Proton Mail Says It’s “Politically Neutral” While Praising Republican Party
theintercept.com
The “privacy-first” company surprised its user base when CEO Andy Yen lauded Trump on social media.

Summary

Proton Mail, known for its privacy-first email services, faced backlash after CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party and its antitrust stance.

The company initially posted and deleted a statement supporting Yen’s comments, later claiming an “internal miscommunication” and reiterating its political neutrality.

Critics question Proton’s impartiality, particularly as it cooperates with Swiss authorities on legal data requests.

Privacy advocates warn that political alignments could undermine trust, especially for Proton’s users—journalists and activists wary of government surveillance under administrations like Trump’s.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
    1713·
    1 day ago

    Correction; the CEO posted a rather tone deaf message. while this is incredibly dumb, it should be little reason to burn the company to the ground

    Having said that, people should start looking at email again how it was designed to be: have thousands of open providers instead of the tiny fee enormous ones we got now

    • TheZoltan@lemmy.world
      61·
      22 hours ago

      You seem to be downplaying it and skipping the part where the companies initial official response strongly backed the personal view he posted and was very nakedly partisan. They later retracted and deleted that official response and had Andy go and argue on Reddit direct. It was a mixed bag… maybe not worth deleting your account over but it didn’t look great and looks worse every day Trump is in office.

    • FinnFooted@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      23 hours ago

      I have my subscription for another 6 months. If Andy is still in a leadership role by then, I’ll probably cancel. I stopped ignoring red flags in my 20s. I’m not going back now.

    • dan@upvote.au
      1·
      22 hours ago

      have thousands of open providers instead of the tiny fee enormous ones we got now

      With distributed/federated services, people still always gravitate towards the largest providers. We see that on Lemmy and Mastodon too.

      I agree with you though. I’ve been self-hosting my email for many years now, using Mailcow. I use an SMTP relay for outbound email though - it’s a hassle to deal with IP reputation otherwise, especially if you don’t own your own IP space.