Proton, the company behind the eponymous email provider Proton Mail, has won itself a loyal fanbase of dissidents, investigative journalists, and others skeptical of the prying eyes of government or Big Tech. Headquartered in Switzerland, the service describes itself as “a neutral and safe haven for your personal data, committed to defending your freedom.”
So it came as a surprise last month when Proton CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party in a post on X, declaring that “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.” When the tweet went viral, Proton’s official Reddit account posted a now-deletedcomment stating that “Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
Within hours, Proton deleted its response across social media accounts, stating that the post — which started with the words “Here is our official response” — was in fact “removed because it was not actually an official statement.” The reply went on to say: “Our policy is that official accounts cannot be used to express personal political opinions. If it happens by mistake, we correct it as soon as we notice it.”
Imo they’d only have reason to switch if the CEO of Tuta or another provider condemned Proton’s views. As of now, that hasn’t happened and probably won’t.
I don’t have the luxury of believing the CEO of what as far as I can tell might be the worlds largest privacy advocates is just ‘unaware’ the things he is spewing are factually wrong in some cases and blatantly biased in others. (Edit: to be clear I am not saying the man is never right about anything on this, just that a certain threshold has been crossed) So, I believe he is lying and quite frankly the fact that it took me 2 weeks to hear about this is exceptionally alarming. Especially Reading Jonahs points on Mastodon.
To be clear, I am not saying the guy is an awful human being or anything. The best I can describe it is in my mind, when he said such things would be the point in a TV show where you hear a record scratch and everyone stops what they are doing to observe what happens next. That’s where I think we should be at, but this is such a heavily polarized topic I legit considered not posting at all. I don’t even know that it’s possible to have a rational conversation on this. I’m not concerned with moralizing where my money goes, as this would be so far down the list it wouldn’t matter.
What I do care about is how much Proton could capitulate information that is harmful to me. I Haven’t cut my service yet because I have been evaluating this from technical, legal, and social aspects and for me the jury is out. I won’t tell anyone “cut your service!” over it because Privacy Guides still recommends it, and objectively I think the staff has more technical and legal knowledge than I do on the subject…
If this doesn’t make you uneasy you’re definitely not paying attention and you’re letting political baises get in the way of that.
I’ve been following the previous discussions here and on Reddit regarding allegations of right-wing support from Proton’s CEO and was really disappointed to see this as a recent migrated user. I found this post on r/anarchism and it seems quite well researched. But I don’t know enough about Proton’s past or political background, and while this analysis made me feel a bit more reassured, I’m still a bit uneasy and cannot make up my mind.
Proton is highly recommended on privacy guides, and as a new user, I’d love to get some feedback from people who know the company better than me. I’m still a bit concerned about this, but I don’t think other alternatives make sense for me. And in all fairness, I really admire this company and ethos.
Welcome to the boards. Interesting article. I read through it and just want to point out a few things:
The reason why people don’t view Gail Slater as a friend of privacy-conscious individuals is because:
She worked for the FTC which is what Andy and others choose to highlight, but that happened over a decade ago. Since then, she worked for Internet Associationa trade group for big technology companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon from 2014-2018. She literally did the bidding of big tech once she left the FTC.This is not something that someone w/ a focus on privacy would have on their resume
Prior to her recent role, she also worked for Roku, which objectively has one of the worst approaches to privacy in the country amongst multinational corporations. Here is their scoring. Notice that the privacy website flags it w/ a special ‘warning’ symbol to denote its privacy concerns.
From my perspective, a good analogy would be if everyone highlighted how I protected sheep from wolves from 2011-2014 and then conveniently left out the part where I spent the next decade teaching wolves all the tricks I learned about sheep. It seems disingenuous to suddenly expect her to grow a conscience and care about privacy given her consistent interactions that go against privacy.
Lastly, I think the response conflates antitrust w/ privacy. From an anti-trust perspective, I agree that she might be bad for Google. This is a privacy board though, and with that in mind, I cannot understand how anyone who lobbied against Net Neutrality, or fought against the California Privacy Act or was upper brass for the privacy sh!ts-show that is Roku, is seen as a friend of privacy-conscious individuals.
So, to summarize, given how clearly he is misjudging Gail Slater, the context of his comments come across as consistently misinformed or purposefully ignorant. We are in a situation where the president surrounds himself w/ anti-privacy social media CEOs during his inauguration, and also owns his own social media company, yet people are advocating for his administration as privacy-friendly.
For some reason, I haven’t seen people talking much on here in plain terms about about the fact that a lot of people in the US are very uneasy right now because they fear being targeted by the current administration. In this climate, any suggestion that a provider they chose to protect their data is in any way aligned with the Trump administration is, understandably, frightening. For many, this isn’t just a moral/ethical dilemma over whether they agree with the politics of the leaders of Proton but a potential compromise to their safety.
Email inherently has many security and privacy flaws that these companies can’t technologically remove and Proton’s email service still requires a good deal of trust in Proton itself. When a member of Proton’s leadership comes out in support of people who wish you didn’t exist, it’s kind of a big deal.
You can’t always separate politics from privacy, especially when those in charge of your government have repeatedly said that they want to persecute already-vulnerable groups of people.
Gonna start with a few points and end with my thoughts.
First: welcome to the forums! I actually am here because I am re-evaluating my situation with proton as well right now.
Second: I am going to be honest while I don’t feel as safe as I did on proton anymore, I haven’t canceled yet. I’ll be more than happy to talk about my reservations and why I am considering leaving. I haven’t left yet and trust that if there was a political, technical, or social reason Privacy Guides would address it quickly. I don’t want to promote or deter anyone, just give my feelings on it.
Third: He’s a human just like the rest of us. I believe Andy in his post and in his doubling down lied, and while I’ll agree there is plenty of reasons to condemn the Democrats, that is not a reason to praise Trump. Whether he lied because he wants to try and give proton some inoculation from the pressures of being on Trumps bad side or he has ulterior motives for currying political favor, it’s very clear he is trying to get political favor with this. This user on reddit I think highlights a lot of the problems Andy had to ignore or avoid thinking about Reddit - Dive into anything Some of the things responded to come from this archived post Andy later deleted Proton_Team comments on So... That happened. Given that Andy to my understanding has been politically active for years, I have trouble believing he wasn’t aware of all of this. Although who knows? I’ve been known to experiment with chemical ‘extra curriculars’ and have said some pretty stupid stuff I was lucky enough to not put on social media anywhere.
Finally: Musk has had his nose firmly up Trumps rear end. Zuckerberg has openly capitulated by ending fact checking and moderation of anti lgbt hate speech. I am not going to dig into every single example of republican shenanigans or pretend the dems are entirely innocent. The dems leave us wanting in a lot of ways. I hope I am wrong about Slater, I hope she performs well. I hope I am wrong but my entire life growing up in a republican state I have had no other experience than at their core the republicans around me being staunchly anti regulation. I don’t have any reason to believe the party that ran on slashing government services, regulations, and that is currently being wooed by big tech no matter how promising an individual candidate or nomination may look has any intention of following through on creating more legislation or acting in the best interest of consumers. It’s been apparent for a long time Trump has only been interested in hard liners who’ll do what he wants above all else across the board.
–My thoughts–
Years ago I read the book Night by Eli Wiesel. The thing that haunts me to this day is the naivety Eli observed all the way through. “It can’t happen to us” and “It won’t happen to us” and “surely things will get better!” were said long after it was clear there were signs things were wrong. My concerns all center around not wanting to bury my head in the sand and pretend Andy didn’t say something that is contextually alarming. Setting aside any parallels to the holocaust there are a lot of concerns. Right now I use Proton VPN to watch porn. In my state the age verification process requires providing the state government your ID to use various porn websites. A lot of people kinda shrug or think I am over blowing this, but Project 2025 explicitly states it will be going after porn. I don’t trust my state government to not make a database of the porn I watch. I don’t trust them to protect a database of the porn I watch to keep it from falling into malicious hands that might try to leverage it against me. I start with porn because quite frankly it’s a great example of however easy it would be to track my habits, I am sure not handing them the keys to make it easier. Currently half the states want your ID to watch porn. Half the states which represent a facet of the government want to monitor you while you do a thing they are openly hostile to. Lots of women in many states may not have access to various methods of contraception in places that would legally prosecute them for seeking appropriate medical care even in other states. (So much for ‘states rights’ eh?) Trump has already put out two executive orders dealing with trans people. Trans people make up a tiny portion of the overall population, which means it takes all the less effort to monitor their activities. People either work or have relatives who work for the fed and there is no telling how far “DOGE” might go to try and get federal workers to step down or what methods might be resorted to to get employees fired. As far as I am concerned the top requirement to be the POTUS is, “Willing to do war crimes” and that is independent of party. On a personal note: I would love to believe Andy is just misguided. I certainly don’t believe he has any particular malice toward any particular group. I just don’t have the luxury of not believing it was a lie for the moment and that’s a pretty major concern. The saying is, “when you sleep with dogs, you rise with flees.” Even if Andy had a noble angle of trying to stay on Trumps good side for the customers sake, it’s hard not to feel like he doesn’t have fleas now. It’s hard to not worry those fleas won’t spread or cause plagues.
But to me, this is still strike one. I will slow down on moving some stuff to Proton like Aliasing services. I’ll wait and see if more BS like this happens again.
Let’s not forget that Elon IMO was once a fighting force for the greater good, but then completely switched 180 with the submarine and “pedo guy” event.
It’s entirely possible that this could happen to Andy.
What I don’t understand here is, why people do not move away to for example Tuta as their provider?
Tuta has E2EE, has real offline support, has contact sync, has a better encryption than Proton, has a push system which does not rely on Apple/Google and and and …
And Tuta does not have some weird guys like Andy and his friends within the board.
I stay with Proton because it’s a great balance between user friendliness and privacy. A lot of stuff is integrated with eachother like Proton Pass and Aliasing. Plus I only have to pay one company to have it all and it personally gives me peace of mind to not have 6 different subscriptions at 6 different companies but that’s just a me thing.
I said this in the other discussion, Andy made a mistake posting his political views, but it doesn’t really change the product. Plus, we don’t know the political views of the CEO of Tuta for example so just swapping to them just because of Andy’s political views feels stupid to me.
Imho opinion comparing Elon and Andy seems a bit unfair at the moment. Maybe I’ll come back to this comment in a few years and regret it but I don’t think so.
The myth of Elon Musk as a fallen hero needs serious dismantling. His ventures, cloaked in “humanity-saving” rhetoric, are just fundamentally profit-driven. Below are some points:
Tesla’s electric vehicles coexist with documented worker exploitation and union-busting.
Is this genuine concern for humanity, or classic capitalist playbook? Musk’s “genius” often involves rebranding existing technologies, standing on the shoulders of underpaid giants. His veeeeeeery wealthy upbringing (which a loooot of people don’t know) provided a huge advantage. His problematic behavior, from spreading misinformation to silencing critics, reveals a deeply flawed character, not a “good” person gone wrong.
The “pedo guy” incident and submarine stunt didn’t change him; they exposed the cracks in his carefully constructed illusion. He’s not a fallen hero; he’s been playing the capitalist game all along. Maybe he also just felt confident enough to let his facade down.
Please remember that this is the Privacy Guides forum. It is not a place for general partisan politics beyond the scope of this specific topic. Only by keeping posts on topic and in good faith can this topic remain open.
People are perfectly justified in forming their own opinions in regards to whether their faith in Proton has been damaged. That being said it’s important to remember that Proton remains technically sound and that Andy Yen does not own Proton.
This sentiment really bothers me on this forum. You can’t just say a service like Proton is unilaterally and wholly “technically sound” as if that ties everything up in a nice little bow and makes everything ok. Proton’s services are not 100% private and secure and trust in the provider is required.
As I said in my previous comment, Proton’s email service absolutely requires a certain amount of trust for the vast majority of use cases. Proton’s VPN service is literally just a transfer of trust from your ISP to them. Trust actually is important in deciding what service you use, and I can totally understand why support of the Trump administration and the Republican party constitutes a breach of trust for many people.
I’m sorry this was your interpretation. I truly don’t want to understate the implications of recent events and the trust required for certain aspects of Proton’s offerings.
However, it’s important to differentiate between the parts of Proton’s offerings that require trust and those that are designed to be trustless. For example, it would be unreasonable to worry about Proton reading the contents of your documents in Proton Docs, since they cannot decrypt those documents even if they wanted to.
On the other hand, using email aliases to achieve pseudo-anonymity does require a level of trust in Proton, since they are inherently tied to your account. In this case, you are trusting Proton not to assist a third party in correlating those aliases to your account and potentially your legal identity. You are also trusting them by using their domains which, at the end of the day, they have ultimate control over and could revoke at any time, which would leave you out of luck if you needed to recover a password for an account. This is the sort of case that I agree people are perfectly justified in expressing concern about.
I find it very unfortunate that you removed @DailyChems response, because it was very nice and showed what is currently happening in this political discussion and I feel these kinds of responses are only removed if they support the “wrong” side.
The reply from @Anvil kind of proves that the discussion is useless to have. I’m not sure what is expected now, will the PG team have to do a background check for every tool it recommends just to check if one of the employees is actually a Trump or right wing supporter? And will we now unanimously have to make a decision which side we support so we match that to the tools we recommend?
I thought this website looks at open source tools and checks if they are private and secure and if the company behind it is based in a country where laws would protect the users. Imho political discussions have nothing to do with it, and as you can see, nothing really useful came from this thread and all the other threads about this subject. Proton is still a recommended tool, and left wing supporters are still screaming they will leave.
I am not asking the privacyguides team to do anything except allow people to voice valid concerns over trust on the forum in regard to platforms that require trust.