this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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The official @protonprivacy@mastodon.social account replied and doubled down
(Less importantly, my response)
Did they just remove their comments?
"Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses."
That has to be one of the most retarded things I have ever read. You would have to ignore the last 50 years and have a lobotomy to believe that nonsense.
Aaaaaaaand it's deleted.
Insane that an official company account posted this.
Seems like they have deleted it now. Link is dead. Has there been any further comment?
So sounds like their main concern is addressing the abuses of the FAANG monopolies, and only a Republican has talked to them about it.
I guess that is understandable in that very narrow lens, but it's a bit laughable considering how all the big tech companies are also cozying up to the Trump administration. All this has done for me is make me wary of anything Proton does now.
Actually I disagree on the latest part. I actually questioned, why google and Facebook had to go kiss the ring and pay some bucks to Trump, and didn't have to do that before? This for me is a sign of a disalignment between big tech and the administration.
That said, it's very much possible (I would say likely) trump won't do shit and he just happens to have the "correct" position on this particular issue because it can be used to attack the Californian elite (I.e. dem elite). But it's a matter of fact that it's auspicable he will follow up with action on his words on this, even if for the wrong reasons.
Its more that trump is very transactional. He couldnt give to shit if corpations are fleecing people so as long he gets a peice. Its like businesses paying the mafia for "protection".
Nobody had to go kiss the ring they payed for his campaign because THEY WANTED to please him. Edit: Typo
Yeah but why they wanted to please him? What's the benefit for them? Why they wouldn't want to please previous administrations? The other user mentioned that Trump is very transactional, and that sounds quite right too.
Either way, look at Facebook, literally went through a shitstorm to align, that is a sign of weakness in my opinion.
Not being targeted by a President.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/29/business/ceos-trump-revenge-nightcap/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/05/politics/trump-prosecute-political-opponents/index.html
Those administrations weren't targeting them.
I think it's always about the money, plain and simple. If there is a threat to their gravy train, they will bend over backwards to keep it going. Otherwise, they don't care about you.
OK, but then that was exactly my point. Antitrust is one way to target those companies, hence they had to suck up. Therefore them paying (peanuts in the grand scheme of things) could be seen as the exact opposite of "they are all in the same team".
Right, I follow your take here as the one that makes the most sense. This makes a lot more sense as the tech companies attempting to head off a potentially adversarial relationship.
That's some interesting perspective, I hadn't thought of it that way. With Trump it's really hard to know what is coming until it happens, but it's nice that some people see a silver lining.
Also the obviously reactionary and self-interested history of right wing reaction to FAANG, which largely has been fueled by a backlash to restraints on misinformation, and is riddled with special case exceptions (e.g. Palestine).
This is a lot worse look than Andy saying something on Twitter. It's one thing for a board member to express an opinion as an individual, it's another to have an explicit corporate position... I don't even think the usual big tech suspects are this stupid to publicly support an administration like this.
These fuckers act like they've never heard of Lina Khan. Let's see if Republicans try to replace her with someone with a stronger track record. Or, if they're so serious about tech competition maybe they'll get on board with net neutrality.
And look, I actually like Gail Slater (the Trump nominee that kicked off this thread). She's got some bona fides, and I welcome Republicans taking antitrust more seriously, and rolling back the damage done by Robert Bork and his adherents (including and probably most significantly Ronald Reagan).
But to pretend that Democrats are less serious about antitrust than Republicans ignores the huge moves that the Biden administration have made in this area, including outside of big tech.
So we can say that Bork borked things up?
It's accurate cause that's where it came from.
That is amazing. TIL!
By my lights your response is quite effective, and while I appreciate the modesty I think it's appropriate to bring it over here:
The election already happened. Therefore it's not a matter of picking. With regards of antitrust and big tech, Trump can do nothing, worse or better. In case of "better" there are indirect privacy wins. Everything else is completely unrelated, it's not like the Trump administration will break up a monopoly every 3 other human rights he violates.
So what does it mean
If "big tech is not restrained" it's going to be the same or worse, so why we wouldn't be happy at least if that happens? I didn't read a celebration of Trump as a win for human rights tout court, which could have prompted this response (I.e., hey, might be a win for privacy, but it's a loss for x, y, z).
I'm having a lot of trouble parsing any of this.
In what sense does the election being over render it not a matter of picking? Slater's selection is a nomination, you could select one person at the expense of another, to better or worse ends, so in any ordinary english language sense, there is indeed a pick.
By contrast, Lori Chavez-DeRemer was selected for labor secretary, which has been celebrated by people who are normally Trump critics. Because there are such things as better or worse picks.
Again: what? Trump gets to appoint the DoJ's Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, Solicitor General, 93 DoJ Attorneys, heads of a bunch of individual departments in the DoJ which each have hundreds of staff, and will likely appoint hundreds of new judges. Not only can Trump do something, his actions will be the single most dominating force determining the trajectory of anti-trust environment.
What's more, as a commenter above noted, Lina Kahn is a perfect example of how influential these appointments can be, as we've seen some of the most ambitious anti-trust action in decades.
They're probably not even right, in the first instance, that big tech will be better restrained. The elephant in the room rendering this whole line of thinking preposterous, is Lina Khan's extremely aggressive record on this won't be matched even by a "good" Trump appointee, and in fact has been vehemently opposed by R's through her whole tenure.
Right, but that's the point. Nobody would credit Trump as a champion of human rights, which reveals why it's so short-sighted to uphold him or R's as leading lights on a topic such as privacy, which falls under the umbrella of a subject matter that we're all agreeing he doesn't care about.
It's precisely because of the absence of consistent commitments on every other front that also belongs in the same category, that of human rights writ large, that it's silly to celebrate the one exception to an otherwise negative record. And it's hard to take statements seriously that treat that totality as if it embodies a pure commitment to virtues of an ideal, free and open internet.
Maybe I was too cryptic. The election being over means that we are not choosing trump for antitrust policy (or better, what he says he will do) and ignore the human rights violation. He is already going to be president, and those human rights violation will anyway happen. So why can't we talk about the antitrust bit in isolation? It's a separate area AND, we are not in election campaign, nobody will vote Trump because of his antitrust posture today, at the expense of the human rights.
With regards to the pick itself, I have no opinion. But I didn't read a single piece that criticized the pick itself (which appeared to be OK?), almost every critique just highlighted that this pick happens in a specific context of shitty policies (project 2025 etc.). Which again, true, but in my opinion is forcing to expand the context. Once again, we are not in election campaign, nobody is proposing to be a single-issue voter on antitrust.
Sorry, I think my sentence was not clear. What I mean is that he can do "nothing", " something good" (better) or "something bad" (worse). If his actions (or words) for now fall into the "something good" - this is anyway fully independent from all the "something bad" that he will surely do in many other areas, why can't be discussed independently? Why it's not possible to talk about this single issue? The rest is going to happen independently from what he does in the antitrust area, so isn't still a net positive if here he does "something good"?
But this also didn't happen, and it's also not logically true anyway. You could be a champion for privacy and at the same time - say - enact completely terrible policy on prisoners conditions (human rights). So in general it's an absolutely arbitrary statement that gravitate towards a platitude. Specifically anyway, he has not been praised to be a champion for privacy, the benefit to privacy is indirect, and stems from a (possible) harder posture on tech monopolies. It was not even said that Trump does it for privacy as the end goal. Fully indirect effect. In fact, it's also possible that trump might be harsher on monopolies and indirectly benefiting privacy of people by providing a fairer market where privacy companies can thrive, and at the same time a point some idiot that wants to backdoor encryption anywhere in some other position (another user mentioned this - which is a very good argument).
I disagree with this based on the above (nobody said oh look what good champion of human rights Trump is because he will do something that indirectly may benefit privacy for everyone). In fact, I believe a few reasons of a previous record IN THIS AREA were cited by the guy (and later by the proton account). how good or solid examples I don't know, but it was not all based just on a tweet with some propaganda.
Fuck, they are dumb and bad businessmen. What's the reason still to chose their product over Tuta, Posteo, Mullvad? They have lost their unique selling point as at least pretending being a neutral instance providing private services. Plain stupidity.
Their unique selling point is having a suite of integrated privacy products under a single moderately-priced subscription.
Also, Mullvad disabled fort-forwading whul Proton has not
That is somet nieve horseshit. Goddammit I don't want to switch email providers again!
N.B. I originally went looking for a reason that maybe it was okay that Andy Yen was giving the thumbs up to Gail Slater. I thought this was an unfair internet pile-on. I think now it's a fair internet pile-on.
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