this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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It's not a purity test so much as a fear that publicly signaling loyalty to trump devalued their trustworthiness as private and secure. If their CEO legitimately believes that Republicans are better on tech policy than democrats because conservatives want to weaponize the federal government to control speech online, then I don't really trust him not to cooperate with federal authorities when they want to access someone's emails or vpn traffic. Conservatives are simply not trustworthy to me
They legally can’t though that’s the thing people are missing
This. It's amazing how naive people here can be just because they fanboyed some random CEO before they were revealed to be problematic.
Yeah a lot of people fan over celeberties politicians or CEO’s, but at the same time a lot of people also hate those same people for various reasons. And people believe in bad against bad and not even the law anymore and don’t believe in second changes or forgiveness.
We call that, the internet.
That's just ad hominem to say people are fanboying the CEO. I never heard the name of the CEO until people started complaining about him. Then I read the statements he put out and that people are hysterical over and reading into as if he's some Trump fanboy. The guys not even an American. He doesn't live in the US. He just runs a service as an alternative to the big tech companies. Was he even in the US for anything but his university years and he's 40?
Americans read more into him than his record and statements say. Not everyone's politics revolve around Americans. I'm waiting for American leftist to turn on Shawn Fain too for supporting Trump auto tariffs and be anti auto workers union because too many in the union are Trump supporters and even someone in opposition like Shawn Fain is supporting a Trump policy. That's even more direct and influential than a guy in Europe that runs a niche privacy centric internet service company
Problematic, barely. It's a handful of statements months ago compared to his life of work. Magnifying glass to your whole life and people would likely find something problematic. If this guy is representative of what a problematic person is, the world would be pretty solid. Waste of energy to be so anti this guy and Proton when it's a service more conducive to privacy rights than anything I or probably any of us have done. Problematic has become such an empty insult with how easily it's thrown around with such passion. Waste of passion
Louder for the idiots who can't seem to listen. Preach!
This is literally just insane rambling. You need serious media literacy.
Tell me why I'm wrong
The premise is already wrong. There was no promise or loyalty, not even close.
He endorsed the republican party. He said we should clean house of democrats. Is that not declaring party loyalty? It was also a completely unnecessary comment, in response to nothing. It was shortly after Trump's election when every CEO went out of their way to kowtow to the new regime. Its transparently a loyalty pledge to the new boss
He didn't endorse the republican party.
The fact that you inflate the meaning of that tweet to make it more meaningful than it is, doesn't mean he did anything of the sort. The tweet happened after the election but before the government, and it was an endorsement of the antitrust appointee. He also expressed his opinion that republicans were more likely than democrats to fight big tech monopolies in the antitrust space. This is far from an endorsement.
It was in response to Trump's tweet about the antitrust appointee. I would say quite relevant context for a tweet about the antitrust appointee.
It was unnecessary, true. Like every tweet. He expressed his unnecessary opinion, the same way we are doing now.
Bro I mean come on, this is literally an endorsement of the republican party. I don't know how more explicit it can get. You're asking people to not believe their own eyes here. Even worse:
He decries the "corporate capture" of the Democratic party while completely failing to address to much larger and more immediate threat of an outright christo-fascist movement capturing the entire Republican party and all 3 branches of federal government. Like he thinks that "the democrats didnt move as fast on this thing as I wanted them to" somehow compares to "the president is kidnapping people with a personal army of gestapo and disappearing them to a black site in El Salvador".
And you may say "well he's not interested in immigration policy; he's interested in technology policy". If you are in the business of privacy and security, then you should not be putting yourself in the corner of a political cult with zero respect for the law, zero guiding moral principles, and which is only motivated by using any means necessary to crush their political enemies. Yen is supporting a wannabe dictator because he's willing to weaponize the federal government to destroy his competitors.
If all he said was "good pick by Trump, look forward to working with them", I'd accept it as a politically neutral statement that you often see from business leaders and even democratic politicians sometimes. But he went out of his way to demonize the democratic party and somehow hold the Republicans up as the defenders of small business
It's such an unbelievably bad take (which he dug in on like 5 times even though he could have said nothing and waited for it to blow over) and completely tone deaf as to be unbelievable. Like I literally don't believe that he doesn't know what he's saying; I think he, like many tech CEOs, is simply a conservative who's too ashamed to admit it.
Yes, the whole discussion is around antitrust, and he thinks republicans have a chance to do better than democrats there. There is nothing to "bro" about, it's pretty clear from the context. If he said any of that before the election, I could vaguely read an endorsement for single-issue voters. Saying republicans are better than democrats in fighting antitrust after Democrats shat their pants about it, doesn't sound an endorsement to me.
The rest of this comment is out of topic. His focus (and his company focus) has always been on a specific political area. So there is no expectation that he would address the whole political scenario, when he was talking about that narrow area.
So this is what bothers you? A completely legitimate critique of the democratic party? Well, I personally cannot care less, but you do you.
I see the issue as very simple: Him and his company work in the privacy space. Tech monopolies are a problem because captured people. Improving in this space is a win for privacy. Which is not something that is beneficial "in a vacuum", it's beneficial to all those vulnerable people that will be attacked by this government, or the next. he expressed optimism about the fact that republicans can do better than democrats here. Period. Naive, wrong, whatever. A legitimate opinion based on his reading of the last few years' trend.
No endorsement, no "pledge loyalty", nothing. Just a consideration. He also mentioned on his reddit account that ultimately actions will be what will count (as it is obvious). So to me this is legitimately a nothing burger. I cannot care less that people in US (and in many more places) live politics like a football game. I cannot care less that you or others got hurt because he criticized Democrats. They could and should do better, and then if the critique is unfair I will be there saying that he "goes out of his way" to criticize them. So far he clearly motivated his opinion with what Schumer did.