using services based on the ceo's political leaning instead of actual features and policies of that service? that's dumb, tell me when that political leaning reflects in polices of proton then we can talk
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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In all seriousness, I genuinely feel like the demographics of those making over 250K/year outside of Silicon Valley (proton is from Switzerland which is a center-right country), and outside of the arts industries, is probably bare minimum of lib-center, and probably most likely to be at least fiscally conservative, if not socially as well. Those kind of people are more concerned with maintaining their financial position than the issues plaguing the income classes that the individual has graduated out of.
I don’t think you’re going to find many CEOs that aren’t at least a little right of center or self serving in their business interests.
Getting to the top 1% income bracket is a lot easier than maintaining that financial position.
Protonmail has been my main email provider for the past 7 years, and unless its CEO decides to sell it to Trump or Musk I honestly don't see how his stupid private or not so private opinions are worth the hassle of changing my email for the million things I use my main and all the other emails I registered with Protonmail.
Most rich people have very dubious or outright awful political opinions and unless you're rich enough to have someone build you an alternative or deconnected enough from society/only exist in programmer circles and are able to live entirely on FOSS software I don't see why the average user should care about the CEO's political stance. Maybe that's my ignorant opinion as a European, but would you stop using Linux if you found out Linus Torvalds secretly loves Windows? Probably not.
Your analogy/ example is fucked up and beyond stupid. Protonmail is hosted by the organization. Linus has no access to the Linux systems in the world. Also, thousands have contributed to the Linux ecosystem.
I agree that my analogy is fucked up and a little stupid, but I was just applying OPs logic: Andy Yen doesn't do any more for Proton than Linus Torvalds does for Linux; they're just stand in figures that people project their love or in this case hate onto. I doubt he personally wrote a single line of code for Proton. In that case Linus Torvalds is actually way more involved with Linux than Andy Yen is with Proton; Andy Yen might have more power over Proton but afaik and like you said Proton is owned in majority by its foundation, which I hope does get a say in what they do.
How dare you find a tone to respond that makes me regret my original harsh choice of words a little? :P Still - my point was that no matter how much Torvals is involved, the linux ecosystem isn't under his control, while proton services are very much under corporate control, and if their CEO decides to introduce a backdoor for american nazi services, that can happen.
He directly profits from Proton subscriptions. As does the rest of the leadership which seem to back him on this.
A comparison of singing the praises for a modern proto-fascist movement with "secretly loving Windows" is... certainly something.
I secretly love your post.
Service =/= Software
Proton could (theoretically) hold your data hostage. Linus Torvalds could not just update linux to inject a maga banner in your desktop, or turn your os into ransomware. Even if your distro maintainer wanted to do that, you still have the final say on whether or not to update (and if you keep up with the news, you can just avoid the update and wait for someone to fork it).
God damnit I literally just got Proton going like 4 days ago.
I was mulling moving everything from Google to Proton. Guess I'll keep my money for now.
As a Brit, I'm not offended by the Proton CEO's post. I don't like Donald Trump BUT I do like that he has hired someone who should be tough on tech anti-trust moves. This is very important.
Americans can be obsessed with their electoral system, but the rest of us don't have to pretend to support the Democrats or Republicans. I don't necessarily agree with all of Andy Yen's take regarding the two parties, but I'm not offended enough by it to boycott Proton, certainly not based on one tweet. I can also see the pragmatic benefit to his position by massaging trumps well known fragile ego.
Was there any urge (as if you can be urged at all to bootlick a rightwing asshole) to make these statements? No. Yet he did it.
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You could look at infomaniak, but I didn't have the best experience trying out (or even getting started with) their services. Finding a provider that has all of Proton's apps is going to be tough (or at least it was from me while I was looking to escape from Tuta). Good luck, tho.
Finding a provider that has all of Proton's apps is going to be toug
Nobody should be using any provider as one stop shop... That's how we got cooked by Google and Apple the first time folks.
Unbundle, mix and match...
Yeah it auck Proton did this but if you only got one proton service, it is eaiser to either do nothing or switch it.
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Escape from Tuta for what reason if you're willing to share? I see it recommended a lot.
Oh boy, getting old here, let's see if I can remember.
I think in part it was because they seemed unable to fix the Linux desktop client after months and months and months, and repeated support requests. Also, I had been a user of theirs for some time when they changed how their plans worked, and moved a feature I relied heavily upon (I think it was email templates—something you might never need!) to a much more expensive plan. Felt like I was being charged more for being a longtime user. I don't know if they have cloud storage now, but at the time they didn't, and Proton had that, along of course with mail and calendar—all of that for less than what Tuta was offering which was mail, calendar, and plenty of other features that were continuously promised but never released. So really just a bunch of little things that were important to me, but which other users might never miss.
Thanks for the writeup. It helps to know where to look to make an informed decision, when I finally have the time to sit down and de-google.