Proton CEO endorses Trump nominee for assistant attorney general

Hello,

So, I’ve noticed on Mastodon that Proton CEO Andy had a discussion with our one and only @jonah , and it seems he just backed republican party.

The entire discussion is here: Jonah Aragon: "Hugely disappointing to see Andy Yen (Proton CEO)…" - Mastodon

I don’t want to go into the politics, but it seems pretty terrible for a privacy company CEO to back anti privacy governments. Personally, I’m moving away as this, for personal reason, deeply concerns me.

Please keep the discussion civil and focused on the privacy.

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Better to link to their reply:

And Andy’s other reply on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/so_that_happened/

Yeah, pretty cringe though, IMHO.

It’s interesting to me that my post from 3 weeks ago suddenly took off yesterday/today, but it just goes to show that more people should be following me on Mastodon :laughing:


Also, my preemptive reply to people complaining about politics or saying that he’s right about Gail Slater or whatever:

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Recent comments have made Andy come across as quite naive/uninformed about American politics (maybe politics generally), and a little bit gullible, which is troubling considering his position.

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Look, from one POV, they want to do what they feel like they need to, to advance their cause from a business POV, but explicit “support” like this to one highly problematic side is still not the best course of action.

You can feel what they or Andy must be thinking but this is bad no matter how you see it or interpret it.

I mean, why interfere or get into the muck?

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My big question is: why? I can understand the motivation for American tech CEOs to cozy up to the incoming administration but does Proton, a swiss non-profit really have that much to gain? As others are getting at, this reflects pretty poorly on the Proton CEO.

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I don’t see what the problem is, everyone believes and chooses the side they want, all the people who work for Signal, Linux, Proton, GOS etc. are necessarily democrats or republicans (right or left), some may even be racist, the most important thing is the finished product, if it corresponds to my needs in terms of security and private view, political choices don’t matter.

Being neither is a perfectly valid option! It is an even easier option for Andy Yen, who is not an American :slight_smile:

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You are really making justice to your alias :joy:

This is really dumb. Specifically the part where Yen makes massive oversimplifications about the two ruling parties in America.

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You are or must be clearly speaking for yourself. If not, you’re so beyond misinformed - I wouldn’t even know where to begin explaining.

They could have been agnostic about the whole thing expecially being a foreign company.

ANyways, I’m going to turn off tracking for this post as its bound to get messy and I just showered.

@Proton_Team - please rethink your decisions and inform Andy Yen of not thinking this through properly. No one is perfect so I understand people making a few mistakes (even some big mistakes, but still few at most) in their executive position over the course of their tenure (but only if they are open to hearing people out and correct their actions)

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Well he supports Gail Slater and has somewhat naive thoughts about the reps (or any party) being on the side of the “little guys” but calling that “Proton CEO just backed Donald Trump administration” is a bit too much IMHO.

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I think you are missing that he is not in the USA. So he is not part of the democrats vs Republican internet war.
He saw something he agrees with and commented on it. Don´t blow it out of proportion.

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I don’t think so, backing the Republican party as a whole is what he did, completely unnecessarily I might add. If it weren’t for their recent public statements today it would be easier to write off as Andy Yen having a poorly thought out opinion on Twitter, which is all I thought about the whole thing when I originally posted that 3 weeks ago.

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dude, he basically said (in the tweet) “dems bad, repubs good”

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I honestly don’t see it this way. He backed that one decision and he seems to like what the Reps do about anti-trust, but that’s not backing the Reps/Trump as a whole IMHO.

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Yet another case of privacy and security people not being able to separate the art from the artist.

Important point: Proton is still an amazing company, and their products are just as secure and private.

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I’m not American, I don’t care what happens there, but given that the United States is the most influential country with decisions that can have a global impact, it’s normal that even as a foreigner to have a preference for some candidates over others, especially in the case of CEOs of global companies.

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Then he should have been explicitly clear about only backing one thing and not the entire entity attached to it. As far as I see, Proton or Andy hasn’t done that.

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Oh yeah - let’s get Aaron Hernandez back (if he were alive) and may him millions for his art of palying football even though he is a murderer.

Yeah, this is how I see it. The way to resolve this problem was blindingly obvious, so simply the fact that they didn’t correct themselves is proof that they don’t see backing the Republicans as a problem in the first place. They left very little room for interpretation in their literal words.

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