Should have done a valve and allowed selling anywhere but require price parity. Now from their greed there will be financial incentive for people to use another platform.
I thought Valve was the one who created Proton in the first place to let people play games on Linux
Different Proton my dude.
The Proton in the post offers mail, storage, and VPN services.
They just lowering the prices cause of his backlash for supporting Trump.
Fuck Proton. Snitching ass bitches.
Online drama which it seems you’ve been drawn into believing
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
That’s you and all the trumpets.
I’m not American?
Damn. People here sure love purity testing. The guy could pay for their cancer treatment and still slap him every chance because they got it wrong publicly in the past but once you get it wrong publicly once, you’re out of the club. Go be a conservative we don’t want you. When someone at Tuta has a bad year and ends up in the wrong publicly, find another email service to try and convince people to go too. Probably worse in functionality than Tuta as you go down to smaller and worse funded efforts in this niche field of Internet activism
But people here do it here too to Mozilla because they don’t like their social outreach programs and their attempts to get advertising revenue so screw Mozilla too. So because nothing but perfection is acceptable, push away people that may be adjacent/left leaning right and switch to less developed products. Switch from Firefox and attack Mozilla who do the bulk of Firefox development and use Waterfox who do a custom deployment/build. Pure display of perfection being the enemy of good here.
You want people to embrace privacy but keep whiplashing people around when the org/anyone in leadership says something wrong. Screw Signal, they’re not perfect. Screw Matrix/Element, some developer said something one day so it’s all bad. I’m surprised anyone here uses any privacy software or a major open source software like Linux or Krita or Blender at the risk that someone in the background may be wrong in someway which I am 100% certain they exist in important positions. Same with Lemmy
Go back to the 60s and you all would be shitting on Fred Hampton for accepting the impure and the color coalition for everyone that had ever said something wrong. Al Franken definitely would not make it with y’all. Y’all can’t build up leftist communities because y’all are bitter assholes that can’t move on and spend so much time purity testing. Y’all are probably mediocre too so can’t make a difference in privacy and data ownership activism anyways so should be lining up to support not just Tuta, someone hasn’t screwed up publicly yet, and Proton
Reminds me of Aung San Suu Kyi. She was under the gun of the military ruling class that permitted limited democratic government and because she didn’t make speech as if she lived in the US, a bunch of Americans turned on her and celebrated when the military dictatorship came back to rule and put her in prison the moment it seemed like the civilian government would actually assert more power
It’s not a purity test so much as a fear that publicly signaling loyalty to trump devalued their trustworthiness as private and secure. If their CEO legitimately believes that Republicans are better on tech policy than democrats because conservatives want to weaponize the federal government to control speech online, then I don’t really trust him not to cooperate with federal authorities when they want to access someone’s emails or vpn traffic. Conservatives are simply not trustworthy to me
Louder for the idiots who can’t seem to listen. Preach!
This. It’s amazing how naive people here can be just because they fanboyed some random CEO before they were revealed to be problematic.
Yeah a lot of people fan over celeberties politicians or CEO’s, but at the same time a lot of people also hate those same people for various reasons. And people believe in bad against bad and not even the law anymore and don’t believe in second changes or forgiveness.
We call that, the internet.
That’s just ad hominem to say people are fanboying the CEO. I never heard the name of the CEO until people started complaining about him. Then I read the statements he put out and that people are hysterical over and reading into as if he’s some Trump fanboy. The guys not even an American. He doesn’t live in the US. He just runs a service as an alternative to the big tech companies. Was he even in the US for anything but his university years and he’s 40?
Americans read more into him than his record and statements say. Not everyone’s politics revolve around Americans. I’m waiting for American leftist to turn on Shawn Fain too for supporting Trump auto tariffs and be anti auto workers union because too many in the union are Trump supporters and even someone in opposition like Shawn Fain is supporting a Trump policy. That’s even more direct and influential than a guy in Europe that runs a niche privacy centric internet service company
Problematic, barely. It’s a handful of statements months ago compared to his life of work. Magnifying glass to your whole life and people would likely find something problematic. If this guy is representative of what a problematic person is, the world would be pretty solid. Waste of energy to be so anti this guy and Proton when it’s a service more conducive to privacy rights than anything I or probably any of us have done. Problematic has become such an empty insult with how easily it’s thrown around with such passion. Waste of passion
This is literally just insane rambling. You need serious media literacy.
Tell me why I’m wrong
The premise is already wrong. There was no promise or loyalty, not even close.
He endorsed the republican party. He said we should clean house of democrats. Is that not declaring party loyalty? It was also a completely unnecessary comment, in response to nothing. It was shortly after Trump’s election when every CEO went out of their way to kowtow to the new regime. Its transparently a loyalty pledge to the new boss
He didn’t endorse the republican party.
The fact that you inflate the meaning of that tweet to make it more meaningful than it is, doesn’t mean he did anything of the sort. The tweet happened after the election but before the government, and it was an endorsement of the antitrust appointee. He also expressed his opinion that republicans were more likely than democrats to fight big tech monopolies in the antitrust space. This is far from an endorsement.
It was also a completely unnecessary comment, in response to nothing.
It was in response to Trump’s tweet about the antitrust appointee. I would say quite relevant context for a tweet about the antitrust appointee.
It was unnecessary, true. Like every tweet. He expressed his unnecessary opinion, the same way we are doing now.
10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.
Bro I mean come on, this is literally an endorsement of the republican party. I don’t know how more explicit it can get. You’re asking people to not believe their own eyes here. Even worse:
By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand. And that’s a missed opportunity for Dems, because by and large, support for cracking down on corporate monopolies is popular on both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, corporate capture of Dems is real and in the end money won. It is hard to see how this changes, and Republicans are likely to lead the antitrust charge in the coming years
He decries the “corporate capture” of the Democratic party while completely failing to address to much larger and more immediate threat of an outright christo-fascist movement capturing the entire Republican party and all 3 branches of federal government. Like he thinks that “the democrats didnt move as fast on this thing as I wanted them to” somehow compares to “the president is kidnapping people with a personal army of gestapo and disappearing them to a black site in El Salvador”.
And you may say “well he’s not interested in immigration policy; he’s interested in technology policy”. If you are in the business of privacy and security, then you should not be putting yourself in the corner of a political cult with zero respect for the law, zero guiding moral principles, and which is only motivated by using any means necessary to crush their political enemies. Yen is supporting a wannabe dictator because he’s willing to weaponize the federal government to destroy his competitors.
If all he said was “good pick by Trump, look forward to working with them”, I’d accept it as a politically neutral statement that you often see from business leaders and even democratic politicians sometimes. But he went out of his way to demonize the democratic party and somehow hold the Republicans up as the defenders of small business
It’s such an unbelievably bad take (which he dug in on like 5 times even though he could have said nothing and waited for it to blow over) and completely tone deaf as to be unbelievable. Like I literally don’t believe that he doesn’t know what he’s saying; I think he, like many tech CEOs, is simply a conservative who’s too ashamed to admit it.
I am sad because of all the people in this thread who think the CEO is “fascist-sympathetic” because he said Trump did something better than the Democrats one time.
Yeah, having only just switched from GMail to Proton last week my heart sank when I saw “Proton are MAGA”.
Then I spent three minutes reading up on it and it’s like, the CEO said one thing about policy on regulation of big tech that was critical of the Democrats for not doing enough, and the internet has decided that means he’s MAGA.
He said Republicans are better on tech policy than democrats. Republicans tech policy is motivated entirely by the fact that their racist and conspiratorial views were getting them banned on social media sites from 2015 - 2024
Conservatives have absolutely zero principles. If they say they want to break up big tech, it’s because they want to control it in some way. They want the platforms to promote speech that’s beneficial to them.
If you believe that Republicans truly are better for tech policy than democrats, then you either whole-heartedly agree that a group of criminals and wannabe dictators should be able to destroy any business that publishes speech against them, or you are extremely gullible. Either way, why would I want to give you my business?
Republicans tech policy is motivated entirely by the fact that their racist and conspiratorial views were getting them banned on social media sites from 2015 - 2024
And i should care because…? Why should I care why republicans wanted to break up tech monopolies, if breaking monopolies is anyway something that I consider a positive change?
Breaking monopolies give people more choice. More choice (free) leads to hopefully people choosing more privacy conscious tools. More privacy means less data that can be handed over to doge, less data that ICE has to target minorities, etc.
then you either whole-heartedly agree that a group of criminals and wannabe dictators should be able to destroy any business that publishes speech against them, or you are extremely gullible.
Those are not the only 2 options. I am instead very happy that they will do the right thing for the wrong reason, and outside those monopolies more people will choose services that republicans have no power over. Moreover, your whole argument assumes someone is in US. I am sympathetic to the people in US, but tech monopolies are a global problem.
Why should I care why republicans wanted to break up tech monopolies, if breaking monopolies is anyway something that I consider a positive change?
Because they’re not interested in breaking up monopolies; they’re interested in threatening their political enemies with breakup so they can control speech on those platforms. Mark Zuckerberg is kowtowing to Trump now to avoid being broken up.
You think the Republicans are going to break up tech and create a more diverse online publishing ecosystem that’s harder for any one party to control? No, they’ll crush their enemies and bolster their allies, so we’ll end up with even fewer choices
There are less than 10 companies that control almost the entire tech space. What “fewer choices”…?
Breaking up google would be already enough, which is what the focus was. All your comment sounds very fuzzy to me. Basically the whole antitrust thing is on google, if republicans break it up, great. Which " allies" are they going to bolster?
Not Even trump, just «the republicans»
Do he still think fascism is good for small businesses though?
Why is it bad though? This business is in no form related to politics. It wouldn’t change fundamentally even if Hitler ran it.
You are not cooking blud
I’m not going to willingly put my money towards someone who supports that kind of thing. The first response to my comment was a very level headed response and provided evidence that he does not directly support the administration.
Still doesn’t provide me a lot of consumer confidence though.
Maybe you should reconsider your threat model. You seem to be very light on information. If political views is an issue than you’re the issue.
Political views are 100% the issue, they drive all other business decisions. If you’re fucked enough to support what’s going on in the US government, I can’t trust you to be a normal human, let alone run a business.
Fuck off with your apologisim for nazis
I bet every company has at least one employee with right-wing political views. Choosing a product based on some random quotes by employees is stupid.
MASSIVE fucking difference between Bob in the warehouse being a racist fuck, and the god damn CEO.
Hold on, racism? We are talking about racism? Did I miss something?
If only he ever said that you weren’t making up bullshit by misrepresenting his statement.
https://x.com/andyyen/status/1864436449942110660
Seems pretty clear to me.
Are you kidding? Hating on Andy Yen for saying dumb shit he didn’t actually literally say is basically a Lemmy staple meme by now.
I’m not a Nazi, I just admire their personnel picks. And their economic policy. And their uniforms. And the killing of some jews. But I’m not a Nazi!
I’m so tired
And article on the topic of what Andy Yen said: https://techissuestoday.com/proton-ceo-responds-to-backlash-after-his-post-supporting-trump-selection/
So, while his comment wasn’t entirely neutral I don’t see any endorsement of fascism in there.
It was the same with Elon before he went head first into facism. They usually start by selling themselves as liberal with some occasional praise of conservatives. Then later claim they are moderate or the go to favorite of tech bros claiming they are libertarian, since saying they are conservative might receive backlash.
I’d say you either openly oppose fascism or you condone it, there are no other possibilities
But I already use proton and purchased outside the Apple Store (on the proton website) and use it on my iPhone? What changed?
Nothing
Proton = Trump support
So no for me.
Fuuuuck.
This article goes into it some more, please pick your own opinion: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
This article keeps getting posted but it really just shows the author doesn’t understand the issue that was presented. It goes as far as brushing of the criticism almost immediately. Truth is Proton decided they would publicly praise a running fascist leader for goodboy points
Proton didn’t decide anything, Andy Yen posted ONE tweet and then doubled down on it with the Proton Reddit account which was deleted.
I know the US is really into this “us vs them” or Republicans against the Democrats or whatever you want to and that is fair, that’s how US policies sadly work which is also one of the reasons why the country is basically corrupt. For most people agreeing with one statement a politician made doesn’t mean anything. I can agree with some things Geert Wilders said, but that doesn’t mean Ill vote for him.
There are other articles about the whole situation, but I believe that the Tweet says more than the bullshit some people have been shouting on every post regarding Proton. Share the Tweet yes, but don’t share the bullshit.
Calling this an “us vs them” is disingenuous. Republicans are actively shredding the rule of law in the US by the day. Democrats are weak on some policy points (though not tech policy, by the way). The two are not the same at all
“Proton didn’t decide anything” He is the God damned CEO of the company.
Proton is not responsible for everything Andy Yen does, Andy Yen has to take responsibility for everything Proton does.
But his power is limited anyway since there is a governance structure by using the non profit that is shareholder of Proton. This is not America.
Never said I was American. Proton as a team has kept him on so that’s their answer. He did not have to make a post at all complementing Donald but he did and that fact says A LOT.
Thanks for sharing this!
It really does appear that the “Proton is MAGA” thing is just quote taken out of context nonsense.
Yeah no problem, everybody is allowed to make their own decisions, but I feel like everybody should at least see the actual Tweet.
Edit: apparantly people don’t want the truth to be shared? Share the dang Tweet people.
I’d use their VPN even if Hitler owns it. It’s private, secure and they stand to their values with respect to that. Why would I care about political views? Politics don’t change the service on a technical level. Literally don’t give a shit.
Except politics, actually, can change the service. For example, surrendering data in secret. Or installing backdoors.
Not that I think Proton is gonna do that (or at least hope so), but thinking “why would I care about politics, they don’t affect the app on a technical level” is incredibly naive and potentially incorrect.
With an over-the-top example, it’s kinda like saying “why should I care about the politics of my landlord after they support the “Increase Tenant’s Rent” party, it doesn’t change the service”
Unless the governance structure agrees to it they can’t and even the we vaj sue them for abusing a Swiss non profit
If your threat model depends of political idiologies then you should reconsider your threat model.
If a person signals loyalty to a criminal government which is violating the rights of its people daily, why would I trust them not to cooperate with that government when they ask for a backdoor to be installed? Conservatives are simply not trustworthy. They’re lying, backstabbing, and manipulative. They have no principles at all and will say or do anything to acquire more power and money
So why do you trust any company? Every company has people like that employed. Do you make a political-views check on every employee of a company before choosing your product?
Call me crazy, but I think there is a bit of difference between the average worker, and CEOs, investors and execs, in terms of hability to sway the company one way or another.
And that’s why you need to have a governance structure to prevent that BS. Putting a non profit above it with 3 people who together have to make decisions that to them seem to be the best for the mission will make it really hard to start being a Nazi al besudden.
Because his power is limited? He cannot just change policy on a dime
Trump is the peak example that they can, in fact, just change policy on a dime, laws and constitution be dammed.
The US is not the same as Switzerland lol
Their CEO approved of an appointment Trump made, and criticized Dem on the issue – doesn’t make him a Trump supporter. If we can’t tell the Dems off when we think the GOP does better, how can we proceed?
People aren’t criticizing him because he criticized the democrats. Liberals and leftists are pretty unhappy with the DNC right now, too. Anybody can criticize the democrats all day if they want, thats not forbidden.
They’re criticizing him because the things he said are actually fucking braindead retarded.
Can you explain?
Yeah, my 2 year plan is up in June. I haven’t decided what I’m switching to. I’ve heard good things about Mullvad’s privacy policies and politics, but I’ve also seen reviews that a bunch of sites and services have them blocked.
I’m open to suggestions at this point.
Mullvad is the gold standard
Proton itself never directly commited on anything from Trump in a positive way.
Their current CEO Andy Yen posted this Tweet. Yes he is an idiot and even doubled down on it with the Proton account Now I am not from a country with a 2 party system, but last time I checked agreeing with one statement from somebody doesn’t mean you support them. Heck finding common ground is often a way to find compromises.
Do what you want and don’t support them if you don’t want them, but don’t act like the company Proton is a Trump supporter. Heck there are a lot of articles on the Proton site which are pro privacy and pro consumer.
Andy Yen went out of his way to criticize Democrats on antitrust, which is how you can tell it’s actually a pro-Trump position unsupported by the actual facts.
I like Gail Slater. She’s possibly the best choice among people who Trump likes, to head DOJ’s Antitrust Division. She has bipartisan bona fides.
But to say that Democrats, after 4 years of Lina Khan leading the FTC, and a bunch of the reforms that the Biden FTC and DOJ made to merger standards and their willingness to sue/seek big penalties for antitrust violations, aren’t more serious than Republicans about reining in big tech consolidation and about stronger enforcement of antitrust principles, completely flips around the history and is a bad faith argument.
Andy Yen could’ve praised Gail Slater, and that would be that. Instead, he took a post by Trump that didn’t even mention Democrats, and made it about how the Democrats are bad on taking on big tech. That’s the problem everyone had with it.
Andy praised Gail Slater publicly, and they even worked together.
Anti Democrat does not mean pro Republican/trump. I personally hate both but the latter much more.
The statement he out out was literally pro-republican. He said the Republicans are better on tech policy than democrats, which is straight up retarded
How so?
Well yeah he did support a Trump statement and went out of his way to do it. Later stupidly doubled down on it by using the official response.
But, and this might be because I am not American and live in a country where politics aren’t so black and white, but I fail to see how that means you are a MAGA nut/Trump supporter or what not. Especially not because he hasn’t taken action (will be hard to do anyway since he is not American).
And there is a strong governance structure with Andy Yen only having 33% power on final says since he is 1 of 3 people in the Proton Foundation which is the shareholder of the Proton company.
Name some policies of Adolf Hitler that you support
A general increase in old person pension?
Every coin has two sides
So, Mr. Yen, are you still sympathetic to the republicans, who have a disdain for the same courts that gave you a win?
Or is your head burried so deep in your particle accelerator you don’t even have any clue about politics?
Dude thinks he knows everything because he has a PhD in Physics, literally out of touch with the politics that anyone doing 5 minutes of web searching can understand.
Dude thinks he knows everything because he has a PhD in Physics, literally out of touch with the politics that anyone doing 5 minutes of web searching can understand.
This is such a common thing. STEM education needs to be more well rounded.
Why? Idiots thinking they know more than they do won’t be stopped by this. Also if we wanted to round humanities and liberal arts by making it mandatory to pass analysis, linear algebra, organic chemistry and classical physics would just lead to much more people not graduating anything.
School is for a general education. Academia is for specialization.
I can only speak for myself… But I had 2+ years at university before declaring a (STEM) major, allowing me to take courses in political science, history, etc.
So, as someone with a STEM degree, in a field of specialists who have zero understanding of the real world outside of their field, the difference is instantly recognizable.
The idea that a more well rounded education can ever be a bad thing is just straight up ignorant and it comes off as some sort of insecurity on your part.
Nobody is kept from taking additional education if they want to, like you did. But the general education should be from school and school education needs to define the standard of what everyone should know or should at least have known at some point so he or she can refresh upon it.
If you make it mandatory to make academic education contain every subject like school did, you will end up with programs taking 20 years instead of 5 years to graduate. If you want to discriminate against certain subjects you end up in the same trap of defining certain subjects as relevant and others as irrelevant, like the criticized “STEM-lords”
I got a Proton two-year subscription that averages out to two dollars and change per month.
I already feel like I got an incredible deal.
Too bad the owner of Proton supports Trump, so when my two years subscription ends, I’m moving to Tuta or Posteo
Agreeing with a statement from a politician doesn’t mean you support that politician, that’s how compromises can even start.
But Any Yen isn’t in politics, let alone US politics, he is just an idiot.
This articles goes a bit more into it, but it is also an opinion. Don’t use Proton if you don’t want to idc: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
I moves to proton because I was paying for a vpn, storage, and password manager and it all came out to like ~$45/mo. Proton gives me all that for $30/mo. This was the 3rd password manager I had my family migrate to so I think I’m gonna stick with them for a bit unless I see some kind of evidence that proton is violating the security of its users for governments. I don’t want to have my family have to move to yet ANOTHER password manager
