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.
Yeah this is a masks off moment for them and people better be paying attention!
“If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
-Desmond Tutu
“If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, but your CEO and official company social media accounts are publically praising the policies of the elephant, the mouse will not appreciate your alleged neutrality.”
-iAmTheTot
I migrated literally everything from Gmail around 2021. Gotta tell ya, I feel just about dumb as shit right now. I kind of understand people with those “I bought this before he sieg heiled” bumper stickers on their Teslas.
I was planning to transition everything to proton this month. Now I don’t know what to do.
Honestly the lesson I took away from this is to not vendor-lock myself if I can help it. Maybe it’d be better to have a domain through which you can route incoming emails to any inbox? That way you can just hotswap email services if their CEO turns out to be a cannibal or something.
yeah, I myself was already getting a little uncomfortable with how far proton was branching out. It’s a good thing that I was already making a transition to using my own domain using aliases through eforw.com
Or I guess just self host an email server
That actually doesn’t work. Most large email providers will put you into the spam folder unless you are a well known server. Microsoft doesn’t even bother with that and outright throws the emails away entirely. Plus, most ISPs block sending emails from residential IPs and cloud providers block sending them from cloud.
It is not that bad. I have been running my own mail server for 20 years and i generally don’t have more problems with it than users of ‘big and known’ mail server do (it is not like GMail is perfect). And when there are problems I am usually able to tell what happened.
But this does not mean I would recommend self-hosting mail server to everybody. I am an expert, have been doing this professionaly for years. And it is an ongoing fight. It is not like I set it up in 2000 and it has been working since then without changes or incidents.
Do you send mail directly from your server, or do you use some intermediary?
I will admit I did not try it myself but I was under the impression it was pretty bad with the spam filters.
I send mail directly. I have a public IP address. I had to remove it (a few times) from a list of ‘dynamically residential address space’. I have configured the server carefully and implemented SPF, DKIM and DMARC. I have proper revDNS records. Currently my mail doesn’t seem to be considered SPAM by Google or others more often than other mails.
When filters consider some mail spam there usually is a reason. The trick is to find the reason and understand how to mitigate it. Some anti-spam measures are not fair (like blanket blocking whole countries or ISPs), but I was lucky enough not to be bothered by those.
Why do you feel stupid? None of this could have been predicted. If you switched to any other privacy focused provider it might as well have been them this was about. You did a logical thing at the time, as many others here did. I don’t see how any of this isn’t obvious.
Check out the comment on this post by @pulsewidth, it provides some interesting perspective on this.Rescinded! Thanks for the context folks
Mmmhm, Republicans are more likely to tackle Big Tech issues by funding them with a cold hard 500 billion smackaroos for AI research, right? /s
Gimme a fuckin’ break. D being trash doesn’t excuse this blatant endorsement of R. Never entertain the whims of the far right, no matter how sweetly they sing to you. History has taught us better.
Can’t really argue with any of that
No, make sure you read the top response to that comment. Pulsewidth omitted the original post by the CEO. Not only that, this was Pulsewidth’s first post. Not concrete proof of astroturfing, but it’s pretty sus
Swiss company says “Nazi’s aren’t so bad.”
The more things change the more they stay the same.
When they say they’re “neutral” lets not forget what “neutral” meant during World War II. It meant making a fucking shitload of money at the expense of the rest of Europe.
Also, the geography of Switzerland is how they were able to convince Germany to not invade. A few US Nukes dropped from the sky make their geography a moot fucking point this time around.
That escalated quickly
The sort of Swiss neutrality that doesn’t care whose teeth the gold is from.
Reason n1 why I never use Swiss services.
Wow. There’s a whole lot of people here reacting to the headline, and not actually reading the story. That’s important, because the journalist’s headline is (shocker) a huge overstatement.
I was concerned as I’m a Proton user and have been for years, and hard left politically, and despise Trump. But maybe lets just read it before reacting?
Here’s what the CEO posted on Xitter:
10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.
Yep. That’s a bad look. Doesn’t make a lot of sense either because the Republicans are very much the party of big business and corporate handouts and deregulation in oil, gas, energy, mining, manufacture, industrial farming etc.
Then here’s what Proton’s team said on Reddit as an explanation and expansion of the CEO’s post (and then later deleted):
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 coincidentally 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.
First off, I feel like I’ve read from hundreds of Lemmy users total agreement that the Democratic party is captured by corporate interests, so I really doubt any disagreement with that section of Proton’s post. My reaction to the remainder is that it’s not at all praise for the Republican party, just the factual statement of the sad reality that Republicans with their very hard-on-Silicon-Valley rhetoric are more likely to actually reign in the big tech companies than the Democratic party - and Proton is in a good position to have seen this first hand. Zero of the statement praises Trump or praises Republicans, and there is in fact lament that the Democrats didn’t stick harder with their left-wing candidates, even highlighting Bernie. I can see why they deleted it though, it’s office chatter than never should have left the cubicle.
TL;DR: storm in a teacup, I’ll be keeping my Proton mail account.
p.s. yes this is my first Lemmy post. I’m a longtime lurker though. I felt strongly enough about this to make an account to post, as nobody seemed to be actually posting the content of the article - just reacting. Edit: typos & formatting of the quote.
If by reigning in big tech you mean a cartel style system where companies need to provide funds to Trump to continue existing, sure. But there is no chance that the Republicans will reign in big tech : they are big tech.
You are leaving out the part where Andy Yen said that the tables have turned and the Republicans are now the party of the small people.
Andy Yen’s statement is downright pathetic and misleading. People are right to stir up shit because that’s the only thing corpos understand.
This isn’t a storm in a tea cup, this is the CEO of a company telling us who he really is and people choosing to tell him to get fucked.
Your post reeks of astroturfing.
Good first post
Good catch. Someone else here in the comments detected a hint of astroturfing… perhaps they were onto something
Edit: they opened a Lemmy acct to make that post, fwiw
Same for me. Was it kind of stupid what the CEO said? Yes, sure, but who the fuck does not do that from time to time?
I also hate this mentality, that if you agree with a decision a party / person made, then that means you agree with everything they stand for. Bitch, no!
Nicely said.
I had my doubts, I mailed Proton and they responded with a statement Yen his opinion isn’t that of Proton, his comment while using the Proton account was a mistake which has been deleted and Proton changed to a foundation so no one, including a CEO like Yen, can change what Proton stands for.
Due respect, your take is obtuse at best or you’re a shill. The company, with current leadership in place, just cannot come back from the first statement, it illustrates a fundamental detachment from objective reality, to the point that you’ve lost any and all credibility, permanently.
In a business based on trust, this is just so clear. Poop
My renewal of proton VPN is entirely dependent on who the ceo is when it’s time for me to renew.
If fuckface is still there, I’ll move on.
I’m fickle that way.
The number of places I can do business with is dropping drastically. I’m going to have to start making my own clothes in the near future.
I strongly recommend Mullvad. Exceptional performance, wireguard support and if you’re really paranoid about anonymity you can literally send them money via post.
Same at this point. I just paid for the year in November.
Yeah Proton already burned that bridge. “Politically Neutral” is no longer an option for them.
When I first saw the headline, I thought it sounded like one of those stories about how many Nazis are at the table or at the bar.
When you exist in a 2-party system, and one of those parties are mask-off fascists, and people suspect you of supporting them, saying you’re neutral isn’t a good look.
Curious how so many people decided to ditch them and switch (vocally on Lemmy at least) and now they back pedal/clarify/whatever. Turns out we have power and using it works. Sorry not sorry. Edited: pedal instead of petal.
Good news for them, I’m “financially neutral”
I think at this point in the USA it’s very clear:
If you’re “politically neutral”, you’re Republican.
I (and very many others) may not agree with the democrats, but since we only got two parties there, it’s damage-control. And any sane person (that would like to have a non-dystopian future) votes against Trump…
they’re Swiss
Yes, I know, I’m also not from the USA from a “neutral” state (Austria)…
Actually, especially if you’re European, even the democrats are more right-leaning, i.e. comparable with the conservative parties here.
No one is actually politically neutral…
Already started migrating away. Canceled my paid plan.
Migrating to what? Seriously I’d like to know.
I could see mullvad for VPN. Not sure about mail/cal or password.
I just cancelled my subscription and moved everything to Tuta. Tuta also seems to have a political stance much more aligned with my own: diversity, privacy oriented, and eco friendly.
Yeah I’m very much now considering alternative options like Tuta now. Been a Proton user since 2020 and subscribed for over 2 years with them, and didn’t have any intention of moving until now.
Welp… Just paid them 80€ for a year and was in the process of migrating my gmail accounts to it. I guess I just lost 80€ and I’m migrating to somewhere else then…
You should be able to cancel and get a partial refund. Reach out and ask.
And also during that discussion with their support team, state your reason for leaving. That will get a lot more attention than the rest of us whinging online where we can easily be ignored.
I’m going to do this with all mail domains and account with them.
I don’t care how publicly they state their neutrality, when push comes to shove, that nazi sympathizer is going to side with the enemy and all of us who thought we had a safe haven are at risk. I’d rather cut my losses.
I’m also annoyed with how they pile so much into the service that for some of us, they’re extras which aren’t needed. I just want to simplify my email into Tuta now I think, and Mullvad for VPN. While having those together was convenient, it’s no different on my phone or pc to use two different apps for those.
I will very clearly state why I’m taking my business elsewhere.
My stance on Proton is my stance on GrapheneOS: just because the creator is bad doesn’t mean the software is bad. As long as the software is better compared to the alternatives then I seen no reason to stop using it.
Note: better can mean more privacy-friendly, cost-friendly, sustainable, nice to use, open, etc.
Oddly enough, I found the opposite to be true with companies like Nestle: the news of them killing children makes me dislike their chocolates.
My stance on Proton is my stance on GrapheneOS: just because the creator is bad doesn’t mean the software is bad. As long as the software is better compared to the alternatives then I seen no reason to stop using it.
I think the major difference is that for a software package or operating system like GrapheneOS, theoretically people can audit the code and verify that it is secure (of course in practice this is not something that 99% of people will ever do). So to some extent, you technically don’t have to put a ton of trust into the GrapheneOS devs, especially with features like reproducible builds allowing you to verify that the software you’re running is the same software as the repository.
For something like Proton where you’re using a service someone else is running, you sort of have to trust the provider by default. You can’t guarantee that they’re not leaking information about you, since there’s no way for you to tell what their servers are doing with your data. Accordingly, to some extent, if you don’t trust the team behind the service, it isn’t unreasonable to start doubting the service.
This is where audits come into place. Currently Proton only made the result of their security audit public, but you can also get an accounting firm to audit the privacy statement. Not endorsing them or anything, but PureVPN has been audited by iirc Deloitte on their privacy statement. I have verified this a couple year by then sharing the conclusion of the report from Deloitte with signature.
Proton should do something similar and yearly and could have a lot more faith in them. An accountant isn’t going to risk his career for something like Proton’s privacy statement. At least I would hope not
The Porton Foundation is also the majority owner of the company these days which makes it a bit harder to do whatever you wish with the company
