Copied from the reddit post:
Hi all, last night, a post from last year from my personal X account suddenly became a topic of discussion here on Reddit. I want to share a few thoughts on this to provide clarity to the community on what is Proton’s policy on politics going forward.
First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesn’t serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.
Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.
The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.
The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.
It is also a legal guarantee under Swiss law, which explicitly prohibits us from assisting foreign governments or agencies, and allows us no discretion to show favoritism as Swiss law and Swiss courts have the final say.
The promise we make is that no matter your politics, you will always be welcome at Proton (subject of course to adherence to our terms and conditions). When it comes to defending your right to privacy, Proton will show no favoritism or bias, and will unconditionally defend it irrespective of the opinions you may hold.
This is because both Proton as a company, and Proton as a community, is highly diverse, with people that hold a wide range of opinions and perspectives. It’s important that we not lose sight of nuance. Agreeing/disagreeing with somebody on one point, rarely means you agree/disagree with them on every other point.
I would like to believe that as a community there is more that unites us than divides us, and that privacy and freedom are universal values that we can all agree upon. This continues to be the mission of the non-profit Proton Foundation, and we will strive to carry it out as neutrally as possible.
Going forward, I will be posting via u/andy1011000. Thank you for your feedback and inputs so far, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.
I’m personally satisfied with the statement, position and reflection on the issue.
It was a fuck-up to publicly respond to donaldtrump in what could be seen as an endorsement. This was acknowledged and remedied.
The no politics stance is probably unavoidable, as mentioned but they should never focus on political parties, but on defending the values, this is what is clarified and that’s best. We should accept to support a bill strengthening privacy even if it may come from a political party we generally do not support. Denying our support to such a bill would not strengthen the core value we defend. And as individuals we may still criticize all other activities of such a political party if we disagree with others of their activities.
As a community, I hope we can come together, and resist the temptation of purity tests, and acknowledge that we are all fighting for the same cause, no matter our perspective on other issues. We need the support of everyone.
Nobody on the left, afaik, rejects bills out of hand, purely because of which party promulgates it… The problem is, while the American Reich talks a lot about worker’s issues, the bills they propose are just oligarch hand outs, cloaked in socialist or populist ideas. ie, The PATRIOT Act was the least patriotic bill ever put forth, but NOBODY was allowed to be unPATRIOTic and vote against it. The left, opposed it. Same with the 1993 Crime Bill, put forth by Dems… Can’t be “anti-crime” now can we?
Catering to the “Libertarian” neo-Nazi crowd so they buy your product vs wanting to defend minorities against these sort of people is not the same cause
You’re confusing proton with our stance as a community which cares about privacy.
As a community the question is, will we shun anyone who cares about furthering our rights to privacy, because they have other stances on other issues?
Doing so is only isolating us and prevents us from making our issues heard and gathering more support across the political spectrum.
You can fight alongside someone you don’t agree with on other topics. It is not an endorsement for all they stand for.
I don’t value privacy for the sake of privacy, I value it because it’s useful for defending against capitalists and fascists who want an unequal society that commits genocides and incarcerates people for immutable characteristics. Fascists don’t value privacy for the sake of privacy either, for them it’s a tool to further their goals of creating the worst society possible. It comes down to a left vs right issue, I picked one side, and Proton picked to promote the other.
The Reich Wing doesn’t want to further your rights to privacy. Their “other stances” are that some humans are sub-human, and deserve to be extinct.
So, yes, you shun the people who think some humans are sub-human.
Perhaps I need to review my thoughts and either see how I really feel about this topic or find another way to express them.
Either way, you are making a compelling argument and I am not in disagreement.
His main point is outright wrong though. Republicans are not better at anti-trust, they’re the big money. Thinking Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos will protect small tech companies is laughable.
This comment is not the original. He changed it.
https://archive.ph/quYyb
They seem to be two separate things. One is a comment, the other is a post.
Either way, if he believes this:
he’s fucking dumb as a hammer
He’s not wrong. There’s a reason all tech billionaires switched to the Republican party when it became clear their dem donations wouldn’t help them any more.
When’s the last time the gop did something to prevent an abuse of any kind?
When was the last time the Dems did?
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
This article goes into some details that I’ll just recklessly post a big section of here:
These actions don’t get media attention because the media treats the government like some reality TV bullshit
Three of the accomplishments in that selection were struck down before going into effect, the antitrust doj actions are nice and all, but don’t actually fix anything or defend the working class – mainly because the effect the admin desired, price reduction and wage increases, didn’t happen. Inflation corrected wages are lower now than in 2020, and food prices never stabilized.
Yeah because Trump will run it like musk runs Twitter. Bezos lost a huge contract last time he refused to bend the knee to Trump.
Yep, I especially appreciate the lack of apologies. An easy cop out would be to say he’s sorry but what would he be sorry for when he didn’t say anything wrong? This is a great response, and the only possible one. And still people will call it damage control.