Proton CEO embraces Trump for "standing up for the little guys"
Proton CEO embraces Trump for "standing up for the little guys"
Unnecessary and deeply concerning bow to the new "king"
Update: position got backed up by an official Proton post on Mastodon, it's an official Proton statement now. https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
Update 2, plot-twist: they removed this response from Mastodon - seems they realize it exploded into their face!
It’d actually be super useful if all of the VPN CEOs publicly stated which authoritarian leaders they are a fan of, so that consumers can make an informed choice on how easily they’ll sell you out to the security apparatus of your country.
OK let me add fuel to the fire. here in Andy's response he says the tweet was from last year which is technically true but it was from December 2024.
Also how can he think that Trump stands for little guys when he has elon musk as his pet monkey
Oh FFS, and here I was recently considering switching to ProtonMail... fuck the fuck off.
Dear CEOs: if you're eager to suck dick, I'm sure you can find someone better than authoritarian shitheads. Have some fucking standards.
Just some advice for all of you affected by this.
Begin demanding a response from the ownership of this company.
"Is this Message approved by your board, and owners"
Just leaving doesnt make a difference, and some of you in the comments bought services right before this. That fucking sucks.
We dont have journalists and media on our side to help any more(arguably we never did, but that's a separate discussion)
I think there are still good bones in Proton, but you know where at least one piece cancer is, and its in the worst spot. Demand as stakeholders that they remove the cancer or admit its not going to happen. Repeat your messages until they publicy respond as a company not just the head of it.
Its a shame if you dont do at least as much as expressing that they owe you an explanation and that you need the company as a whole, to why this had happened
This is a betrayal to many of you, tell them exactly what they need to do
Good luck. It only takes one of you to suceed and we all win
Extra weird because this is always the narrative, yet Trump could be any further from "standing up for the little guys" if he tried. It's the same with the AfD in Germany, their voted policies (which is public as per the EU regulations) are as anti-consumer pro-corpo as you can be, even edging our truly crazy libertarian money sucker positions.
I am dissapointed that my VPN is getting involved in US politics. This is not something I want for this kind of service. I dont want to debate US politics here. That being said, I cancelled my annual autorenew for April and I would like some recommendations. Originally I was deciding between Mulvad and Proton. I've also seen some people in this thread using Tuta? I am in Europe and just want a service that prioritizes anonyminity and data protection. I don't know how the dust will settle on all this Proton stuff. What would you all recommend for a provider?
May it live forever even if they delete the toot: https://web.archive.org/web/20250115165213/https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
Really disappointing. Never imagined this from Proton. Truly dead to me now.
The official @protonprivacy@mastodon.social account replied and doubled down
protonprivacy@mastodon.social - @jonah
Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.
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.
1/2
protonprivacy@mastodon.social - @jonah By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.
Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
2/2
(Less importantly, my response)
Why can't we have nice things?
Standing up for the little guy. Huh. Is that why billionaires and CEO are throwing literal tens of millions at Trump? Why he staffed his cabinet with billionaires? Why the center of his policy is tax cuts for the giga wealthy, at the expense of everyone else and the national debt, at a time where wealth inequality is literally tearing the country apart?
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/15/trump-windfall-fundraising-500-million
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/09/trump-wealth-cabinet-politicians-billionaires
These are objective, public facts. Like, I'm way more conservative than Lemmy’s center and willing acknowledge any good Trump does, but what reality is this guy living in? Who is this statement for? Who the heck does he think is using Proton services? He just pissed off his employees and customers for… What?
Andy is sad that he didn’t taste that sweet sweet cheeseburger and diet coke cock.
I see a lot of good discussion here. I've been on proton for years now, using my own domain. While true that Andy is one of 5 board members, and it's a nonprofit etc, these statements are raising hairs on my neck, personally.
Does anyone have a good guide on problems associated with self-hosting email?
I guess it's time to look at self-hosted cloud storage services like NextCloud, OwnCloud, Seafile, CryptPad etc. that can replace Proton Drive, but does anyone have any recommendations for a secure email service to replace Proton Mail? From what I read on r/selfhosted, while you can technically run your own email server, it's just not worth it.
Regrading Update 2, maybe the other board members can push his guy out? I'm paid for to the end of the year, so I'll wait it out a bit. I'd rather not jump ship, only to have that ship also go pro fascist too.
Fox and Roku, everyone's two favourite small companies!
He went after big tech as a punishment for fact checking the bullshit coming from his administration and his followers. That was it.
Now that all big tech has turned away from democrats (probably as punishment for their antitrust lawsuits), we will see a much different perspective from the Trump administration.
I wouldn’t say he embraced Trump, I’d say he is pro-breaking big tech, since that would probably help Proton.
Bernie Sanders even came out and said “hey, if Trump wants to cap credit card interest rates, I’m with him on that.”
Trump says a lot of shit to appeal to working class people. I don’t disagree with reminding him of what he said and holding him to those things, if he’s now going to be president.
Another tech dipshit, whose wealth allows him to exist outside the realm of reality, bending the knee to an anti-democratic felon rapist so he can get some handouts.
Pathetic loser.
Growing up, if you had told me half or more of America would end up elevating a rapist to the presidency and prostrating themselves at his feet, I'd have laughed you out of the room. This nation has sunk LOW.
NordVPN is superior in every way. If you have ProtonVPN, dump it and swap to Nord.
Yes I'm sure he'll crack down hard on all the tech companies that are giving him millions of dollars and kissing his feet...
What a moron.
I’m not sure what’s worse, kissing the ring or taking that Trump post seriously. He obviously did not write it, and he also obviously only makes statements like this to threaten others and secure their loyalty. Here we are a month later, and some of the richest tech bros in the country are expected at his inauguration.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and that applies to tech. I pay for Proton and this is disappointing af but not shocking. Corporations and wannabe billionaires always fold to fascism.
Gonna start looking around at alternative email services to consider but I use my Proton email everywhere, so switching away is going to suck.
well this makes me slightly less fomo'd after going for tuta and mullvad- but i'm probably jinxing it rn ;-;
Lmao, proton looked sus to me for a long time. Good I never felt for anything more than their email.
One thing that this entire situation has done for me is to make me feel more justified in my posture of never paying a subscription for an online service if I can avoid it. So far I'm using Proton stuff for the free tier only, so I can have some degree of relaxation in evaluating any alternatives withotu also having to worry about banking stuff.
This is a stretch & honestly not worth abandoning proton because of this.<br> Don't just abandon a good FOSS/Privacy project just because of a CEO's (of a frickin Non-Profit in Switzerland) statements, you're too busy arguing & not getting things done Have some nuance guys
Could be 1000+ IQ chess move in disguise, appeal to Trump's ego & get him to make trouble for big-tech Let's see whether this actually affects Proton & decide from there
as a side-note: people from techlore are scumbags
Biden's pick Lina Khan deserves all the credit for aggressively prosecuting anti-competitive practices. However, Gina Slater looks like someone capable of continuing that work and a legitimate admirer of Lina Khan. Yes there are ties to Vance and the FTC office is likely to end up beholden to the egomaniac in chief. So the whole "little man" thing aside (that's baloney), that's one person that's not a shit stain out of all the shit stains in the incoming cabinet.
Look Lemmy, you're welcome to choose what you want in your life and what you don't. But being too rigid with letting stupid opinions of a project's founder cause you to reject everything, would have you miss the big-picture benefits of having such a project exist. If you look at this Lemmy development co-leader's opinions on transgenderism, are you going to stop using this software that lets you converse on an LGBTQ+ safe-space instance with no involvement on a social level from said developer/founder?
God. Fucking. Dam. It.
I use too many of their services right now to get everything switched over to something else before trump takes power.
The swiss better fucking jail this guy if he hands over data to the us government without swiss court approval, per swiss law.
Now I have to find a new password manager, VPN, and email provider. Open to suggestions, but I want to find services that aren't hosed in the us or by trump friendly countries/companies, and ideally use open source software and zero access encryption.
Nothing good is allowed to happen ever again.
Well, that's a platform I'm leaving now.
Someone remind me, what's the first chapter in On Tyranny?
Is he right about the start of the anti-trust action ?
Did he (the CEO) really need to do this? Orange 🍄 Guy's probably never even heard of Proton. The transition for me from Tuta to Proton was long and rough, so I'm not prepared to jump ship just yet and really hope I won't have to.
Nooooooo not Proton! 😡
the rich got so unbelievably rich and the poor became so insignificant / invisible that these few people in the middle think they're the "little guys"
wake the fuck up
Must be talking about a dwarf Trump pays to wipe his ass.
He does realize that Big Tech loves trump, right?
WELP
Is this the same as, "fuck standards, pay for a walled garden, and promote crypto-scams" proton? I'm shocked 😮
Swiss-based Proton? Wtf? One less reason to switch from Tuta.
say what you will about trump. sure hes a small pathetic man. sure he is under musk and putin, but there are people under him. He may be a sycophant but he is the head sycophant.
Leftist: fuck the little guy
Let's see if he keeps Leena Khan if he's so anti trust
Someone's account got hacked?Gonna wait some time in case this is an account hack.Edit: Also can I just say that Proton's cloud drive thing suck ass. Like on the mobile app you cant even download an entire folder, you have to manually download the files, and if you download more than 25 files at once, it gets buggy and not all files get downloaded.
Edit 2: Oof, this motherfucker got some weird "Libertarian" vibes
Why he gotta praise trump's stupidity? Who the fucks stands there like an idiot when there could be more than 1 shooter? Its nothing to praise, its stupidity to stand there, if there was a second shooter, his dumbass would be dead.
Edit 3: Btw Proton is controlled by a board of five people:
This dude is just one of five, no need to switch providers yet, but it is a bit concerning...
I'm not going to switch away from them just yet... But I am going to start using an address with my own domain. My only regret is not doing this from the beginning.
Embracing politicians... 🤦
Trump fired Lina Kahn, so we know this is bullshit.
Aww FUCK. I'm a huge proton pass user. I don't want to go looking for a replacement but if anyone knows an easier way to set up email aliases on the fly and reply to emails sent to that alias easily like I can w proton I would switch
One thing I saw was lacking in the comments here are some alternatives (Some were named, more self-hosted options, which can be good for a person, but not always)...
RiseUp.net and Disroot.org both are ran by collectives, and both protect your privacy. RiseUp has a log of how they've done so, as well.
Proton better shut this dude up as I really don't want to find a new platform :|
It's almost understandable to bend the knee in the hopes of avoiding the coming purges, but this goes well beyond just seeking corporate survival. Genuinely disgusting. It looks like the way forward for Proton will be lit by the bridges they're burning.
Noooo pls noooo
Well, I'm embracing a new e-mail service. And maybe a new VPN.
Proton has been giving me some issues sometimes when I couldn't access my inbox, I can't have that when I'm in great need to see if anything has happened. Also, I've joined Tutamail just now and I can make a lot of folders. Screw you, Proton for endorsing trash and limiting how many folders I can make. Which sounds like a silly complaint and it kind of is, but who the hell limits basic features like that?
So I'll be giving Tutamail a year long trial, just as I did with Proton 4 years ago before making it my primary service of choice. Push comes to shove, I'll just use GMail again for at least it's reliability and as an ironic middle-finger to Proton for this kind of move.
Hey Americans, maybe think about why Bernie Sanders was not elected by the Democrats?
Well shit, I was about to make the switch to Proton for email... glad I've been lazy about it, now. I'll figure something else out, mail-in-a-box looks like what I really want anyway
The entirety of the tech space is basically mask off fascist Trump/Musk simps
Any good alternative to proton services? For mail I have tuta so far, but they cover only that part and the webmail UX in tuta is actually worse for the free tier.
Oh well. Another scratch on my list of companies I'll never patronize.
I was considering a new email. Bullet dodged!
My take is that a libertarian who thinks big government (or the spooky 👻 deep state) is out to get him is an attitude I want for the ceo of a privacy company.
If Trumps associates are going to jail for refusing to turn over passwords to their proton accounts, then I think the service is working.
Gonna be super funny when Trump turns on him anyways though, and bans proton from the US, because only his privacy actually matters.
Large corporations like google have grown and thrived in Silicon Valley, supported by the politicians of California. So by extension they are partially responsible for enabling these companies to be the giants they are.
According to this article Google has funded 40 elected officials and spent $10.7 million in lobbying California's legislature and Governor this year alone.
If a president (even a shitty one) was considering putting a damper on companies like google, I would not be against that. We'll see if anything actually happens.
I'm not ditching Proton over one fucking tweet
Insanity
If for "little guys" Proton CEO intends minors, we are cooked 🤦
Also, top 10 anime plot twists
It's ridiculous how many people just go "oh well time to dump Proton" because of a picture (not even a link) of a tweet without context. Also the title is misleading. Andy Yen in this picture is complementing Trump, and also apperently posting facts about who started the antitrust actions. "Embracing" is, really, as I have written, misleading.
Based!
People have private lifes. CEO‘s too. I don’t see why I should remotely care what the personal opinion of a CEO is. And I am deeply concerned that this is such a big deal, no matter what their opinion is.
If you have a personal problem with that, that‘s totally okay. Putting them on a stand, is not okay. Let them have an opinion. Debate if you disagree. But stop making such a scene out of everything.
Im glad I dont use any of their products
