Proton

He praised trump for appointing someone into a role who is a big tech sceptic. However the issue is he then went on to make a broad generalisation about the republicans being the party of fhe people and the democrats being by the party of big business. Someone from proton doubled down on the assertion on social media.

That has caused offence in a era when US politics is extremely polarised and divided. The attitude is "if you're for the other team, you're the enemy". But also people are angry at the company having an apparently right wing political stance.

Personally I think this is overblown. I think its reasonable to be happy if someone anti big tech is appointed, but the broad sweeping comments about the parties was ill judged. However they have backed away from this position and made clear that proton in politically neutral. I see this as bad PR and on the spectrum of someone saying something stupid on twitter and then regretting it, but some people are treating it as an existenial threat for proton and a huge red flag.

He said times have changed and Republicans are now the party for the little guys. He later deleted that, but did not clarify or apologize.

He also said he likes the Trump nominee to the cabinet for antitrust issues. But people were quick to point out that that person used to work for Big Tech lobby groups. I don't think he ever took this back or clarified.

Why we should care - this is multifold, but I'll just tell you how I feel. I'm not going to immediately delete all my proton stuff over one guy's words. But I am definitely considering.

As I see it, there's two possibilities (both come from a very generous place if I may say so myself). First is that he's kissing ass like every other tech CEO right now (you can see the Trump inauguration pic), which is a really really bad thing because you need a spine if you claim to be fighting for freedom and privacy. Second possibility is that he's naive enough to think that some nominee Trump got in will mean good things for anything to do with privacy, which is also a really really bad thing because the other thing you need for advocating privacy and freedom is actually being able to read between the lines and see what are the upcoming challenges and how to prepare for them.

And guess who's going to pay for the naivete or the cowardice? The end consumer of these services - us, and a lot of other really vulnerable folks who use such sensitive services.

To wrap it up, I want to go to my earlier statement about not jumping ship because of one man's words. The problem is, it's been a while since that one man said this stuff and no one from the company or foundation has issued a retraction or taken any action. If anything they just seem to have doubled and offer more "explanations" that still don't mean much.

Also, as a non-american why would I care until Proton product is good?

Two things:

1. In the worst case, where they support fascists, they'll also likely not provide the protection from fascists that a lot of users are expecting and paying for. E.g. trans people might be using the service to protect themselves from an administration that is trying to erase them. Will the service actually be safe for them? Can people trust that fascist supporters won't break their own product to support fascism?
2. We've seen lots of cases of tech companies and CEOs having a deleterious effect on politics. Is this a sign that proton will be yet another of those companies? Swiss law seems to work in our favour here, but if the company is rotting from the head, it won't be enough.

It could be that this is just a series of clumsy actions from the CEO (including using his birth year in his new Reddit nick, when that birth year is also a well-known nazi dogwhistle (88, code for the 8th letter in the alphabet, as in HH, as in "Heil H…")), it could be him showing his true colors.

As an existing customer I've taken a sort of wait-and-see stance; I likely wouldn't become a new customer right now.