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.
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.
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
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…
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.
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.
Wow, thank you for this. I’m not feeling so good about having moved to Proton now. I’ll check out Mailbox.org and look more into Mozilla too.
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
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…