Proton Mail Says It’s “Politically Neutral” While Praising Republican Party
theintercept.com
The “privacy-first” company surprised its user base when CEO Andy Yen lauded Trump on social media.

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.

  • waywardninja@sh.itjust.works
    43·
    23 hours ago

    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.

    • MadPsyentist@lemmy.nzEnglish
      7·
      1 day ago

      Im so sorry. I tried not to, but the pull was to strong. Ignore me please…

      But…

      The saying is “back pedal”, not “back petal”. “Back pedal” as in trying to pedal backwards on a bike. Not “back petal” as in trying to pick flowers at the back of a bush, maybe? Trying to not lie down on a bed of roses? Unsure.

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      13·
      1 day ago

      I am currently entrenched in Google. Slowly digging my way out so I could transfer to proton. I was probably within about a month maybe two or pulling the trigger. Zero chance that happens now. I don’t like Google But I know what they’re going to do. If I’m going to put the effort into move that critical data it’s got to be with some place I can trust or I’m going to have to host it myself.

      • Kelsier@lemmy.world
        5·
        24 hours ago

        yap I’m exactly on the same boat. I am testing the waters with proton to leave google… and then I see this… Can’t find an alternative

          • dan@upvote.au
            2·
            1 day ago

            AirVPN is still great if you need port forwarding (e.g. for P2P services). Unfortunately they limit it to 5 ports for new accounts - used to be 20.

        • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          BW is great Chefs Kiss $40 a year for 6 people, it’s a good product made by people who seem to care.

          I’m using PIA, it’s not great, but i’m not doing great things nor and I doing them quickly. They’ll give you openssl certs and you can do programmatic crap AND have a dedicated port.

          Tuta is pricey for what you get. 8/month/user for email/cal with reasonable storage, No office apps, i need to replace a LOT of google services. Still have a lot tied up in their auth/store. And honestly encrypted email (AAS) is mostly worthless. It’s not encrypted between them and office 365 or google and everyone is already reading those in transit. And Google/MS are already mining/selling the content. If you’re not talking tuta<->tuta you might as well be broadcasting it.

          The $3 for the shared box seems like a slap in the face. You’re literally already paying them for service/storage.

          You can host thousands of email users on a couple of modest boxes for a couple hundred a month.

        • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          Personally going with option 2 on an old PC, learning a lot about docker lol

          Have to be careful in planning, a lot of ISP’s block common ports needed to host dns/web/email

          Getting DKIM and SPIF running locally has a bit of a learning curve.

          The real pain is SMTP. Even if you set up everything perfectly, a lot of mail providers won’t accept SMTP traffic from a home IP.

          I think my longterm plan is to just keep a free gmail and try like hell to never use it.