988
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
988 points (92.2% liked)
Privacy
37279 readers
1139 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wait, the proton ceo is a trump supporter? What the fuck, he's the last person I thought would do that
No he had plenty of time to educate himself but instead doubled and tripled down. Also his username ends in 88 which has been the most unsubtle Nazi dog whistle since the invention of usernames and the internet.
If you look a bit around in this thread, someone linked an article that mentions he was born in 1988.
How convenient.
He didn't have to put it in his username.
Neither do the other thousands or millions of people who do so, but it's not a particularly uncommon thing and it's likely enough that (birthdate) is the reason it's there. I've got my birth year (not '88) in my username for some sites because the bare username was already taken
Where's the 88?
1011000 is binary for 88
Ohhhh. Drag thought it was the ASCII code for X
https://calculator.name/baseconvert/binary/decimal/1011000
Isnβt 88 considered extremely lucky in Chinese culture?
You honestly think thatβs what he was going for? Someone who grew up in a culture pretty heavily insulated from that but steeped in βformerβ Nazi ties?
Not only is 88 considered auspicious in his native culture, he was also born in 1988. Normally, yes, be wary of the 88 dog whistle, but without further evidence it looks like a nothing-burger in this case.
I think heβs more likely fascist than a Nazi, given the differentiator being the racial purity part. He lives and works in Switzerland, but was born in Taiwan and educated in the US.
Considering how he runs a business whose goal is to capture the privacy crowd and how a large portion of the privacy crowd is made up of those "Libertarian" tech-bro types, it might be more than just "no clue about American politics", especially since he's also doing stuff like promoting Bitcoin through Proton Wallet which is also popular among "Libertarian" tech-bro types, and the article used for marketing that both-sidesed the problems the "left" vs "right" experience and equated the Democrats with the "left", which is popular among "Libertarian" tech-bro types as well. The 88 in his Reddit username is also suspect regardless of him claiming that it's there because it's his birth year. People who know how to operate a business usually aren't doing it out of stupidity, so I'm not going to give him the benefit of the doubt on this, especially since the entire platform depends on trusting that they aren't doing anything shady.
How do you explain the 88 in his username? Thatβs not an American thing.
My guess is that it's a neo-Nazi thing, so his promoting right-wing American politics (his largest userbase) is probably intentional and not just him being stupid
He's a money supporter.
I mean he is here publicly supporting Trump so..
I need to switch away from Proton immediately. Too bad they wouldn't refund me.