Copied from the reddit post:
Hi all, last night, a post from last year from my personal X account suddenly became a topic of discussion here on Reddit. I want to share a few thoughts on this to provide clarity to the community on what is Proton’s policy on politics going forward.
First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesn’t serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.
Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.
The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.
The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.
It is also a legal guarantee under Swiss law, which explicitly prohibits us from assisting foreign governments or agencies, and allows us no discretion to show favoritism as Swiss law and Swiss courts have the final say.
The promise we make is that no matter your politics, you will always be welcome at Proton (subject of course to adherence to our terms and conditions). When it comes to defending your right to privacy, Proton will show no favoritism or bias, and will unconditionally defend it irrespective of the opinions you may hold.
This is because both Proton as a company, and Proton as a community, is highly diverse, with people that hold a wide range of opinions and perspectives. It’s important that we not lose sight of nuance. Agreeing/disagreeing with somebody on one point, rarely means you agree/disagree with them on every other point.
I would like to believe that as a community there is more that unites us than divides us, and that privacy and freedom are universal values that we can all agree upon. This continues to be the mission of the non-profit Proton Foundation, and we will strive to carry it out as neutrally as possible.
Going forward, I will be posting via u/andy1011000. Thank you for your feedback and inputs so far, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.
Literally none of this matters and its all just noise. American politics and Americans themselves are insane.
In the first comment after the second Proton toot, some queer woman complains about something related to the killing of people that are non-binary.
!Man, I love Mastodon.!<
IDC as long as they are not bending their knees to European countries that the EU hasn’t yet kicked out. But mainly I don’t care because I’m not American.
Honestly all that noise was coming from Americans anyway, not a big deal They’re drama-queens. Never take Americans seriously on politics & economy (& also healthcare)
Am American. Can confirm that we are hyper reactionary. I read the tweet and shrugged it off, and rolled my eyes at the people claiming that Proton was now “dead” to them for bending the knee to Trump and were seeking out alternatives.
All of our American healthcare horror stories are true. Never take medical systems advice from us; our system is so evil and broken that our only possible recourse is “deposing” CEOs.
Those calfs are looking amazing right now!!!
a post from last year from my personal X account suddenly became a topic of discussion here on Reddit.
You mean last month right.
this is the most “i think my userbase are idiots” statement anybody could make. like do you think we dont know how time works andy? fuck you
Yeah, last year, 2024. Stupid way of intentionally phrasing it.
Yeah, I pay for Proton to try it out. I was liking it but this guy bending the knee to someone like trump is a huge red flag. I won’t be renewing my subscription!
we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups
Insane equivocation. One of those is a national and ethnic group; the other is a political movement whose pet project is currently on trial for genocide… “we refused pressure to deplatform both Jewish student groups and National Socialist student groups”
I think that’s the entire point of the comment. They are impartial even to evil. They respect privacy.
i agree with you, but the company has now invited scrutiny openly by allowing a) andy to make this tweet (personal accout or no) and b) andy to make a follow up statement using the proton reddit account. people have a distaste now, so expect to see everything you say and do to be overanalyised.
“we refused pressure to deplatform both Jewish student groups and National Socialist student groups”
They are a Swiss company, yes.
He should not have @'d Trump. By doing this he is explicitly calling for the incoming administration’s attention and signalling he’s willing to play ball and bend the knee. Also nice try at obfuscation saying the tweet was from last year, jackass.
Additionally the company account doubled down on his messaging. I think dems suck too, but both sides are not the same. What kind of Swiss crack are they smoking to be able to pretend that the administration that created permanent tax cuts for the ultra wealthy, that I subsidize with my tax dollars, is a friend of the little guy? Or how about the administration that seated the court that bulldozed the right to privacy, while state courts pass censorship laws under the guise of child protections?
The guy is talking out both sides of his face and he’s an asshole. While I don’t think this is indicative of Proton’s services per se I am no longer a paying customer.
You can tell Andy is European because he does not understand American politics.
If you say anything positive about an American politician it means you will stan them for life and support all their actions unconventionally.
Likewise if you say anything negative about an American politician it means hate everything they stand for.
Almost without fail, every service that touches creeptocurrencies goes into a decline.
Don’t expect Proton to make virtuous ethical choices anytime soon, especially now that Trump joined the cult. Once the greed bug has bitten, making a profit supersedes delivering a good product as the primary objective.
Crypto Cult Science
“Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin’s shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won’t change the world for the better.” —https://www.arscyni.cc/file/crypto_cult_science.htmlhttps://fosstodon.org/@stardust/112404108681755769
I mean, I’m all for crypto, but proton posting about holding BTC is cringe
I don’t agree with your first sentence though. There is some sense with using crypto, but solely using it as « haha numbers go up, profit, profit! » is stupid
The only crypto to trust is XMR. Its blockchain is very opaque in contrast to Bitcoin.
If an employee did this and there was this much backlash that said employee would be promptly fired…
In the US maybe, in the EU? Only if you want to get sued and then forced to re-hire them.
He isn’t an employee tho, he’s a member of a board of trustees of the non-profit organization who owns Proton AG. The other board members could say that he’s veering off-couse from the mission of the non-profit and remove him. (But then this move could also angers the right-wing “libertarian” tech-bro types of people that use Proton. So this political debacle was gonna fuck up the trust in Proton either way, Andy should’ve just STFU to begin with.)
I’m not sure about that. There are a lot of right wingers who also use proton (ya know, like the right wing “libertarian” tech-bro types). If they remove Andy from the board, there no doubt Proton is getting labeled as “woke”, they lose either way. Honestly, making political comments in the first place, is just a no-win scenario for a privacy-focused mission, which wasn’t even that left-right partisan to begin with. He should have just STFU, and everything would be fine.
I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues
Holy shit I feel so STUPID for giving $30 a month for this clown. I am so pissed, I hate myself for allowing myself to migrate my stuff all over thinking it would be fine. I am so fucking pissed right now.
The American mind cannot grasp liking specific policies of a given party
Well he did build the Autobahn…
You need to understand the Republican party is a fascist one. Giving anything to them is a mistake.
Whole cognitive dissonance thing is stronger in American than Russia at this point Putin’s won. Can’t even like a single policy idea that’s good and talk about it being good. I’m confused why this is even a big deal and I fucking hate trump. I think half the morons on the Internet forget the way to manipulate trump is to praise him and then you can convince him to do good or bad. Or whatever. Hes worse than Joe Rogan. He just parrots the last person who stroked his ego.
I’m still confused how he could have been dumb enough to think, let alone imply, let alone say out loud, that Republicans want to reign in big tech, when they so transparently want to capture it and make it an even worse version of itself. It’s not that everything they do is a cynical power grab, it’s that everything they do is a blatant cynical power grab, and being in the privacy business without having a perfectly clear understanding of that feels equivalent to not knowing what a VPN is.
His statement here is great, and I support it whole-heartedly and unabashedly. It just feels almost…I don’t know, unrelated somehow? Even though ostensibly it isn’t.
agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies)
Where is he getting this bullshit from that republicans actually want to do antitrust lol
from https://lemmy.ca/comment/13913116
Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidently 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.
Chuck Schumer is democrat, JD Vance is republic. Would guess opinion based on personal experience with few people.
Trouble is Andy, we now know what you privately think and all the follow up statements in the world can’t put that genie back in the bottle.
Proton is an org that exists in an industry whose customers do not trust easily. Publicly aligning with someone utterly untrustable, either as an individual or as a board, has tainted Proton and adversely affected peoples ability to trust. How can we ever know when Proton will find it acceptable again to respond positively to a Trumpian decision or how it might affect our privacy?
Literal thought policing (“what you privately think”) and quasi-religious purity logic (“has tainted Proton”). This nicely reveals the kind of busybodying inquisitorial mindset that keeps losing elections for US progressives and thus landing the rest of the world with Trump.
There’s an easy solution to the pseudo-problem you raise: judge Proton by its actions rather than the (utterly commonplace) opinions of one of its directors.
I love user notes; this one has ‘fascist centrist’ attached, and lo and behold.
Hey bud, when you blurt out what you think “privately”, it’s no longer private, and people not liking what was said publicly isn’t “thought policing”.
Secondly, Protons actions include supporting this wackjob’s “private” thoughts.. Even by your asinine rubric, they’re allowed to be judged on that.
It’s not thought policing. Proton, a company all about privacy, is literally nothing without the trust of its user base. Aligning with someone who is not trustworthy by making a statement that makes no sense (literally saying Trump’s administration will be anti-big tech while it’s been gaining shit tons of support from the Tech Titans Musk, Bezos, and Zuck) completely debases that trust. Additionally it’s not thought policing because companies are not people and cannot think.
Even if it was thought policing, in line with the Social Contract of Tolerance, there is no room to tolerate, let alone vocally support, fascists.
“Thought policing” is when you coerce someone to change their thoughts against their will. It is not boycotting a service because one does not agree with the service owner’s thoughts. That is not thought policing. That is a purely voluntary transaction on both sides, and that is one’s right as a consumer of said service. He is not entitled to customers.
hey i remember you from yesterday’s thread, where you called the official proton’s account doubling down “significant if true” and still haven’t changed your tune
They walked it back and apologized.
Literal thought policing (“what you privately think”)
Are you suggesting that a statement that he made is not what he thinks?
quasi-religious purity logic (“has tainted Proton”)
lol, sorry you’re incapable of processing descriptive language :) I’ll rephrase it to ‘has negatively affected Proton’s image in the eyes of some’.
This nicely reveals the kind of busybodying inquisitorial mindset that keeps losing elections for US progressives and thus landing the rest of the world with Trump.
Neither I, nor Proton, are American so its difficult to see how my opinion keeps landing the world with Trump.
