody seemed to be actually posting the content of the article - just reacting. Edit: typos & formatting of the quote.
If by reigning in big tech you mean a cartel style system where companies need to provide funds to Trump to continue existing, sure. But there is no chance that the Republicans will reign in big tech : they are big tech.
You are leaving out the part where Andy Yen said that the tables have turned and the Republicans are now the party of the small people.
Andy Yen's statement is downright pathetic and misleading. People are right to stir up shit because that's the only thing corpos understand.
This isn't a storm in a tea cup, this is the CEO of a company telling us who he really is and people choosing to tell him to get fucked.
Your post reeks of astrosurfing.
Then here’s what Proton’s team said on Reddit
are you REALLY asking us to care about their PR damage control? They can literally cherry pick anything and say anything that's true and try to tie it back into their argument. What stands is his initial heartfelt public statement.
Zero of the statement praises Trump or praises Republicans
Great pick by
@realDonaldTrump
. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.
On Twitter (your know, the fascist communication network)
Tagging Trump directly (ohh look at me, I'm a good boy, give me contracts, invite me over)
your definition of Zero and mine are WILDLY different.
I feel like I’ve read from hundreds of Lemmy users total agreement that the Democratic party
Yes, the standard far right argument, no no they're both bad so this isn't bad.
of the sad reality that Republicans with their very hard-on-Silicon-Valley rhetoric are more likely to actually
There it is, you're not even going to sugar coat it, No no, the Republicans WHO ARE DISMANTLING DEI AND MEDIA FACT CHECKING
are going to
ctually reign in the big tech companies (more )than the Democratic party
GTFO, or at least come up with a half reasonable argument. That's serious not even worth the time to post on..
TL;DR: storm in a teacup, I’ll be keeping my Proton mail account.
If you're for real, (and I expect you're just more damage control), sounds like you're in a good place with like minded friends not worried at all about their safety.
p.s. yes this is my first Lemmy post.
Ahh so more damage control. Gotcha!
Their PR Department can do better
Yep, a complete drama over nothing that got many people start a witch hunt. We already reached the point in which the guy is now a Nazi for having chosen a username with 88 in it, despite the fact that he is Taiwanese AND born in that year. Basically this is the well-meaning, internet vigilantes version of "bill gates injects 5g microchips with vaccines".
It's what happens when politics becomes faith.
Good first post
Good catch. Someone else here in the comments detected a hint of astroturfing... perhaps they were onto something
Edit: they opened a Lemmy acct to make that post, fwiw
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Curious how so many people decided to ditch them and switch (vocally on Lemmy at least) and now they back petal/clarify/whatever. Turns out we have power and using it works. Sorry not sorry.
I am currently entrenched in Google. Slowly digging my way out so I could transfer to proton. I was probably within about a month maybe two or pulling the trigger. Zero chance that happens now. I don't like Google But I know what they're going to do. If I'm going to put the effort into move that critical data it's got to be with some place I can trust or I'm going to have to host it myself.
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Imagine being so fucking brainwashed you believe Republicans are for "the little guy"
I already switched from Proton Mail to Tuta. No regrets
I've been with tutan for two years now. The service is ok, but they still have some limitations that bother me a bit. Before this issue with Trump, I'd have considered move to Proton, but I guess I'll stick with Tuta.
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I think at this point in the USA it's very clear:
If you're "politically neutral", you're Republican.
I (and very many others) may not agree with the democrats, but since we only got two parties there, it's damage-control. And any sane person (that would like to have a non-dystopian future) votes against Trump...
they're Swiss
Yes, I know, I'm also not from the USA from a "neutral" state (Austria)...
Actually, especially if you're European, even the democrats are more right-leaning, i.e. comparable with the conservative parties here.
No one is actually politically neutral...
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Just when I'm done migrating all my email shit to Proton, the CEO turns out to be a nazi. A classic.
Same. Considered getting a domain for my email, but ended up just switching directly to the protonmail domain. Regretting that now.
Getting your own domain is the best thing you can do, regardless of provider - it means they can't lock you in anymore.
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Only way to make sure your email isn’t run by a Nazi is to run it yourself.
Unless you’re a Nazi in which case FUCK OFF
Even for the technically literate, running a mail server is an ongoing nightmare. If you think it's easy, you're not doing it right.
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I really don't understand why smart people put their eggs in the proton basket.
Big (shady) money rule Switzerland. A Swiss server or company isn't safer or more trustworthy. Quite the opposite.
Excluding Switzerland from the equation, most in the US don't have + or - for Switzerland unless it's banking.
You can never trust any company to put your needs first. A good moral company has at least its founders, private funders, employees, and vendors to look after before they worry about your wants and needs.
Proton was kinda small. 500 employees for a communications company isn't bad.
Good start.
Proton made a name for itself. WE ARE PRIVACY FIRST and they mostly delivered on that in technical capabilities.
So far, so good.
Then they doxed someone's IP (french?) due to a remote government order.
Not great, but anyone would do that. There have to be limits. That said, they now clearly play ball with governments.
All the other providers would do the same. They're now on par with most, but less likely to sell all my data down the river. But my needs are to keep my secrets state secret level. (or so I think)
Then he crawls up Trumps ass.
Now, I'm doing nothing illegal. Nothing immoral. Nothing questionable by the previous administrations standards, but what happens If I start to protest? If I subscribe to democratic news sources, is this jackass going to train an AI on my and hand my name address and phone number to the neo facists running my country now?
We put our eggs wherever we think they can best be served conveniently and for the best price.
You can also choose to not put your eggs anywhere. You can secure your email but not sending any.
we were trying to choose price+convenience+security.
knock one of those legs out, it's not a table anymore.
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Thank you! I was also very confused how all these privacy-conscious people warned against big corporations, and then starting using a product.... By a big corporation. Just because they say they're privacy conscious and nice and safe and whatever doesn't mean it's true. I mean, they might be substantially better, but there's no proof of that. Every company always makes promises, at first. I guess people really like to believe in an underdog.
It's like if someone warned you against eating sweets because they're unhealthy, but then pulls out their own bag of sweets saying "oh no, these sweets are fine because the company that makes them promised they're healthy".
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I just cancelled my subscription and moved everything to Tuta. Tuta also seems to have a political stance much more aligned with my own: diversity, privacy oriented, and eco friendly.
More theater do to this today:
I migrated literally everything from Gmail around 2021. Gotta tell ya, I feel just about dumb as shit right now. I kind of understand people with those "I bought this before he sieg heiled" bumper stickers on their Teslas.
I was planning to transition everything to proton this month. Now I don't know what to do.
Tuta for mail, bitwarden for passwords, mullvad for vpn. You lose port forwarding.
I migrated last week. I dont miss proton.
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Honestly the lesson I took away from this is to not vendor-lock myself if I can help it. Maybe it'd be better to have a domain through which you can route incoming emails to any inbox? That way you can just hotswap email services if their CEO turns out to be a cannibal or something.
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Yeah this is a masks off moment for them and people better be paying attention!
"If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
-Desmond Tutu
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The sort of Swiss neutrality that doesn't care whose teeth the gold is from.
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Swiss company says "Nazi's aren't so bad."
The more things change the more they stay the same.
When they say they're "neutral" lets not forget what "neutral" meant during World War II. It meant making a fucking shitload of money at the expense of the rest of Europe.
Also, the geography of Switzerland is how they were able to convince Germany to not invade. A few US Nukes dropped from the sky make their geography a moot fucking point this time around.
Yep, I moved to tuta the day Andy decided to out himself as a MAGA dipshit. The only way I’d go back is if he resigns or gets forced out. At the absolute minimum Andy Yen has shown extremely poor judgement in claiming Republicans are the party concerned with people’s digital rights. That tells me he fundamentally does not know what he’s talking about, and I do not trust Proton under his leadership anymore.
As a side note, If anyone’s looking for a VPN alternative, I highly recommend Mullvad.
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My renewal of proton VPN is entirely dependent on who the ceo is when it's time for me to renew.
If fuckface is still there, I'll move on.
I'm fickle that way.
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Correction; the CEO posted a rather tone deaf message. while this is incredibly dumb, it should be little reason to burn the company to the ground
Having said that, people should start looking at email again how it was designed to be: have thousands of open providers instead of the tiny fee enormous ones we got now
We owe no fealty to any company.
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My stance on Proton is my stance on GrapheneOS: just because the creator is bad doesn't mean the software is bad. As long as the software is better compared to the alternatives then I seen no reason to stop using it.
Note: better can mean more privacy-friendly, cost-friendly, sustainable, nice to use, open, etc.
Oddly enough, I found the opposite to be true with companies like Nestle: the news of them killing children makes me dislike their chocolates.
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Good news for them, I’m “financially neutral”
Okay, can someone help me, a tech illiterate, choose a new vpn, email provider, and password manager? I'd really prefer open source.
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For me, the most-used Proton service after email is their calendar. What privacy-friendly calendar alternatives are there that you can recommend?
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