Proton? Isn’t this the company that praised Trump and the fediverse lost its collective mind for a news-cycle?
Privacy focused company praising a political party jailing opposition and citizens without due process, ignoring the rule of law, and generally grabbing power to maintain complete control.
Speaking as someone who currently has a proton account, I was super disappointed. Thought I was leaving Google for the Rebellion, then I found out Proton was happy the Death Star’s construction was underway and doesn’t understand why the dissolution of the Galactic Senate is a bad thing. I’ll be leaving when my subscription expires.
Wow. I’m a new Proton subscriber. This happened? Can you share a link or more details? Feeling disappointed, thought I found a good solution away from Google. Maybe I’ll look into Mozilla mail instead after my sub ends.
Trump appointed a anti-big-tech guy and the CEO of Proton praised trump (paraphrasing here “earlier the dems were the party of the small man, now the republicans are”). This was not an endorsement of Trump and only applied in the narrow context of the anti-big-tech appointment. But a lot of people didn’t understand that context or ripped it out of that context and made it look like proton as a whole supports Trump.
Trying to be fair, Donald Trump is so surrounded by sycophants who ritualistically praise his every move or fear excommunication, it is really hard to tell whether a tweet is that, or a legitimately reasoned opinion with some historical consistency which is not an endorsement
I don’t have a favorite source so any searching will give you various perspectives but here’s one I fully read that seems reasonably objective.
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
Essentially, they praised the Republican platform. Then they took it back and said we won’t share political comments that aren’t neutral. Then they shared some more pro-republican opinions. And then they again said “whoops our bad back to politically neutral comments.”
I personally think political neutrality is a coward’s position and most often used by the supporters of “The Empire” to hide their uniforms and obscure their salutes. I can understand when your company employs X people, it’s a highly public company, and your product is something as detached from politics as possible like - oh idk - a twitch streamer showing videogame footage or something entirely entertainment based. Even then, I still think neutrality is the garden which allows weeds to thrive.
But this is worse than that, this is pro-republican people who got excited their guy won and got vocally bold, got punished, and are now going into hiding. And their company isn’t an entertainment business, it’s one who’s product is intertwined with privacy and the digital/corporate landscape we live in today. Proton wouldn’t be doing as well as they are if a pro-worker party was in power for the last 50 years. They wouldn’t be as profitable if monopolies had been busted sooner and mergers denied. And this is only the tech related focus they’d like you to consider, which isn’t fair. If the KKK are burning crosses in the front lawns of your neighbors and lynching people, it’s a bit tone deaf to talk about how good their sponsored lunches are and it’s evil to walk around the town square praising them for their lawn care. There are more important things they’re responsible for than the things that benefit you. And that’s even if you believe they’re doing any good on this subject which I have not seen. Trump has approved historically massive mergers, republicans have removed people like Lina Khan who was actually doing good, and introduced people who have publicly said they want less scrutiny on business - while deregulating corporations and defanging the agencies responsible for holding corporations accountable.
I haven’t seen, read, or heard any reasonable defense of any of these points and I think more people should be aware. We all make deals with the Empire at times, I’m not here to shame the workers, but if you’re like me who wanted to move their email from Empire to something Rebel than you might as well know that Proton is not the best alternative you could choose.
I’m currently looking at mailbox.org as an alternative.
Same here. The only thing that could potentially have changed my mind was if they fired their ceo. But they didn’t and haven’t, something that tells me he probably has the same hold on the company as Trump has on US…
Great development!
Andy being a Trump supporter is a bit more nuanced than claimed.
He did however come with a couple of bootlicking tweets in republicans and the Trump admin. The tweets were in regards of republicans being better at cracking down at big tech than democrats, and some in regards to choice of people.
I don’t like it either, but I don’t feel confident that he actually supports Trump
Sorry no, nazi supporters don’t get to claim nuance
rolls eyes
That’s great news! Although I doubt i will apply to me, since I’m grandfathered into the older, cheaper price already.
Before rejoicing, I’ll wait to see the actual ‘reduced’ price. (saying that as an already paying customer)
Correct… This is just a PR stunt coming in on heels of a recently failed PR stunt…
Corpos doing corpo shit and trying to recover rep. I think they realized Andy fucked up big time bootlicker this white house.
It is similar issue with telse… Who the fuck does Telsa tubby thinks buys his cars? Mouth breathers who vote for trump?!
These “CEOs” are delulu
In the post the article refers to proton says they don’t have to burden their iOS users with apple tax, I don’t think they even meant prices outside of apple apps. So unless you are paying through the app store, don’t expect any reduction.
Fuck Proton completely
Don’t care, a European Trump supporter is still a Trump supporter
I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that. Normally anyone supporting him at all I stay away from their company. This is well worth a read on their stance (gives the case for and against proton supporting him): https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
welcome to my bot list forum slider
That link seems to make a strong argument to me. Do you have a counterargument?
There’s room for all of you on the list
Can I get into the list too? The reasons given in the link still don’t convince me, but you sound like you didn’t even care to look at the link.
You know being open-minded and not looking at things from a white-and-black lenses (even when things turn out to be black or white in the end) is part of critical thinking, don’t you?
Can we please stop parroting this “Trump supporter” nonsense?
Trump is an absolute piece of shit with nigh-zero redeeming qualities, but nothing that Andy stated in that tweet is false; The first Trump administration did begin the anti-trust proceedings against the Big Tech firms. The Democratic Party has largely been co-opted by corporate money and neo-liberalism.
It sucks to hear it coming from the Trump camp, because I hate to admit that they’re actually right about something, but we are better than the types of people who would rather stick their fingers in their ears and yell “La la la La…” because someone didn’t live up to some imaginary Internet-hive mind purity test.
Ya, nah this is some bullshit. You’re actively defending Trump and Republicans even if you’re pretending you don’t like Trump or his policies.
Republicans are definitively not the party for “the little guys”. That’s demonstrably false, Republicans are consistently the party working against progress in most fields but especially worker protections, wealth inequality, and competitive regulated business. I agree Dems have big business backing as well, that they have some corrupt ties going against their constituents interests but the fact remains that applies to nearly all republicans. That only applies to some to most of Democrats. There is no Bernie Sanders in the Republicans, there is no AoC in the Republicans, hell there’s barely anyone of color or who isn’t a male - like Republicans are entirely private sector goons. To equate the Republican and Democrat partys is to fundamentally misunderstand the political climate of the US.
Lina Khan was the FTC chair appointed by Biden and she’s been lauded as a fantastic agent for Anti-Trust and consumer protection reasons. Andrew Ferguson was appointed by Trump and although his track record doesn’t seem to be the worst he’s said he wants to ease scrutiny on mergers and acquisitions (so the opposite of Anti-Trust) while “continuing critical oversight over big tech”. To me this is a clear demonstration that Republicans are in bed with big corporations and Democrats were working with what tools they had to break up big businesses. To me, this should be an obvious concept to anyone who says they pay attention to the political happenings of the US.
Big tech paid into Trump’s campaign, famously, and there has been no indication that the billionaires behind Trump’s reelection are doing worse off for themselves. The US is now further away from having laws similar to the EU’s consumer protection laws and it is directly thanks to Republicans being corrupt. Are some Democrats corrupt in the same way? yes. Do I think voting Democrat will fix the country? No. But I’d argue day and night that if Democrats won every race in the country, worker wages would go up, standard of living would go up, crime would go down, wealth inequality would slow down or shrink, and the country would be in a better place because unlike the obstructionist Republicans enough Democrats care about their constituents that positive change would happen.
I am in no way, shape or form defending Trump? The man should be rotting away in a Federal prison not serving a second Presidential term, but that’s really outside the scope of what we are trying to discuss here at this very moment.
As the Republican Party began to hyper-radicalise during the Obama era, there was a marked shift in corporate spend from the GOP towards the Dems. That’s not to say that no such money is going towards the GOP at all, but they have more-and-more begun to rely on dark money via SuperPACs. That means that their stances will continue to skew towards the extreme, further alienating corporate donors towards the Dems.
So clearly, while they aren’t doing it for noble reasons (as it’s likely a billionaire donor’s pet cause - my bet would be either Thiel or Murdoch), they are proceeding with anti-trust cases against Big Tech. It is almost like the horseshoe theory of politics, in this case.
It beggars the question, if you truly believe that republicans are irredeemable - and absolutely nothing they could ever do would be worthy of support - what is going to be the ultimate outcome? Thinking more broadly, we Progressives are generally known for in-fighting over ideological purity - there ends up being “No True Scotsman”.
The reason why the far-right has been able to succeed over the past three decades in particular has been their willingness to make ‘allies of convenience’ with those that they don’t necessarily agree with on every topic.
Wall Street didn’t care about repealing Roe v. Wade, but they were more than happy to go along with is as long as the Religious Right delivered tax cuts. Quid Pro Quo. …
It’s getting very late here in Aus (1AM) and I have work tomorrow; but I want to pick this up again tomorrow as I still need to circle back around.
But you are, you’re defending the line “Republicans are for the working class and Democrats are for Big corporations.” That’s your stance. I’m saying Trump got put in office by not one billionaire but by dozens. He was funded by big corporations and his actions show him supporting them. In his first term he gave a massive tax cut to corporations and the rich and he raised taxes on the working class (disguised as a temporary decrease in taxes while he was in office). You’re literally saying wall street was okay with RvW being repealed, an anti-humanist action done by Republicans, as long as they got tax cuts, an anti-worker action done by Republicans. Republicans did two bad things you can recognize that go against your central argument you’re defending “Republicans are for the working class and Democrats are for Big corporations.”
When the trump administration successfully does something Anti-Trust related and the American people benefit THEN I will say “wow look at that, one good thing they did.” Until then I’m gonna focus on the fact that they’re generally and overwhelmingly NOT doing good things. Including but not limited to pro-corporation anti-humanist anti-worker actions like deregulation, disrupting oversight, allowing massive monopolistic mergers, going against unions (except for police unions it seems) and taxing the working class more while giving slush fund money to their corporate donors. All the while they’re locking up judges and US citizens and immigrants without due process.
I’m not saying you’re a bad person or a bad progressive and I’ll happily join hands with you in making good policy changes but I will call out what I think to be bullshit that hurts the cause because we need to have a united front against the billionaire class and they win by creating wedges and one liners that are plausible and divisive. Like “Republicans are pro-worker and Democrats are for Big business” which is at best reductive and misleading and at worst fucking obviously stupid, wrong, and dangerous.
Just one of the sources detailing some of the billionaires that funded his return: https://www.forbes.com/sites/leokamin/2024/08/14/here-are-trumps-top-billionaire-donors/
It’s not just about the one dudes statement! It’s how the whole company handled the backlash, they doubled down and even pulled out of Mastodon and settled on fucking Reddit to post their official updates.
Bunch of fucking clowns.
Yeah, honestly, I was about to start shifting a lot of my stuff to proton, and that episode made me do a complete about-face.
Andy did not state this is false, I emailed proton directly and they basically told me too bad and yeah he said it, it wasn’t until the backlash they started trying to spin things.
sometimes its simply better to keep your thoughts to yourself though, especially in the position of a CEO of privacy-based platforms. andy broke rules one and two of fight club (privacy) and wasn’t very private lol
c’mon, that’s one guy from the board
and their products are solid
I was strongly considering their plans by the time he tweeted that, made me do a 180 degrees turn and look other places for private mail services and cloud drive… After that event, he did write on the comments of a Reddit post that he’s not a Trump supporter and was distancing himself from right wing politics.
I made peace with it. Was he writing the truth or just trying to throw some water into the fire, idk. I have currently the unlimited plan and I’m happy, in the end of the day I want to support companies that are European and provide services like Proton and Tuta.
one of the main reasons i switched to posteo was that it only costs 1 euro a month. i dont use email a whole lot so i couldnt really justify paying whatever proton were charging
Kdriiiiiive
Maybe stop supporting Trump, leave Twitter and return to Mastodon, and stop giving IPs to the police.
Maybe then I’ll consider. For now I’ll stay with Mullvad and mailbox.org.
