2d ago

Proton Mail Says It’s “Politically Neutral” While Praising Republican Party

theintercept.com Proton Mail Says It’s “Politically Neutral” While Praising Republican Party

The “privacy-first” company surprised its user base when CEO Andy Yen lauded Trump on social media.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/30934764

The “privacy-first” company surprised its user base when CEO Andy Yen lauded Trump on social media.

News @lemmy.world

MicroWave @lemmy.world

2d ago

Proton Mail says it’s “politically neutral” while praising Republican Party

theintercept.com /2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/

843 249

Proton @lemmy.world

BrikoX @lemmy.zip

2d ago

Proton Mail Says It’s “Politically Neutral” While Praising Republican Party

theintercept.com /2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/

213 19

103 comments

"We're not liberal or conservative, we're a secret third thing!(conservative)"
- They're swiss.
  We have more parties in our equivalent of the presidential office than you have parties in total.
  I have huge problems with this notion that you have to be either democrat or conservative. They don't even cover 50% of the opinions I, a green-liberal (actual liberal, not US-definition), hold.
  You're absolutely able and allowed to have your own opinion different from what any party official says.
  
  When commenting on US politics, they should be aware of US political realities though. When taking position relative to US politics, they should be aware of that. At the very least, they should comment that they're progressive or something along the lines of "Our political orientation isn't represented in US politics" to acknowledge that, like you did.
  But when your CEO endorses Republicans, pretending you're neutral isn't a good look.
  
  Yes but swiss people can still be absolutely piece of shit human beings. They proved that in WWII by helping fund the Nazis directly. Swiss people also aren't immune from rampant US party propaganda. You aren't magical, psychologically different humans than the rest of the world.
  Publicly supporting an openly fascist dictator, whatever "political party" they are on, someone who directly opposes the stated mission and values of the company, means that they are piece of shit humans who cannot be trusted with our data because they will just lie with what they do with it just like how they lied to us about their company values.
  
  They were commenting on American politics though. Swiss parties are irrelevant. Supporting Trump is a crazy position no matter what your nationality is or what parties exist in that country.
  
  Saying someone is swiss isnt the defense you want it to be considering that the swiss helped harbor nazi wealth.
  
  I have a huge problem with parties period. Parties inhibit critical thinking. And I'm an American. And I don't want this. Eat the rich!
- They vote for whoever helps them get paid the most.
  
  Capitalist.

“Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
I don't believe that they haven't heard of Lina Khan.
- Yes, big fan of Lina Khan, I worked with her in 2020 on the House report on antitrust (the House was controlled by Democrats back then). I've discussed this elsewhere, but certain events in 2022 made it very clear that further progress on antitrust was unlikely under Democratic leadership. You can read more about the backstory here: https://time.com/6243256/schumer-kills-antitrust-big-tech-bills/
  proton ceo ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/m7psmzx/ )
  his reddit account is pretry active if you want to read bad takes
- They did, they even worked together in the past.
  See https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/m7psmzx/
  Quote for those who don't want to reddit.
  Yes, big fan of Lina Khan, I worked with her in 2020 on the House report on antitrust (the House was controlled by Democrats back then). I've discussed this elsewhere, but certain events in 2022 made it very clear that further progress on antitrust was unlikely under Democratic leadership. You can read more about the backstory here: https://time.com/6243256/schumer-kills-antitrust-big-tech-bills/
  Edit: I see someone else already posted it. I will leave it here even if it's a duplicate for future self-shame.
- I'm sure Elon Mush will get rid on that, though.
- Problem is, she was lobbying Sony so hard that her corruption was clearly seen by everyone, she fought tooth and nail so Microsoft wouldn't buy call of duty, and was saying that microsoft gaming department will become a monopoly, and... You see a monopoly out there? Microsoft gaming department is a giant flop even with call of duty, of what monopoly she was telling then?
  
  Microsoft gaming department is a giant flop even with call of duty, of what monopoly she was telling then?
  Cloud gaming? Duopoly and oligopoly (see healthcare) being also anticompetitive? Look, of course Sony also opposed to merger because it was a competitor. Every antitrust lawsuit is bound to attract some of them. I dunno what you're going off on here.

Cancelled my Proton subscription citing this as the reason. Hope others do the same. This administration is not normal and relations should never be normalized with them.
- Planning to do the same, but first I have to find an alternative for my mail, probably I will try a self hosted mail server for a while

This is what a kleptocratic oligarchy looks like folks. Suck up to the big man and he'll let you fleece the joint.

This is not an ad
Enter email to receive emails
I disagree, Mr Website.
- I used bob@example.com without issues.
  
  I did no@reply.com
  
  I prefer fuckyou@getfucked.io
- Just turn noscript on and the popup doesnt show up.

I've been looking in to degoogling and was considering Protonmail before this. Does anybody know of a good alternative? Espeically one that lets you have multiple email addresses?
- I bit the bullet this month & bought a domain so I can assign mail handling and change providers without changing my email address. Currently using https://purelymail.com/ because they're $10/year for as many addresses & domains as you want "within reason." It's apparently just one guy with some AWS instances, but it was very straightforward to set up.
  
  I was dumb enough to walk away from that approach about 10 years ago. Ugh. But you've convinced me. The annual cost of a domain is lunch money for a week. The freedom it provides in this scenario is well worth it.
  
  +1 for purelymail.
  I've had my personal domain on gmail and most recently proton. Proton got too pricy when I wanted to add another couple of domains. After some research I landed on purelymail, and it's been smooth sailing to set up and use.
  
  The same applies to what I commented about Mxroute - Purelymail doesn't cater to users who require end-to-end encryption, advanced privacy features, or those who need built-in security measures beyond standard email protocols, as it's primarily focused on reliable email delivery and hosting rather than security-first communication.
  Tuta would be a viable alternative to Proton.
  
  What do you mean by "I bought a domain"? Is the domain has been rented or there is someone who sells domain for life and heritage?
- If you only care about email (and calendar, I guess) Tuta is a pretty good choice. I've been using it for years and had only one problem very early on. Additional aliases are only available with the paid plan (€3 a month) however, same as Proton I believe.
  
  Yup.
  Tuta works well for me for the past year or so, so I recently switched to their annual plan. I used Proton for a couple years (paid plan) and preferred it, but they raised the price so I bailed. The €3 plan from Tuta is more than enough for me.
- Mailbox.org
- I have pretty good experience with Tutanota an bitwarden as the most direct alternatives
  Tutanota apps lack a bit of polish but the UI looks reasonably nice and gets the job done. Bitwarden has treated me pretty well.
- I have tuta, bitwarden, firefox relay, and libreoffice, seems to work decently. I am also considering getting a mullvald vpn, but not sure how well it works with torrenting, since they no longer support port-forward.
  
  Using Mullvad, I stay connected to it 24/7. I've no problems with torrenting. It costs 5€/month. Maybe try it out to see if it'll suit you as well.
  
  Does bitwarden have a browser extension for firefox?
- After digging around, I'm going to try Tuta for email/calendar and Mullvad for VPN. Tuta's €3 plan lets you have 15 additional addresses and 3 custom domains.
  Anyone using a good proton drive alternative?
  
  Anyone using a good proton drive alternative?
  I run Synology NAS at home and I love it, but it was expensive to set up.
  Other extreme is Syncthing for completely free device sync, but no backup beyond your devices and both devices must be online to sync.
  I self-hosted Nextcloud on cloudamo with Cryptomator for e2ee but I can't really recommend it. Nextcloud is pain to administer and tends to be buggy.
- It's not the most practical thing in the universe, but I have a small VPS that I host my email on for myself and a couple others (5 addresses in total). It's a bit of a pain to set up, but once it's working, it is really nice to have that kind of control.
  
  There are dozens of us!
  I think email gets a bad rap for difficulty of hosting. So long as you get your DMARC, DKIM, RDNS, SPF, etc right, it's reasonably forgiving. Need to take server down for maintenance? No worries- any mail that couldn't be delivered will be resent in a few minutes/hours/days.
  Harder than hosting a simple website? Yes. Rocket surgery? No.
- I've heard https://mailbox.org/en/ is good.
  
  Been using it a few years and I'm happy. Best upgrade coming from google is that the calendar actually works with thunderbird.
- im using a nextcloud host called murena. you could probably use an equally good one or self host, but i found the free next cloud host sign up tool too buggy to use.
  main draw of next cloud for me is you can use features like third party clients and calendar sharing without having to manually prepare for account downgrade if you want a lower tier, and in fact the only difference between tiers is storage
  note that im not clear how good their encryption is, it seems not to be fully end to end encrypted

The fact that a privacy company based in a non five eyes country is even praising a government - especially one like the US - is a red flag.
Nevermind the fact that they claim Republicans are anti big tech while being surrounded by tech CEOs...

Eww I stepped in shit

Well fuck
- Yeah, my two year contact just renewed with them before this happened. fml
  
  You can get a refund within 30 of an auto-renewal. That's what I did too.
  
  You can still cancel your subscription so that it won't auto-renew in 2 years and it let's you leave a comment when doing so if you want to voice any concerns.
  
  Plan Your escape.... It takes a hit minute to switch emails anyway

I may be too Roman, but I will never trust a Swiss.

"while spewing right wing propaganda"
FTFY

I believe them. They’ll praise whomever is in power. Neutral opportunists.
- That's not a good thing though.
  
  Correct. It’s bad, whether the Dems or the GOP are in power. It’s not suddenly bad now.

Capitalism -> Fascism

So........ we are going to police people's thoughts/actions/speeches now ?
Be a bit practical here people, Imagine the right-wingers saying "Oh no, he donated to left wingers, reeeeeeeee"
- Official company announcement, not only personal one.
  Proton has position itself as a service for those who want to avoid big tech spying on them and unfair government prosecution. It is then very charring that they officially support a party that is trying to go out of their way to reduce women/lgbtq rights and invited the whole cabal of big tech as guests of honor to the innaguration.
  If their mission and their messages do not align, it's normal that customers are concerned.
  I would be concerned of they officially supported any other party, but this case is specially outrageous.
  Be a bit practical here people, Imagine the right-wingers saying "Oh no, he donated to left wingers, reeeeeeeee"
  This might be sarcasm right? They went full reeee with Nike, Gillette, Budweiser, Costco....
  
  They did now, didn't they, I'm simply gonna wait until Trump in his magnificent stupidity tries sanctioning Proton
  Let's see Andy come out of that
- Nah... Much better to take the pitchforks out for every little shit one reads in the internet and pretend to be a good guy to accumulate fake internet points.
  
  Sounds like a good plan

Well good thing I just switched to mxroute
- MXroute doesn't cater to users who require end-to-end encryption, advanced privacy features, or those who need built-in security measures beyond standard email protocols, as it's primarily focused on reliable email delivery and hosting rather than security-first communication.
  Tuta would be a viable alternative to Proton.
  
  No they don’t, but I never switched to proton for that. I switched to proton to get away from iCloud. I also never loved the idea of them keeping my gpg key in the cloud, I can just as easily do e2e with mxroute in a more secure way
  
  security measures beyond standard email protocols
  Doesn't exist. The only security you can have is if you use OpenPGP. Everything else is marketing and lies.
- +1 to mxroute for anyone thinking about it.
  Been using it for a while (and worked with the guy who runs it) and it's been pretty much perfect.

Check my comment history..
I said this before:
fucking stop putting all your eggs in one basket, folks
Mix and match ftw...
This is not a deal breaker for me but if they keep this up, I will stop using them. And it just one service, so I can easily do it, assholes.
- This is not a deal breaker for me
  Absolutely disgusting.
  
  I mean company backs pro-company party isn't exactly surprising. You want to not shop at every company that supports Republicans? You're going to have a hard time finding anywhere to shop in most of the US. Gotta stick to smaller companies, and if you get small enough you'll get to mom and pop locations where personal votes are the comparison and they've voted Republican their entire lives.
  
  the CEO of a company I use for emails expressed a questionable opinion on antitrust issue
  it's not deal breaker for me
  absolutely disgusting
  If this is absolutely disgusting for you, I guess you have really, really, really high standards, that probably nobody can meet.
  
  Can't fight them all...
  But I don't disagree, good sir

103 comments