• Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    19 hours ago

    Why are there so many conspiracy theories in this thread? Why don’t y’all take this with even just a tiny little bit of nuance?

    There have always been conspiracy theories regarding Proton, but the stuff in this thread is just insane.

    No, he didn’t go “full MAGA”. Do you even know what “full MAGA” looks like? He used the official Proton Mastodon account to participate in the discussion (which he definitely shouldn’t have done), because he doesn’t have his own account. Yes, that’s definitely the wrong thing to do, but it’s not “the whole company supporting Trump”, it’s just a CEO who used his company’s account to spread some bullshit.

    Obviously Andy Yen needs to immediately step down as CEO, something that might realistically happen if the community outrage is big enough, since Proton’s source of revenue are subscriptions sold directly to its users. Spreading conspiracy theories definitely won’t achieve this goal though.

    • TheObviousSolution@kbin.melroy.org
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      18 hours ago

      Translation: DOUBT! DENY! STRAWMAN!

      Actually, I always had the notion that proton was focused on security until this bit of news. This isn’t some conspiracy, I stay away from any social network or email service whose CEOs begin sucking up to Donald Trump because it’s a dead giveaway of how the leadership of those services are willing to discard ethics and morality for profits and preferential treatment. With services like Proton, this would most easily be done by making concessions to intelligence agencies. A CEO isn’t just “one bad apple”.

      • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        18 hours ago

        With services like Proton, this would most easily be done by making concessions to intelligence agencies.

        I don’t think that this would make sense for them. They would only get some short-term advantages, while putting their entire business at risk. Proton was founded right after the Snowden leaks. Their core idea is that user data needs to be protected from intelligence agencies, and I don’t think that one CEO will just completely change this because of one presidential election.

        A CEO isn’t just “one bad apple”.

        I think you underestimate how many people are involved in companies the size of Proton. There’s a whole board of directors that at any point can decide to get rid of the CEO.

        I don’t want to give any money to Trump supporters either, but I think many people are just being overly dramatic. I think this comment sums his political views up pretty well: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/15996243

        • TheObviousSolution@kbin.melroy.org
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          18 hours ago

          Their business isn’t put at risk, we are long past the time when there were Edward Snowdens. Any intelligence agency involvement would be highly localized, highly specialized, and highly classified. You’d have more of a chance of a CEO of such a service outing themselves by sucking up to Donald Trump than getting ratted out. There are plenty of services that at one point or another did price themselves as being the privacy option that were later exposed, usually because they came from more well known brands that just happened to run into the situations that would expose them due to market presence.

          A CEO is a good indication of the internal company culture at the top. He may be as much of a libertarian as Elon Musk is a “free speech absolutist”, I’m not going to assume the best case scenario because I am not invested in proton and don’t have an innate sunk cost fallacy. I agree with that comment, “it seems like he might just be bootlicking whoever is in power as appeasement”.