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Imho opinion after reading this whole drama my opinion of both Proton and PG has been damaged and both times because the frontman couldn’t keep their opinion to themselves and both also couldn’t stop when it would have been smart to stop.
But imo there is also a key difference. Proton is a non-profit organization where other people and even the Swiss government/canton of Geneva could easily stop Andy if he wouldn’t follow the goal of the non-profit but I’m actually not so sure if the same could be said for PG (is the transition to a non-profit already finished?)
I don’t intend this as an attack on Jonah or PG but those are just some of my concerns.
Thanks a lot to the whole PG team and especially to Jonah for doing your best 
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This discussion thread is actually fine for the off-topic category, which is to say, nothing that’s being discussed here is actually on-topic to materially matter (:
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Ok? Not sure why this is controversial or even worthy of a thread on here besides as rage bait for particular users.
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My bits…
I think there should be topics to discuss this stuff in PG but explicitly labeled as political and it needs to have a clear code of conduct.
Ideally one that keeps the speech pretty open but pushes back on direct attacks to humans. Discourse has trust levels so you’d need some higher level of trust to participate to avoid the trolls trying to stir the pot and enable accounts with a rep to lose (btw not requiring doxed accounts).
I think cowering away from these discussions is exactly why the siloes exist. These will never work for centralized platforms but should be where we have these conversations IMO.
Ive modded some data tech communities and would be happy to submit a proposal.
This is about privacy and thats linked to political and economical shit. We need spaces like this to air our thoughts with friends and put tolerance into practice.
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This is the best takeaway. Privacy is political and philosophical. These just happen to be some of the things where most people strongly identify themselves with, and it gets personal quick. Remember, everyone here isn’t a machine that ingests data and spits out recommendations, we are people. At least until we replace ourselves with LLM versions of ourself 
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Are the “extreme-leftists” in the room with us right now? Or are you just making up a guy to fight in your head to deflect from the Proton CEO making a really dumb comment supporting someone who you may support yourself and are mad that there’s pushback
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You can browse comments/replies on Reddit, X, Mastodon and Bluesky.
Edit as of 24 January 2025: Since this thread is closed I’m updating this post to add some opinions of mine, I also didn’t want to create a dedicated thread for this.
I can’t bear this bs anymore on social media, where people says that Andy is a nazi, fascist or whichever names they’re calling.
This is just pure comedy. You can check Proton’s posts and replies to the posts on Bluesky yourself.
I don’t support Trump. Heck, I’m not even American. And I’m not mad that there’s pushback (as pushbacks are usually good for a service to improve itself and I agree with people who criticise that using official Proton accounts to post Andy’s replies was unprofessional and he had needed a different account from the start), I’m just mad that people exaggerating things and calling Andy names, which he is not.
off-topic
Calling everyone nazi, fascist etc. IS NOT okay, this is just a toxic behaviour. That’s one of the reasons dems lost the elections.
And in this case Andy didn’t even imply that he’s supporting Trump. Agreeing with someone’s opinion DOESN’T MEAN that you agree with all of the opinions of them. Sometimes I like posts on this forum, even if I don’t agree with some parts of the post. Attacking Proton & Andy (this is not criticizing, it’s just attacking atp) does more harm than good and is just cringe.
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On the one hand, I admire the desire for a good faith discussion but in the other I did chuckle at the second 
reaction.
This is again, where a good code of conduct for serious vs lighthearted rick rolling versions of these topics would be nice.
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They’re saying “trust me bro!!” rather than actually linking to concrete examples, so I think that tells us enough about how good faith they’re being (and bristling so hard at a react)
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Yeee that’s a good point. Not to get all legal (Ive watched some Matlock on sick days in the 90s), but the burden of proof is on @yes.
Perhaps links to specific comments would be easiest food folks to know the left behavior you aren’t a fan of vs having folks guess.
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Also because the unidimensional political spectrum has all sorts of ambiguity.
I’m a Marxy type and some may call that radical left or left of the left but I also identify as anarchopacifist so maybe less radical but also some people mean left as like people who focus on their subset of identity politics but ignore class conflict and other upstream issues like healthcare.
So uhhh anyways… Maybe also specify left.
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In light of all this, I’m reflecting on the vaguely anti-monero, anti-altcoin statements made defending why Proton was being rolled out as Bitcoin only with no privacy-enhancements or support for privacy currencies. There isn’t enough info to say this with any degree of confidence but it just kind of feels like Andy might be fairly gullible/impressionable when it comes to non-technical topics in light of that sitaution and the current one.
In that earlier minor controversy, Proton was adopting and using some rather weird, bitcoin-maximalist language that was pretty out of line with their tone and values as a company, and also just weird, and seemingly dismissive of truly privacy promoting cryptocurrencies like Monero. That caused controversy that they then had to try to walk back and justify.
Now in this case, as he apparently engages more with right wing lawmakers and lobbyists in the US, he seems to have swallowed their party’s marketing and branding without questioning it. He seems upset that a prominent Dem senators children are lobbyists but seems either unaware or unwilling to admit, that the person he just called a “great choice” was an executive for a lobbying firm that fought against California’s privacy legislation on behalf of big tech clients. If she is a great choice (and I’m giving him and her the benefit of the doubt that she might be), I’d really like to know why he feels that way, and why he seemingly applies a double standard with respect to lobbyists in her case.
I don’t know that this take is the right take, it probably isn’t. But I’m grasping for plausible explanations, and this is the most plausible I can come up with that doesn’t assume bad faith/disingenousness on Andy’s part. We all misspeak, we all make missteps, we all are occasionally confidently-incorrect, or say more than we meant to say sometimes. I’m hoping that this is just an example of that and this controversy can be put to rest.
If I comment on this again in the next 24hrs, I give everyone permission to tell me to GTFO of the thread 
I intend this to be my last comment on the topic until/unless something changes.
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People claims that Andy (& Proton) is indirectly involved in fascism, racism and homophobia WHICH is not the case here. I’m indeed acting in good faith, but these people aren’t.
I’m not bristling over anything, it really adds nothing useful to the discussion. I’m not saying “trust me bro”, I’m saying you can find comments/replies like this if you browse a bit.
I agree with what you’ve said here, and this is the updated response from Andy
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Andy is a human. We do well at telling stories and sometimes we apes make emotional decisions.
Companies aren’t their CEOs (in most cases), and are complex systems that ideally keep self correcting mechanisms.
I say all this has me watching Proton a bit closer and glad I have this community as a sounding board. I wint be jumping ship any time soon and i just think the fat orange ape has all the people in a bit of a stir right now.
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I refrained a couple of times in this discussion to react to the posts. In topics like this, eventually someone will ended up feeling that people are ganging against them or aren’t supported or prefer to not contribute because the general tone is outside of their convenient rational.
In general, despite the appearance of a bad turn on how people reacted to the topic. There was food for thought and it was better to put it out of the chest than holding it.
Anyways, not sure where I was looking to go with this comment. Please just ignore. Sorry, to disappoint those that saw me writing for so long. I’m tired, time to sleep.
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I’m just wondering, apart from political stuff, if Proton was to support Trump’s beliefs (which is not true). They believe in privacy and security, that’s what they sell, it’s their product and it’s open source for everyone to verify. So my question is: what happens, apart from the fact that people don’t agree with trump so they hate everyone who does? (I’m not from the US, I don’t know shit about Trump and I couldn’t care less). I just let everyone be, left, right, middle, up, down, x ,y, and if people are on the other side of the spectrum I can still be respectful, you don’t have to agree on EVERYTHING. I honestly don’t get why people would jump ship because it changes nothing about the product and their ideology. Again “everyone can do what they want”, so I’m just sharing my opinion.
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I also want to note that, I understand people’s concerns and frustrations of Trump BUT saying Andy is supporting Trump is a bit overkill. Agreeing with someone’s decision IS NOT supporting them, at least in my eyes. Though, he could’ve phrased it better.
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To understand why the US is so divided i recommend reading the cliff notes or watch an interview with Noam Chomsky on manufactured consent.
The last time the US had a successful pluralist movement was the civil rights movement in the 70s amd before that was the antitrust laws. Upper class realized the threat pluralist (notice i didnt say populist) movememts had on their ability to maintain a proletariat working class.
Since the civil rights movements, you started seeing political philosophy pushed like the war on drugs, trickle down economics, and a media obsessed with shows like cops and how to catch a predator. The strategy of divide and rule came heavily into play in the mid 80s and we’re starting to see the success of this 40 year campaign of hate thy neighbor in full force in the states and spreading into the minds of many other countries. It’s full blown imprerialism and again… This is why politics are so dang relevant to privacy.
I’m an avid believer in fix the system and love the people. The system is large amd gnarly and has developed for centuries. I think the internet gives us the opportunity to assemble to rekindle the love and reverse course on divide and rule. We need people hacktivists, journalists, and anyone else to stay safe from the international police state we live in today.
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I just don’t understand what it adds to be honest. Tuta and tresorit don’t share their political opinions and might be full blown trump supporters walking around with a maga hat, we don’t know. This way, how can PG recommend a product? We have to ask all companies and their employees for their political preferences? As long as a product adheres to the terms required to be on this website, it’s private and secure, so I just don’t understand why it matters and why we’re having this discussion… once proton starts changing it will be removed from this website…
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