- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
When called out on it, they then doubled down on this dogshit take: https://archive.ph/quYyb
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Official statement from Proton, after I filed a complaint:
Hello, Thank you for contacting us. We appreciate you reaching out, please be informed that we have shared a response to the community feedback which can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/ We hope you find this information helpful. Should you have any further issues, questions or perhaps a concern that you’d like us to address, please do not hesitate to let us know.
Kind regards,
Ethan Customer Support Proton Mail
My response:
Hi,
Thank you for your response. I wish this would clarify everything, however, the comments he made on Reddit were done with the official Proton admin account, therefore making his personal comments an official Proton statement. https://snoo.habedieeh.re/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/comment/m7ahrlm/ Next to the fact that he posted his personal believes as an official Proton statement, the claims he made are factual untrue, making Proton spread fake news (as noted in the comments under Yen his statement). If it indeed it is just his personal opinion, he should have posted everything from his personal account only.
I have my personal opinion which I don’t mind sharing with others, but I won’t use a company account to make these claims as that could get me fired.
Andy Yen didn’t make Proton a part of his opinion by just sharing it, but by sharing it as Proton. I believe Proton should take action if Proton doesn’t want to be affiliated with Yen his personal opinions and with the fake news he spreads.
I would like to know what Proton will do about this incident and how Proton will ensure this doesn’t happen again in the future as incidents like these make Proton look unprofessional and breaks trust with its customer base, one which holds privacy and security high. When the CEO is so easy to manipulate by populists and fake news from another country and makes this official Proton statements, how can the company ensure what it stands for.
Kind regards,
W
So is this an intentional or unintentional get off of proton message? Maybe it’s a subtle "we are compromised but warrant Canaries don’t work message? Lol…
This isn’t going “full MAGA”. This isn’t even going half MAGA. Shit, this isn’t even going a little MAGA. He’s very clearly saying he approves of the pick.
And that’s that… I was building up momentum at home to just move to proton mail. Now? Now I got no choice but to figure out another way to self host my own email somehow. That’s an f-ing PITA.
Going to put https://tuta.com/ out there as an alternative, if people are looking for one. I don’t love their UI/UX, but it gets the job done and seems to be security and privacy focused. The clients are open source as well.
Self hosting email is very easy, but one thing you have to know is that you can’t proxy your email server through CloudFlare, so if that’s a problem for you, you’re gonna have to figure out some other service.
Self hosting email is very easy
Is it? Running a mail server is easy, sure, but is actually ensuring that everyone you’re trying to send email to will actually receive it, rather than being spam-filtered?
Self hosting email is very easy
Setting up self-hosted email is very easy.
Maintaining it is a massive pain in the ass.
I gave up on 2015.
This guy gave up recently. https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html
This is the exact post I was thinking about as well
I’ll take your word on it, when I found out I had to expose my actual IP, I decided it wasn’t worth it and stuck with Proton.
I mean you can use an SMTP gateway, but that kinda defeats the purpose, since they can read your emails, and you are still dependent on that service. Finding a good and trustworthy, encrypted email provider is probably easier. Don’t forget that you can still use a custom domain.
Enshittification in high gear mode. The other day they’ve been exposed for backpedalling on their promises to spare inactive accounts that were created before 2024 until next year from the inactive accounts deletion policy.
Wait, so his solution to abuse in big tech is…hiring someone who formerly worked in big tech…? Okay…
Meredith Whittaker worked for Google for over a decade, in AI.
Gonna go drop Signal now?
…you can’t possibly mean the woman whom, in her resignation note from Google, expressed concerns about the company’s unchecked power, right?
That’s not the gotcha you think it is…
She was content enough for long enough before Google started their military project, which was what she objected to.
That absolutely cannot be your only takeaway from her entire resignation letter.
https://googlewalkout.medium.com/onward-another-googlewalkout-goodbye-b733fa134a7d
This is def not what going full MAGA looks like, lmao. This tame AF.
No no, this is tantamount to violently storming the capital to delay the certification of the election.
I can’t believe people thought that was actually “violently storming” the capitol
It was a protest. Methinks you’ve never seen an actual violent crowd
Lol fuck off troll.
That wasn’t violence. Why they did it and the Trump thing is stupid but an actually violent attack would have been actually successful at purging the congressional ranks.
And fuck off, .world mods, me saying what I wish had happened isn’t a call for violence
So as long as an attack isn’t successful, it isn’t violent? Then the attempted assassination of Trump also wasn’t violent. Just a peaceful protest.
Violence would be the Oklahoma City bombing. That actually accomplished something and was great. We need much more of that.
Jan 6th couldn’t be successful because there wasn’t actual violence. The fact nobody was killed, not even the cops, shows it was all bullshit (except for that stupid girl who was killed for lack of shooting back)
It’s the same disconnect from reality as the guy who shot at Trump thinking an AR was an “high powered rifle for killing” like it’s always portrayed when it’s totally wrong and appropriate for that shot. He was a moron and if he’d actually studied at all Trump would be dead. We can only hope the next attempt is successful. There’s still time for Biden too.
violence is when guns and bombs and death
Smooooooothbraaaaaiiiiin
Ah yes, I remember when they peacefully bludgeoned that police officer.
Sorry, my bad. Shouldn’t have given you the benefit of the doubt in assuming that you were a troll and not just braindead.
He’s a cop. He has no right to live
So edgy and cool.
I can’t believe people thought that was actually “violently storming” the capitol
It was a protest. Methinks you’ve never seen an actual violent crowd
There’s a video here of some of the peaceful protesting:
And that’s not violence. That’s less trouble than a soccer fans
Welp, if you ever wanted any confirmation whether Proton was really psyops …
Oh my God. I went directly to the Reddit thread. Why is the Reddit UI so bad? How can people use that?
swap “www” with “old”
slightly less bad, but it’s still a worthless site at this point with half of the useful information either years out of date or actively deleted.I couldn’t even access it, since they block VPN users. Thankfully there’s Redlib.
Archived Reddit doesn’t really work. Here’s the none archived link: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/comment/m7a91fs/
Yes, I went to that directly and it is horrible. Every second interaction there is a pop-up telling me to install the app.
Always, always swap the “www” in a Reddit link for “old”. It makes it usable. (Especially if you have RES installed.)
I am a little confused by this because I think they’re kind of technically right?
Democrat corporate interest will absolutely keep them from going after big tech. Maybe they think and ponder about some antitrust stuff, to save face, but it comes to nothing. Any significant change we’ve had recently has come from legislation in the EU.
Republicans are absolutely more likely to go after big tech than Democrats. But it’s not because they’re altruistic or down to help the scrappy little guy. They’re petty. They hold grudges. They’re still mad tech companies clamped down on them over Covid. But, they haven’t been bribed yet, but once they are, this goes away.
That’s why all these contributions are coming into the inauguration fund. There’s more to come.
But that only works on the Republicans who haven’t drunk the Koolaid, and there are more and more Republican politicians who drink as much Koolaid as they possibly can. They’re not the classic grifters taking advantage of their constituents, they’re diehard believers, and that’s way scarier. They’re the most likely to retaliate against big tech.
I guess the “Trump supports the little guy,” take is bad, but the “Republicans are more likely to hurt big tech,” is not. Never underestimate pettiness.
Republicans are absolutely more likely to go after big tech than Democrats.
Do you not consider Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos “big tech”?
Do you consider Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos “Democrats”? They’ll go wherever the wind blows, which right now, is with Republicans. They’re billionaires. They have no loyalty to anyone or anything beyond their mountains of gold.
Since when did democrats make anything more than token platitudes towards going after big tech?
Only one of of those was actively sucking up before he won. The others were hedging their bets.
“Republicans are more likely to hurt big tech” … by politicizing big tech. Basically this is everything trump touches turns to shit and the proton CEO just reached out and touched trump. The republican party cannot touch anything today without politicizing it.
Edit/addendum: Portraying brand damage as “real consequences” is definitely wishful thinking/dumb conflation. Democrats legitimately were prosecuting big tech companies for a variety of regulatory transgressions that republicans for sure won’t bother to continue.
Republicans are absolutely more likely to go after big tech than Democrats.
Nani? Trump replaced Lina Khan.
Here’s what he said in Reddit
Source: https://snoo.habedieeh.re/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/comment/m7ahrlm/
Andy here, since it’s my original post that’s being reposted here, let me comment further.
My post is talking about Gail Slater, who is by all measures, actually a good pick, with a solid track record of being on the right side of the antitrust issue. Yes, she happens to be nominated by Trump, but her record speaks for itself.
This is not going to be a popular opinion, but on the specific issue of antitrust, Democrats fell short. 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. In the aftermath of this failure, great people like former Democratic rep David Cicilline left congress, leaving few strong voices for antitrust left in the Democratic party. In the meantime, at a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
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. And that’s a missed opportunity for Dems, because by and large, support for cracking down on corporate monopolies is popular on both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, corporate capture of Dems is real and in the end money won. It is hard to see how this changes, and Republicans are likely to lead the antitrust charge in the coming years.
From that perspective, and going back to my original post, Gail is a great pick. One should not equate our support of Gail for Proton not being neutral anymore. We continue to call out bad behavior from both sides, whether it’s Dems or Republicans, on our core issues. Just a few weeks ago, we were called out for being in bed with Soros because we gave money to too many “liberal” organizations: https://proton.me/blog/2024-lifetime-fundraiser-results No, the Proton Foundation isn’t the new Soros either (even if we may coincidentally fund some of the same things sometimes). We simply stick with our strongly held core believes, and leave politics out of it, because the issues we care about, should be apolitical.
UPDATE: I posted another comment further below in response to a user, but I’ll reproduce it here for completeness:
I don’t really want to wade further into what is obviously a very polarizing political topic, but since you are asking for some thoughts, I can share.
We have been fighting big corporate interests since the very beginning. People have short memories, so few remember that in 2019 and 2020, we were working with congressional Democrats on this issue. We’re even cited a dozen times in the report, which by the way, was partially authored by Lina Khan, who at that time worked with Ciciline. This is the report here: https://proton.me/blog/congress-antitrust-report
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) was also mentioned. Guess what, we supported that too: https://proton.me/blog/congress-stand-up-to-big-tech More than with blog posts, I personally was on Capitol Hill trying to convince senators who were on the fence, on both the Democratic and Republican side. The votes where there, but in 2022, Democrats controlled the Senate, and ultimately Sen. Schumer decided what gets to be voted on, and as we know, AICOA was not advanced.
Epic vs Apple was also mentioned. Well, we supported that one too. In fact, we were one of the founding companies of the Coalition for App Fairness, along with, yes, Epic: https://proton.me/blog/coalition-for-app-fairness
The point I am trying to make is, in the past 10 years, our position on corporate monopolies has not moved. But US politics has shifted, and the parties themselves have moved. We’re huge supporters of Lina Khan and her work. But you know who else agrees with Lina Khan on Big Tech? Actually, JD Vance, as he’s publicly stated: https://fortune.com/2024/08/11/jd-vance-5000-child-tax-credit-support-ftc-lina-khan-tech-regulation/ Can you imagine the Republican Vice Presidents of the past taking this position?
It is not a bad thing that Republicans have moved so far on this issue, and are now in a position to go even further than Democrats have managed in the past four years. It’s a good thing, and something that should be welcomed irrespective of your political leanings. Ultimately, we will judge actions, but for now, I am supportive of Gail Slater, just as I was supportive of Lina Khan. And honestly, it should not matter that one is a Republican, and the other is a Democrat.
Later there was an official statement posted stating the previous post made with the Proton account wasn’t an official post. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/
What a shit show. Sack the guy.
Interesting perspective. With this context this makes sense. Thanks for posting
Thanks for compilation, hopefully next administration can at least do what your post suggests.
Hopefully the next administration can post the contents of reddit on Lemmy so VPN users can read it?
Lol what?
I understood your post, but maybe put Andy’s comment in a Quote indentation.
Are multilinear comments possible? Or so I have to type like 200 > chars
Are you on mobile? On desktop, you just highlight the text and it the " icon.
I’m on mobile
add a “>” to the beginning of every paragraph, and the empty lines between them, and it will render as a big blockquote:
> paragraph one > > paragraph twoparagraph one
paragraph two
God help you.
Yk what else you could imagine?
Wait I’m confused why this is him going full MAGA?
I legitimately don’t want the Republicans in charge of anything unless they drastically change their policies, but this actually seems like a pretty decent pick considering the absolute trash that trump has nominated so far?
If she is actually trying to break up these companies that’s generally good right? We’ve been wanting to break monopolies for a while.
If Republicans go so far right that they swing back around to the left I’d be fine with that lol
I’m not voting because of the letter next to their name, I’m voting because of policies. If someone wants to provide universal health care, protect the environment, break up monopolies, stop price gouging, stop hating gay and trans people for no reason, etc. I will vote for them. And yes I understand that the republican party as it is is the least likely group of people to ever do that. But the democrats didn’t do it either they just pay it lip service when they want votes.
Vote for actual policies you want, not because someone pretends they’re a D or an R.
You can’t apply logic to a situation and expect lemmings to understand.
If Republicans go so far right that they swing back around to the left I’d be fine with that lol
Hitler’s regime launching the first anti-smoking propaganda campaign in history doesn’t mean they were going “so far right that they swing back around to the left.”
Please stop this liberal “horseshoe” bullshit.
Not full maga, but not good trend. Its a rather unforced error.
Everybody is freaking out at the proton guy because he doesn’t think zuckerberg, musk and bezos are big tech
You need to read Andy’s replies after people questioned him on that initial post. I linked to an archived thread in my OP, or you can check the Proton Mail subreddit.
I read his replies; what about them are “full MAGA”?
I’m assuming you’re arguing in bad faith, or you missed his uniformly glowing praise of Republicans and how they defend “the little guy” as opposed to the corrupt dems.
This is the comment which you linked to, copied and pasted:
Here is our official response, also available on the Mastodon post in the screenshot: 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. 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.
This doesn’t seem like a glowing commendation to me. It seems he said exactly what he thinks happened, and that only one person showed up. He even brings up the fact that Dems could choose the progressive wing with Bernie, but that they chose to follow the money. That’s not false either.
I really don’t get how this is full MAGA, unless you’re stating that anything that praises the Republicans is full MAGA.
unless you’re stating that anything that praises the Republicans is full MAGA
If you’ll read the thread, this is not the first time he has praised Trump.
Just so everyone is clear, this is what you’re framing as “praise”:
It is not Trump’s fault
It is tempting to blame all this on Trump, but that is taking the easy way out. All Trump does is put a new face on the existing privacy problem, so now it concerns a segment of the population that previously didn’t care as much. Proton Mail users have always come from both the left and right side of the political spectrum. Today, we are seeing an influx of liberal users, but Proton Mail has also long been popular with the political right, who were truly worried about big government spying, and the Obama administration having access to their communications. Now the tables have turned.
The same terror the political right has experienced is now being felt in liberal bubbles such as Silicon Valley for the first time. The left is correct to be terrified of a Trump-led NSA snooping on their communications, especially since Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook can be forced to spy on users on behalf of Trump’s NSA. However, this precedent was not set by Trump – he hasn’t even taken office yet. The first major incident of a US tech giant being complicit in US government spying actually took place in 2015 under the Obama administration(new window).
Why did you leave out the part about democrats being corrupt and republicans being champions of the little guy?
We’re still waiting on this quote, btw
how much you paying to deliver this quote?
So you are being absurdly hyperbolic. Gotcha.
If Republicans go so far right that they swing back around to the left I’d be fine with that lol
That’s not a thing.
They gave a more nuanced answer afterwards
Wow, lots of people on Lemmy just look at screenshots of text and dont read anything anymore.
I dont think he said anything controversial. Read what he wrote.
He’s not supporting Trump or the Republican party in general. He is calling them out for selecting someone good on antitrust. That’s not controversial.
Read what he wrote. He said Dems used to be for the little guy and the Republicans were for big business but now the tables have turned…
So now the Republicans, party of billionaires, is for the little guy and Dems are for big business?
Controversial no doubt.
How is that controversial? Harris lost because she was so fucking pro-corporate. Same thing happened to Hilary.
They’re both pro-corporate parties, and breaking up the trusts is progress.
They lost because they tried to convince trumpers to vote for them, ignoring everyone else.
No, they lost because they were so obsessed with telling us how bad Trump is they completely ignored their failed economy, and that people would be voting for someone to do better with the economy.
Yeah, but surveillance is also high on the fascist agenda, so you’d think a company pitching privacy would be more concerned about approving of anything they do.
Surveillance is different than suppression. Yes, they usually go hand-in-hand, but the issue everyone was up in arms about is the censorship part, by the surveillance part.
He didn’t say Trump has good policies on surveillance. The two corporate parties in the US are terrible on privacy.
He said the tables had completely turned, that the Reps were now supporting the small guy. It’s idiotic at best, dishonest at worst, to assume that such praise will change anything about the fact that the incoming US regime will seek to undermine Proton’s stated objective and prime selling point. Even if they somehow followed through on those antitrust expectations, I have no doubt it would double back into serving corporate dragons in the end.
The tables have turned.
The shitty center-right corporate party that claimed to be against big business has switched with the far-right party that claims to be pro-consumer.
Both the most popular US political parties are terrible. When either one appoints someone who isn’t captured, its a good thing.
… Are you seriously claiming the dem party is not a party of billionaires? Soros? Gates? Bloomberg? Hoffman?? I could go on.
What little business policies have Dems put in place? Seems to me the biggest dem states absolutely demolished small businesses during COVID, and have not done a gd thing to rebuild them.
Bush-era republicans haven’t done a gd thing for small businesses either, don’t get me wrong, but it’s so dumb to say the Dem party is for the little guy.
Republicans literally have a billionaire as their emperor with a the richest man in the world as his advisor. Dems are playing recess tag football vs a Republicans varsety 5A when it comes to supporting corporations.
Literally none of that has anything to do with reality.
And… now I have to get out of Proton. Not USA citizen, just a leftist from South America, but not gonna accept fascism in any country, neither will I support enablers of it.
Check out Mullvad maybe instead!
love mullvad but haven’t been able to use them since they removed port forwarding :(
God damn it, I just got fully in to proton, took me a year or so to slowly switch everything over, the new proton services like the drive, docs and wallet are pretty sweet. ugh. Gonna have to watch proton closely.
read the pinned comment before taking harsh actions
Thanks for that, that does help put things in perspective. However, I am not pleased to see proton taking political stances at all. Money corrupts and it seems they are following whats best in their interests that doesn’t always reflect the users (ours) so. This is a space I’m gonna have to follow. The minute they start doing any sort of data sharing, data “personalization”, ad integration, etc. That’s when I’ll be moving.
Very disappointing though. I just want google like services but without the spying on me by me paying.
