Proton CEO Andy Yen Interview
Proton CEO Andy Yen Interview
Outmaneuvering internet firewalls isn't easy, but Proton VPN is waging a digital war for an open internet.
The article is from December, so the interviewer couldn't have asked about their CEO's recent betrayal: https://insights.priva.cat/p/does-proton-still-stand-for-anything
Please summarize in what way he betrayed anyone?
Because I see nothing in that article.
People and businesses are allowed to have political opinions. I can disagree with them (or not) while still respecting the service they provide.
"Betrayal" might be a wrong word for it, but I find this disappointing because the current events are the reason I have tried using Proton instead of Gmail. A tweet wont ruin the functionality of Proton, but it goes against my personal rationale for making the switch.
Many feel betrayed because he (partially at least) politically aligns with someone (and something) they loathe intensely. The feeling of betrayal probably comes from an implied idea that because they align on the issue of digital privacy they naturally do so in other aspects, and with the comments made by the CEO that idea is burst and someone who once felt familiar is now foreign.
From a previous reply that I made :
Nothing in that article suggests Proton doesn't care about privacy. Every country has laws that must be abided by. Their verbage on not logging IPs was misleading but not inaccurate as they weren't until ordered to by law. At that point the law was able to find the person because of lack of opsec on the perp's part.
Besides that, to my knowledge all of Proton is open source and encrypted. It has been audited and proven to be secure.
Quit letting politics ruin our collective privacy by suggesting to people that Proton is now an evil company. They support Trump because they think his business policies will benefit their company. True or false as that may be their company is still great for privacy and we shouldn't be infighting about that.
Proton has a business model where they want the user to put their eggs all in one basket. If you want that kind of userbase you need to leave your personal politics out of it. The problem isn't that the CEO is right wing. It's that he is very publicly right wing. Supports a known huckster. And lastly could be vying for a role in the administration. All of this calls into question just for how long Proton will be secure before they are selling user info to the state.
Politics are very fucking important in terms of security for whistleblowers and dissidents. They are the canaries in the coalmine as far as personal liberties go.
Quit letting politics ruin our collective ability to drive by suggesting to people that Volkswagen is now an evil company. They support Hitler because they think his business policies will benefit their company. True or false as that may be their company is still great at making cars and we shouldn't be infighting about that.
Unless I'm missing something, didn't Yen just praise 🍄's pick for antitrust AG? I forget her name, but her Wikipedia page didn't make her sound all that great, so I'm not sure what exactly he was praising her for. If that's all it is (and it might not be!) that hardly sounds like a betrayal.
EDIT: I was missing something! See this.
Praising the pick wasn't so bad. The issues really arose when he was called out on it and chose to use Proton's official accounts to affirm his view and went on to state:
- the republican party is now the party of the people and most likely to crack down on big tech
- The democrats have effectively betrayed their voters in favour of corporate donations
- This was Proton's official stance
It was insane boot licking and incredibly poorly thought through. It's fine for him to have an opinion but completely inappropriate to use their official accounts to spew such drivel and to state it was the official stance should have resulted in him being fired for damaging their reputation.
edit: I was asked to provide sources so please find them here: https://feddit.uk/post/23386970/14888441
This guy is a fascist, and nobody should be using proton.
Making a dumb tweet doesn't make you a fascist and doesn't invalidate the years of hard work people put into a non-profit swiss company, you should get over yourself.
The tweet he commented on was indeed a nice idea, but a CEO should have more foresight that the things Trump stated in it would not be true. When you look at it now, it looks like it was more or less a threat that led to a closer relationship between "tech bros" and the current administration instead of the "take down" of them.
Huh, I think they forgot a pretty big regime in the headline...