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.

  • Red_October@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Yeah Proton already burned that bridge. “Politically Neutral” is no longer an option for them.

  • Spazz@lemmynsfw.com
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    7 days ago

    Imagine being so fucking brainwashed you believe Republicans are for “the little guy”

  • loon@sh.itjust.works
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    7 days ago

    Again privacy oriented companies that bend to demagogues and desperate profiteers cannot be trusted to handle sensitive data.

    Switched from ProtonVPN to Mullvad and ProtonMail to Posteo. Wiped my ProtonDrive. I sleep pretty soundly at night.

  • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I cannot fathom being that stupid to believe that Republicans are anti-monoploy when they give huge corporation massive tax breaks and removes barriers for mega mergers

  • febra@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    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.

  • JustTheWind@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Okay, I feel like the part that people are skipping over is the “cooperating with authorities on legal data requests” part. No. As a privacy company; You DO NOT save and store ANY information apart from what is crucially and imminently necessary to run your service. Anything beyond that is a blatant conflict of interests and should not be trusted. Corruption and data sharing that CAN happen, WILL happen when it comes to data security based companies. Full stop.

  • Victor@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    And today I got an email saying they’re donating a million dollars to support non-profits for privacy and freedom. Timing, timing, timing.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    Correction; the CEO posted a rather tone deaf message. while this is incredibly dumb, it should be little reason to burn the company to the ground

    Having said that, people should start looking at email again how it was designed to be: have thousands of open providers instead of the tiny fee enormous ones we got now

  • Mikina@programming.dev
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    6 days ago

    What would be a good alternative? I refuse to support this. Thankfully, I have my own domain, so anything where I can use it would be great, and moving shouldn’t be that hard. Bonus points if I can use wildcards, or at least have a few emails, like spam@mydomain and other.

    Oh, and it has to support “+” emails, such as mail+whatever@mydomain.com

  • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
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    7 days ago

    Yeah I definitively know which service is not getting my donations or subs this year. I’ll continue using their free service for a while until I can migrate most stuff. After all it’s all their cost. If they want to be nazis, the least I’ll be is a load to them.

  • doktormerlin@feddit.org
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    7 days ago

    Any good alternatives for ProtonVPN when visiting China? ProtonShield looks pretty promising and with 10 devices for 9,99€ a month my whole family (8 people) would get it for our trip

    • wax@feddit.nu
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      8 days ago

      Same. Considered getting a domain for my email, but ended up just switching directly to the protonmail domain. Regretting that now.

      • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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        8 days ago

        Getting your own domain is the best thing you can do, regardless of provider - it means they can’t lock you in anymore.

        • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
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          8 days ago

          I gotta get a personal domain just for email, I don’t really want my personal life mixed in with our small business domain; both due to the nature of the products and because I don’t want to dox myself on either side of the work/life gulf. It’s a shame too, because I am actually proud of our garage business.

          • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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            8 days ago

            I totally get that; I have three domains (work, personal, and one only for online services / aliases)

          • ArchAengelus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            8 days ago

            They’re relatively cheap. I’ve had one for years, though I don’t use it for email forwarding.

            Weird shit also happens if send mail isn’t coming from a big provider :(

            • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
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              8 days ago

              Yeah, I have no desire to try to host smtp. I’m thinking I could run my own imap and pull mail from various accounts and then just send mail through proton or tula or whoever. Someone already trusted.

        • wax@feddit.nu
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          8 days ago

          And the main reason I didn’t get a domain? Because I couldn’t come up with a good domain name. Naming stuff is always hard.

          • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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            8 days ago

            It is hard. I made up a name that sounds like it would be a webmail provider (it has “mail” in the name).

            • Rogue@feddit.uk
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              8 days ago

              Surely the point of your own domain is to personalise it? Why would you go for something generic?

              • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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                8 days ago

                I use it with aliases for online signups, so the genericness is a feature, not a bug.

          • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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            8 days ago

            Email is already bad for privacy, and WHOIS protection solves most of the rest. And obviously don’t buy a personally-identifiable domain if that’s a concern.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Only way to make sure your email isn’t run by a Nazi is to run it yourself.

      Unless you’re a Nazi in which case FUCK OFF

      • eclipse@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        Even for the technically literate, running a mail server is an ongoing nightmare. If you think it’s easy, you’re not doing it right.

    • potate@lemmy.ca
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      8 days ago

      Dagnabbit - I went all in on Proton as well. Why is it so hard to find an email provider that respects privacy and isn’t run by people with ‘problematic’ views (i.e. people who wish people like me didn’t exist)

    • peregrin5@lemm.ee
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      8 days ago

      I guess I’m lucky he came out with this shit just as I was about to migrate.

      • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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        7 days ago

        The EU was initially a good idea, but it got too involved in national politics (anyone remembers the banana guideline that reads like a meme?). I still think, the EU is fine and we should keep it, but it should be a defensive alliance first and foremost and not some fucking merger that is advocating for the rich. Sadly, it’s the rich that have the influence because, well, money and they are going to abuse it.

        A call for isolation and autarky is a massive red flag and nothing good will ever happen after that, it always leads to exploitation and violence. The reason CEOs don’t like globalism is because it’s harder to create a monopoly on a global market than regional and capitalism strives for those because it hates competition.

      • the_swagmaster@lemmy.zip
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        7 days ago

        Ar eyou saying Proton’s CEO is a Nazi? Far as I can tell he isn’t

        Edit: your message is confusing which is why I ask

    • DahGangalang@infosec.pub
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      8 days ago

      #BigSame Friend.

      I was looking at Tutanota for a bit. Guess I’m need to bust open that research again.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Signed up last month because I had something to protect. Looking into Tuta. Anyone know a comparable free vpn?

        • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          I am aware of mullvad, and it sounds very good. However, I was looking for a free vpn, as I use vpn service very rarely.

    • warm@kbin.earth
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      8 days ago

      While the comments were not welcome and left a sour taste, we are blowing it a bit out of proportion here.

      • ZeroCool@slrpnk.net
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        8 days ago

        You don’t get to decide how other people feel and respond to the issue.

        • warm@kbin.earth
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          8 days ago

          Person A has an opinion, that is allowed. Person B has opinion, that is not allowed.

          • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
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            7 days ago

            Lol I read this thread first, then went to the article and his comments were supportive of the potential for anti-trust legislation under the new administration? That makes him a Nazi? Wtf 😂

            This is a huge reason why Lemmy faces an uphill battle in terms of growth, these absolutely batshit insane political takes pollute most threads about newsworthy events, which are in many ways the lifeblood of a content aggregator.

            I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen people say they tried Lemmy for a little while but eventually stopped because they got sick of every thread and community being constantly flooded with Nazi comparisons, accusations of genocide denial, and guillotine the rich stuff.

            Like I get it, I really do, but maybe direct some of that righteous anger into some kind of real world activism instead of constantly bitching at anonymous strangers on Lemmy. These people are so outraged and the situation is so dire, and yet they continue to scroll online forums and farm upvotes? Have some ideological consistency ffs, if it’s a matter of life and death, go out there and do something to help.

            Doomposting on Lemmy accomplishes nothing, and in fact continues to marginalize one of the few tools that we could potentially have to fight back. If Lemmy were to grow significantly and become a place where people could organize and communicate without being subject to corporate control or censorship, that could potentially do a great deal of good for people IRL. But constantly whining Nazi this, Nazi that is preventing that growth from happening.

            • PlainSimpleGarak@lemmings.world
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              7 days ago

              Which is why this platform will never have a meaningful growth. But 90% of the user base is happy with that because they enjoy having their opinions validated and not challenged a.k.a. echo chamber.

              • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
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                7 days ago

                Well, never say never. It happened once already, in June/July 2023 the userbase grew more than 10x.

                And we have seen a nice bump of 2k users in the past week or so as the fediverse has gotten some publicity. Reddit is not an option so we have no choice but to try to make Lemmy better, and I genuinely believe that the federated, decentralized concept can be the solution in so many ways.

                Piefed and Mbin are also huge boons to our chances of success. Lemmy may not ever take off, but I expect one of the fediverse content aggregators eventually will. Reddit is simply too shitty of a user experience, they are guaranteed to fail.

              • warm@kbin.earth
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                7 days ago

                Reminds me of another site. It’s why upvotes/downvotes will never work.

                • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
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                  7 days ago

                  That other site is the 6th most visited website in the world, so clearly having upvotes/downvotes doesn’t preclude growth.

                  Does mbin only have upvotes or am I misremembering? And boosts I guess. That’s not my personal preference but the beauty is we can still access the same content from different platforms.