3d ago

2 Months old Post that i saw now: 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.world/post/24846782

Summary
Proton Mail, known for its privacy-first email services, faced backlash after CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party and its antitrust stance.
The company initially posted and deleted a statement supporting Yen’s comments, later claiming an “internal miscommunication” and reiterating its political neutrality.
Critics question Proton’s impartiality, particularly as it cooperates with Swiss authorities on legal data requests.
Privacy advocates warn that political alignments could undermine trust, especially for Proton’s users—journalists and activists wary of government surveillance under administrations like Trump’s.

14 comments

Not this thing again. This has been unnecessarily over-blown topic and has been explained since. Please don't stir unnecessary drama again.

Andy Yen went on to make an explanatory statement on Reddit, which provides a few insights: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/
For one thing, from the context of the original tweet – which referenced a screenshot of some other person's statement – "little guys" was quite certainly meant not as consumers but as "little tech" as opposed to "big tech". One might still consider it irresponsible and shitty to say anything good about the Grand Oligarchic Party, but what he said was not as deranged as it is often taken to be. And indeed, the Democrats do also have a long-standing problem of being in liaison with billionaire donors in particular from the tech industry (remember, Peter Thiel used to be an outsider in Silicon Valley with his pro-Trump stance); it was only rather recently that most of the billionaires decided that their interests are much better served by "Republicans".
I'm still not using Proton though. When I get around to switching to a paid provider, the top contenders right now are posteo.com or mailbox.org, but everything could change depending on what cloud plans they offer. And! it's highly plausible that we're going to see several new attractive offers being made in the next few weeks or months, so it might pay off to delay switching just a little bit.
(For calendars, by the way, teamup.com is really, really awesome. It's Swiss.)

They praised the republican party once. I saw a medium article that showed they do praise left wing things a lot more. I still cancelled my subscription because i don't want a service that is politically neutral with that disgusting party.
- Well it is Switzerland, they remained neutral even when the you know who rose to power. I will keep a free plan for the time being. It is early for making changes again, but i am glad that i am Google free after so many years.

No worries, Switzerland is a neutral country! 🤪

Switch to posteo or mailbox.org.
- regarding privacy concerns - is mailbox.org a problem as Germany belongs to the 14 eyes treaty?
  
  https://mailbox.org/en/post/transparency-report-2024

@nuko147 I mean, that was economically the best thing they could do. Without the republicans and trump, the run on European alternatives and therefor for Protonmail wouldn’t be that strong like it is now 😅but yeah on a personal level that’s really rubbish.
- The bad thing is that i learned about it after having migrating all my accounts from Google. I am feeling bad now, but there are many accounts and i can not really move again. Who the hell had the idea to connect every website account to an email in the 1st place. Seems a bit ancient mechanic right now.
  
  The actual solution to that is using your own domain for email which can then be transferred between providers. But yeah changing everything again is annoying.
  
  @nuko147 yeah that's right. I am in the lucky possition to own my own domain, so a swap in the "backend" with a provider is fine so far. But I also struggle at the moment to find a new one, luckily I have time until next year, because my contract then runs out.

14 comments