I was afraid Proton would eventually go down the far right route… and it seems like my fears came true
their CEO publicly announced support for trump; anyone saying otherwise about proton’s proclivities is coping too hard – especially the ones in this community.
you can say this about literally every tech company these days.
very true; capitalists will always capital.
Which is why we support Open Source like Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, NextCloud, LibreOffice and a whole lot more. :-)
I’d cut nextcloud from that list
Why?
With euro office coming up, there was some musing that libre office has Russian roots, does that change the equation any?
From what I understood: ONLYOFFICE is a fork of Libre Office by a russian company. NextCloud was using ONLYOFFICE for its built-in cloud office suite replacement. Then they forked it with others to have greater control on the software with no communication whatsever to the company developing ONLYOFFICE without respecting their questionnable trademark restriction within ONLYOFFICE licence which I am still unsure if it was compatible with GPL licence Libre Office is using.
It’s Euro-Office that might have Russians roots. Do get the facts straight. ;-)
LibreOffice is the only real free and open, open source office suite out there.
Isn’t libre also a fork of open?
Yes… Because OpenOffice was truly free at the beginning, but then they wanted to make it more and more closed, and then people who didn’t share that mission went their separate way. Lucky for those os us, who like things to be as open as possible… And free… And I still pay for it - but I’m free to do that. I had a rough couple of years with low income and many expenses, but even then I could use it for free. That’s true freedom to me. I don’t want things to be free, like in the sense that I don’t want to pay. I do pay, I like to support things that makes sense to me, and with the amount that I can actually afford.
I have not seen evidence of Proton “going the far right route” yet. They are just sponsoring channels that ever mention privacy and far right ones frequently does that too. You can blame proton for no scrutinize, but not of siding with the right or the left. Proton is just focusing in mayor growth and nothing else, for better or for worse.
Archived BlueSky Post of them: https://archive.ph/2yWGz
I can’t see much of a problem with this, yeah Trump actually did started something useful for all the wrong reasons and the guy praised that, the company sponsoring far right weirdos is waaaay more problematic to be honest.
Three things on Proton:
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Proton mail has been in a rampage with sponsor YouTube channels and, in my opinion, that is a mistake. I would have kept it an organic growth, but that is me… a nobody, and Proton has become far more successful than no other email provider in the privacy world.
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Considering even that, Proton is not vetting who is sponsoring. This is a fiasco. For instance they try to sponsor the channel “The hated one” that never takes any sponsors and even constantly criticizes channels that does it. That is a mayor blunder for Proton, there is no scrutiny at all with their marketing deployment. By the way, we learned that that youtubers get a juicy amount by Proton in these sponsorships (I think was $70 per subscription).
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Proton, for years, has been aiming for the masses, not the most serious in privacy (for instance, androidś Proton email still uses Google push services). That is not bad per se, I still recommend Proton to many. But those with a more ideological approach to privacy or those requiring top notch on it, should be aiming for other service providers.
’
Considering what the Proton guy has said about MAGA I imagine these are on purpose.
Honeypot behavior, don’t you think? We are suppose to be trusting them, but this is what they do?
controlled opposition
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Using Proton always seemed like a bad idea. People come to Proton in order to deGoogle or de-big-tech but then lock themselves into their ecosystem, defeating the entire purpose.
Not mention how scummy their PR-Team, their CEO and their Business Practices are.
So many Proton sponsered content creators spread lies about how Proton Mail is supposedly E2E encrypted or how Proton VPN is supposedly a privacy and security tool.
Time and time again they have lied about how much data they have and how much they have disclosed to investigating agencies.The only way I could ever undestand someone using Proton Mail would be to use their service but behind your own domain, such that migrating away stays easy.
I did this myself in 2023, coming from google. And have now dropped their Eco system for all disconnected privacy friendly options like mailbox.org and bitwarden for example.
But I also use my own domain and a ton of alias email addresses so wasn’t locked to my proton email address in any meaningful way
They also sponsor a far-right influencer in Brazil.
This guy is literally a grandson of a dictator of the military dictatorship. He was also one of the articulators of the 2023 coup attempt, pressing the military to join
very cool proton
edit: giving more context in case someone wants to post this in their subreddit (I won’t): his name is Paulo Figueiredo and he still have a proton vpn sponsor link in every video on youtube.
I’m from Brazil and I hadn’t seen this yet. It’s disgusting! Dude, Proton never again! They are financing the most rotten things in Brazil! Very sad and revolting!
Such companies “sponsor” everyone. It’s cheaper than normal advertisements.
You’ve got some companies advertising with streamers/youtubers that do some checks on who they advertise with. They use specialised communication agencies, it’s their job.
Yes, and then you have companies like Proton Mail.
Companies that neither do their job nor get someone to do it for them, and end up financing fascists, even though they should be especially careful given their CEO past declarations ?
It still means that my subscription fees are ending up in the pockets of a far right “influencer”. Fuck them for doing me dirty like that.
Is there an article about this?
https://reddit.com/comments/1u052qp there’s this thread on Reddit at least
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u05xs2/comment/oqgihvq/
Here’s some of protons response
Thanks, yeah seems it was a mistake. The CEO / founder is I believe a libertarian, but at least he believes in something, like privacy.
Thanks for the heads up. Haven’t really used Proton, but I have a few accounts in case of… But now they will be deleted.
man, is it just time for me to quit technology altogether?
The corporation sponsors the pro capitalist ideologue? I’m shocked.
deleted by creator
It’s actually wilder than that. The official Proton account went onto several platforms to repeat the endorsement.
Ironically I am happier with cock.li than proton
(context: owned by 4chan user (with a grain of salt(?)) but it’s best i’ve found :/ )
Edit: I don’t use it much anymore, profile lurkerers.
Proton did respond to this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u05xs2/comment/oqgihvq/
To avoid you all a trip to reddit:
You’re right to raise this, and we want to address it directly and provide you important context on how this happened.
Vincent Lapierre’s channel should never have been part of our affiliate and sponsorship program, because we intentionally avoid association with channels whose content could distract from our message and divide our community.
Proton operates globally, and while our services are available to everyone regardless of political views and our mission is consistent everywhere, our knowledge of every local media landscape is not. In this case, our team didn’t have enough context about the French space to make a well-informed decision, and that’s on us.
We also want to be straight about what a placement like this is and isn’t. An affiliate or sponsorship arrangement is a transactional placement for awareness, not an endorsement of a creator’s views. In the case of Vincent Lapierre, this was a single video sponsorship, not a partnership.
But that distinction doesn’t excuse what happened here. The responsibility to vet who we put our name next to is ours, and we didn’t meet it this time. We’re now reviewing our vetting process and our guidelines for our marketing agencies to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
If you see something like this again, tell us. We rely on your feedback and vigilance.
But have they cancelled the channel from being affilates and sponsored? I don’t see them directly stating that.
ELI5 if proton is for everyone, why does it matter who they do sponsorships with? Wouldn’t being very eclectic about it be a kind of discrimination or at least following a defined political view? I can’t make, and don’t want to, know the difference between right and left in politic. People tried explaining it to me but I don’t care.
anti fascism means anti fascist no matter what. The fact you don’t care about right wing extremism doesn’t mean shit to me. Keep on using your fascist software, while not caring. Your “convictions”, or lack of, means fuck all to the world
what if Proton mail sponsored far left extremists and censored criticism on their subreddit, would it be okay then?
Are you for real using horse shoe bullshit?
If your sense of right and wrong depends on a map or a label, then I don’t think you have principles… you just have a tribe
