Scratch under the surface of every for profit privacy / anonymity service, you find shitty libertarian cryptobros who probably post racist memes on 4chan while whining about feminism in the man-o-sphere. That doesn’t speak to the nature of people who care about privacy, it speaks to the nature of people who care about privacy and also want to do capitalism.
Totally in good faith. A post from last year? Yea, suck my dick andy. Deleting my account asap.
“hey guys social media manager here. It was all my fault. It’s not our CEOs fault, at all. Just mine. Who am I? Well I can say my name definitely doesn’t start with an A and end in a Y. Just little ol’ faceless nameless me. Tee hee sorry.”
Get. Off. Reddit.
As swiss person I have to meet and talk to this guy, he can not be that stupid!
We definitely have something like the republicans party, it is called SVP (Schweizerische Volkspartei). SVP uses exactly the same tactics as republicans, like anti “woke”, anti regulation, anti common media, pro hate-speech(“anti censorship”), etc.
We just not have a single party to counter it, like democrats, but like 10 parties with little nuances.
We have some small parties besides SVP “on the republican site” but those tend to be irrelevant. Maybe, the anti corona party has a some relevance, still, but I guess their power is sinking.
I personally support the pirate party, which mainly stands for privacy, no matter if left or right, but the party it self is leading to the left (democratic) side.
At least, that is how I understand our situation here.
I am sure he is very smart about a lot of things. Unfortunately US politics are not one of those things. I also suspect he is not that good at business considering he just alienated a lot of his customers.
That’s fascinating that you have so many parties. Do parties not have a lot of power at the “federal” level? Also curious if you have coalitions between similarly aligned parties!
This is how parliamentary governments work, they figured out how to resolve the bug in the US system that always tends towards two major parties. However the two-party system, so I’ve read, is actually a tad bit more resistant to the fascism bug, as parliamentary systems can have outright fascist parties winning a minority of the vote eventually grow big enough to take over and end the system entirely.
They do have power. But it is split between around 4-5 bigger parties. Our federal council (similar to the President uf the US) is split into 7 persons, where the biggest parties get one or to seats. Like the mentioned SVP has “only” 2 seats and next big party the social Democrats have 2 seats as well.
What’s nice in our system(in my opinion), there is no “The winner takes it all”. Because our federal government is split between alot of parties, not one can “rule” alone. For every thing the want to pass, they need the support of multiple parties.
I wouldn’t say we have ruling coalitions like you see in germany, but they do work-together if they have same goal.
We have two “Räte“ like groups that write the laws depending on the constitution (they give new laws back and forth until an agreement is found, and after agreement there can be a referendum made with enough signatures from the people that are allowed to vote, which then leads to a vote where the people who are allowed to vote have to confirm the new law). One of these “Rat” is a Voting where all people allow to vote choose which party gets how much seats in this “Rat” and in the same voting you choose people to place on this seats. (It is a bit complicated and here at the choosing of seats. Partys can work together and “combine lists” meaning that they collect seats together and split it up after). In the other “Rat” there are a defined number of people per Kanton (the states of switzerland) and those are chosen by each Kanton in their own way. Kantons are relatively free on how to organise their government, but most have a similar mechanism as what is done in federal level.
The Bundesrat (aka 7 presidents of switzerland) are chosen by the people in the Rat (I would have to check if both Rat get to say something, or if it is only the one with the lists). We have some unwritten laws in choosing the 7 persons in the Bundesrat. The general consensus is, that we have to ensure most diversity possible (political, gender, and all the other things), but of course, here we have discussions all the time as well.
☺️feel free to ask more
I moved several years worth of emails off their platform and closed my subscription on Friday. Enough is enough. I’m not giving this guy another dime. I specifically pointed to andy88’s behaviour in the “why are you cancelling” dialogue. I feel for the good people who work at that company and don’t support this, but we all have choices to make.
Ridiculous.
He specifically started talking about American party politics, unprompted, making sweeping statements about both Democrats and Republicans. NOW he wants to blame us for…being concerned with his views on American party politics? Dude. Get real.
Saying stupid shit now and then is forgivable, but not if you take it in as the new nucleus of your public image. Why do so many public figures have this compulsion to double down combatively?
Business owners should not touch politics, thats just alienates 50% of the user base no matter his views
Holy shit he’s still arguing with people about this today?
Andy out here shooting straight through his foot and putting holes in his boat’s hull.
I seem to remember that Switzerland has a history of profiting from their relationships with Nazi’s. Thus they might not be a good source of advice as to what to do about Nazi’s.
It’s dumb to call Trump a nazi and the populist wing of the Republican party nazis.
It’s not even clever at this point, maybe it was edgy and transgressive like 7 years ago.
The reason it’s dumb is that you are wasting all of your powerful language and you will have no more if things get worse. Boy who cried wolf. Just like people did to racist which used to carry great power and now is basically meaningless as a powerful descriptor.
Gee. Which side has all the people marching with nazi flags?
Which side never kicks them out when they do?
It’s not even clever at this point, maybe it was edgy and transgressive like 7 years ago.
Are you really this childish that you genuinely think the only reason people might suggest Trump is a fascist is because it was “edgy and transgressive”? Not the fascist rhetoric, increasingly fascist policy and the various fascists he’s willing to work with and support?
Nazism is a very small subset of fascism, they are not equivalent. Nazi also carries VERY heavy baggage which is inapplicable to Trump. Use the right terms.
Nazism is a very small subset of fascism, they are not equivalent. Nazi also carries VERY heavy baggage which is inapplicable to Trump. Use the right terms.
Can’t tell if you’re defending trump or gatekeeping nazism.
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Hey guys, look at this dipshit, drawing irrelevant distinctions and pointlessly trying to police other peoples language because they think the only reason others would use those terms is because they’re “edgy and transgressive”.
Tell me, where on the fascism to nazism meter is mass deportations, muslim bans, endorsing far right militias, supporting running over protestors, palling around with white supremacists, and seeking to eradicate trans people from public life? Are we at .49? or is it more like .76? My readings seems to be off. Just so I know I’m not using the incorrect terms so some moron from .world doesn’t get mad and try to incessantly police terms on the internet.
chill
“Chill, I was just drawing a meaningless distinction between my party and another part of my party with identical views!”
I’m sorry but what? This is really weird logic as language and words aren’t required to follow some linear path of severity. People call the GOP, Trump and the like Nazis because… they fit the definition of Nazis, actual card carrying Nazis support them by a significant majority. (Yeah yeah I know there is the odd one here or there that doesn’t)
If it walks like a Nazi, talks like a Nazi and engages in Nazi tactics, behaviors etc. Then it can be called a Nazi. You don’t reserve your language so that you have some end point to progress to.
It’s also very weird to use the boy who cried wolf when the whole point of that story is that you don’t call something that which it isn’t for fear that when the real thing comes along no one will believe you as that would imply that they are in fact not Nazis. Which would only be true in the most technical of sense (As in they are not of the Nazi party of Germany) but by most dictionary definition the word fits.
Lastly, what the hell are you even talking about “edgy”? Do you think people are calling them Nazis to be edgy? Because that’s ridiculous and quite frankly your entire comment screams of someone trying to defend them through deflection.
What’s more important, winning the fight over what label to put on those assholes or actually fighting what they do? It’s the same as people arguing about whether the Gaza situation is technically a genocide or not. Endless debate on the technicalities while nothing changes. Calling Trump and by extension all his followers “Nazis” just reinforces their belief that the “left” is their unrelenting enemy.
Now now. Many MAGA are in fact documented nazis, and Trump’s record is bad but it quite as explicit as that. If you’re afraid of the term being bandied about, I recommend therapy.
Far right is not mutually exclusive to Nazism
They don’t kick their nazi buddies out of their events.
I recommend therapy.
Poe’s law detector fail
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andy88, if he cares about proton, should have resigned yesterday
Isn’t 88 neo-Nazi code for “heil Hitler”? And isn’t putting it in binary to disguise it evidence that he knows full well what it means?
As much as I’m not terribly fond of the guy, IIRC he’s 36, which makes ‘88’ likely short for 1988, the year he was born.
Oh OK, that makes sense. Still, an unfortunate choice of username that could add to the confusion.
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Our license plates look like this: 2/3-letter city identifier - 1/2 letters you can choose - a 1-4 digit number you can choose. A friend of mine has the initials A.H. and was born in 1988. He wanted CITY - AH - 88. Registration did not allow it as it’s nazi dog whistling.
Dog whistling is very common to find like-minded fascists and nazis. Kind of a sad, pathetic life if you think about it.
It is very sad indeed. I went through the same experience when I wanted a license plate to commemorate Albert Heijn.
I’m just aware of how these people signal to each other. I don’t know anything about the Proton CEO’s politics, but numbers like 14 and 88 in usernames are common dogwhistles.
What does 14 mean?
It stands for “the 14 words”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
Hey that guy is thinking about stuff! They must got brainrot!
8 is also a lucky number in Chinese culture. I’ve seen a lot of "88"s in Chinese social media just because of that.
It always sucks when shitbags co-opt innocent symbols and language.
This was my first thought, as it’s a very common username addon. I was unaware of all the other stuff.
He’s from Asia where the number 8 have a good luck meaning, so is likely is not related to the 88 neo nazis uses.
Thanks for pointing that out. I didn’t know about that good luck meaning.
same reasoning would justify the use of swastika for an indian living in Germany
good luck working that out
To be fair, it’s easier to be ignorant of neo-Nazi numerology than of their use of the swastika.
I’d buy that if he didn’t start his statement with “I live in Switzerland.” 8 may be a lucky number for him, but he absolutely knows what 88 means.
He can be both from Asia and still live in Switzerland
On the flip side, do you think a Swiss person living in Asia would be ignorant that 8 is a lucky number?
Sadly, “Asia” doesn’t mean “ignorance of Hitler.”
#Looking for link to Nazi store in …
Edit: first link I found. Not endorsement. https://qz.com/928440/asias-disturbing-embrace-of-nazi-chic-is-prompting-a-nonprofit-to-teach-holocaust-history
And explain this!!
Not even a little in this situation. Maybe take your head out of your ass and stop spreading lies. He literally addressed this head on.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/comment/m7nr5ym/
His reply in text form:
It’s the year I was born, and also a lucky number in Taiwan where I am from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#%3A~%3Atext=Number+88+symbolizes+fortune+and%2Csupermarkets+often+contain+many+8s.
deleted by creator
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2ff6q/call_for_andy_yen_to_resign/
UPDATE: Andy Reply
According to Andy’s logic, if Hitler were the president of some unfortunate country, we should differentiate the boss from his good nominees. Even using a company founded by an entire community to show a good evaluation made by one of its founders to give him a loving pat on the back and show the world that he is not completely bad as they think, but not meaning that the founder agrees with all his innocent actions, of course, such as disregarding the rights of many people around the world because they are just part of the democratic game.
“People forget I don’t live in China. Just because I praise Mao for wanting to shed the yoke of cultural tradition, doesn’t mean I necessary support everything he’s doing…” -Andy, if this was 1966
Careful saying that around these tankie parts.
le false equivalence totally validates my endorsement for the worst president elected in US history
Wow, the comments on that Reddit post. Ok.
So, to get this straight, for you it’s impossible to recognize that a pick for a position is a good pick in the Trump government, by definition, without consideration of the actual pick?
To me this is religion, not politics or ideology (which I both consider very good things). To be even more clear, I consider Andy’s position completely rational and legitimate in this case. I believe it’s absolutely legitimate to be happy Trump picked someone good for a position and at the same time not support the rest 98%. At most, the interesting debate is why that pick is not good, which is 100% opinable and worthy of a discussion.
But saying that any statement, in any context, whatever narrow and specific equal full support is completely insane to me.
If all he said was literally “i approve of this pick for this position” you’d be correct.
What actually happened was he approved of the pick and also claimed the republicans are now actually the party that stands for the “little guy”.
Then followed up with a non apology that claimed what he said was not intended to be a “political statement”.
by all means, argue that you think there’s a fuss over nothing, but if you leave important context out seemingly because it doesn’t suit your narrative it weakens your argument substantially.
I know what happened, I followed quite thoroughly.
He thinks that republicans are now the ones with a higher chance to push antitrust cases against big tech (I.e., work for the little guy - EDIT: source). He thinks this based on the last few years and a few things that happened. He likes the nomination from Trump. How is this a full support to Trump? How believing that republicans will do better - in this area - equals being a Nazi?
Of course I believe that there is a fuss over nothing. The above statement has been inflated and I have already read “he applauded to Trump antitrans policies”, " posted Nazi symbols" and other complete fantasies.
Many people, who are on the internet on a perpetual witch hunt decided to interpret a clearly specific tweet (about antitrust and big tech) as a global political statement, and read that “little guy” as “common man” or - I have read it here on Lemmy - “working class”. Basically everyone tried to propose ideas about why that post was so awful, rather than first trying to understand what the hell he meant. I will agree the first tweet is ambiguous, but that’s because it’s a 200 characters tweet, he then explained his position quite clearly, and the summary above is what he actually meant.
This “context” added doesn’t move my post a centimeter IMO.
While it’s certainly true that some of the people who are angry at him for that tweet are saying things in their anger that are overboard, I think only pointing out the most ridiculous things that people who disagree with you have ever said in their anger is a really terrible way of engaging honestly on the subject.
It’s important to remember that an authoritarian that always figured out what the right thing to do was and did the opposite of that would be a really bad authoritarian. Republicans at the state level have been increasing state surveillance to hunt down and punish people for choices they make with their own bodies. For a lot of people in America, Trump is the head of the organization that they want privacy to protect themselves from, and the current largest threat to privacy in America.
For the CEO of a company that is supposedly about protecting our privacy to completely unprompted start publicly praising decisions made by the very threat we’re supposed to trust them to protect us from, and then to double down on their praise when called out, is deeply concerning.
Yes. It’s true that not every single thing Trump does will be the worst possible thing, but his goals are fundamentally opposed to ours. When I say I want big tech to be broken up it’s because I want their to be less concentration of power. When Trump wants to break up big tech it’s because he wants to eliminate the competition to his concentration of power. That is not worthy of my praise, even if in any one particular instance the thing he is doing is similar to what I would do, and the fact that the CEO of Proton either doesn’t understand this or doesn’t care is deeply concerning. I do not trust them after this, and I doubt they can ever get that trust back.
He praised one thing, and motivated that praise. It’s 100% possible to disagree, but I don’t find it concerning at all. I find it reasonable, because proton can better protect the privacy of users if more people can choose freely privacy oriented tools (like proton). Hence, if Trump does or says something that can help moving in that direction, it can be labeled as a good thing. Not every sentence is a collective or global assessment of all things considered.
When Trump wants to break up big tech it’s because he wants to eliminate the competition to his concentration of power.
- this is something US citizens should concern themselves
- it is only tangentially irrelevant
- if by breaking up monopolies people will be able to choose more privacy-preserving services, what you think is Trump’s goal will fail anyway. More privacy and less data is also a way to limit the amount of demographic targeting he uses so well in his campaigns.
So I am good with him doing the right thing for the wrong reason, and I wish him a swift failure afterwards.
doesn’t understand this or doesn’t care is deeply concerning
Have you considered that he might not agree with what is just your opinion? Obviously you are free to draw any conclusion you want and not use them.
See, now that’s a more thorough explanation of your position.
I disagree with pretty much all of your assertions (though the witch hunt stuff can be true sometimes) , but at least i know I’m disagreeing with an opinion formed using the whole of the information provided.
This “context” added doesn’t move my post a centimeter IMO.
It shows you read the initial information in it’s entirety and still came to the conclusion you did.
That removes the possibility of responses such as “Did you even read the initial tweet?”.
Well… it should remove that possibility, in practice it just means you can safely ignore those responses because clearly the people making those responses haven’t read your response in it’s entirety.
Context matters. Why did you ignore it? We see so many CEOs kissing Trump’s feet these days. Here Andy is, doing the same… Of course I don’t know what’s in Andy’s head, but Trump loves groveling, and clearly Andy is riding that bandwagon on purpose.
That’s not context, that’s a superficial observation. Zuck kissed the ring by changing Facebook policy to align with trump/musk posture on “free speech”, Andy said he likes the antitrust pick. They are completely different things.
Right, Andy’s action was bad but not as bad. We agree. It’s not identical.
And when given the chance to explain how he felt about this situation, on how the bad timing is … purely accidental or something … he did a bad job of it. Which suggests our original conclusions were in fact correct.
Also, if you think observations about time, place, and manner are superfluous, that’s a peculiar thought. Maybe we disagree. Maybe I think basic elements of societal interaction and communication are important and informative.
This tweet happened right after trump picked for the antitrust position. The “time” is completely logical, the “place” is a tweet and the manner is a short statement supporting that pick. Also proton is a US company, so it doesn’t have the same reason to “bend the knee” as other US big tech are doing.
So it’s not that I am ignoring context, I genuinely don’t see relation. He praised something that he pushes for years, he did not suddenly switch to “free speech” like Zuck.
Honestly I find his attitude to be quite commendable and I think that speaks much louder than whatever it is you disagree with.
Maybe he should have just left Trump’s name out of it entirely as that seems to be what really pushed people’s buttons.
People are going to twist things around no matter what is said though. Don’t forget hindsight makes everyone look guilty.
He should have just stayed the fuck out of Americans politics being a provider of a secure service that many Americans of all political persuasions use.
He is an idiot who cost his company business. The only spin is trying to downplay it at this point. The consequences are lost profits.
Glad I cancelled. If the CEO is this clueless and/or and/or ignorant and/or disingenuous do I really want them responsible for my private data?
Yes, because nobody (including you) is probably going to do it better: https://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-burkeman-s-blog/2014/may/21/everyone-is-totally-just-winging-it
Heaven forbid I have opinions!
Sorry, I took your rhetorical question as a genuine one.
A wise man once told me, don’t mess with politics. The moment you show stance (which usually isn’t beneficial), you cut off options from yourself and endanger customer relationship.
Proton should just do business as usual, without that single post things would probably be just fine.
The fight for privacy and digital freedom is inherently political.
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I think that’s a different thing. That is a political stance but it’s not picking sides. People who want to organise Nazi rallys and people who need to communicate without getting attacked by Nazis both have reasons to use encrypted email. When you pick one over the other, you’ve cut the size of your userbase.
I would be perfectly happy with a VPN that was openly anti-nazi.
That’s not the point. A neutral stance VPN has all the anti-Nazis as customers, and all the Nazis. I would prefer anti-Nazi as well but I get that that a neutral stance means they can have more customers, something they need for economy of scale.
If they had stated their anti-trump stance then the freeze peach lemmy instances would probably have all their Nazis cancelling their proton subscriptions.
Honestly I hope all the cancellations on our side aren’t balanced by a bunch of Nazis signing up after seeing the comments.
He’s trying to have it both ways though. He wants to support trump and then be like “nooooo! What are you talking about? We’re neutral!”
Yeah, with the same Swiss neutrality that doesn’t care whose teeth the gold came from.
I don’t think I quite get what the benefit is to them of supporting Trump’s pick. What was it he was hoping to gain, not from the pick but from his comment?
What benefit do all those who have kissed trump’s ring thus far get? All I know is that I’m not about to trust my privacy to someone with 88 in their username. I only signed up for proton last month because of trump. I’ll be leaving for another service for the same reason.
The reality is that being “anti-Nazi” is also a neutral stand. This is in the terms of service of Proton:
Unauthorized activities include, but are not limited to:
[…] 4. Harassing, abusing, insulting, harming, defaming, slandering, disparaging, intimidating or discriminating against someone based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, race, age, nationality or disability;
I don’t think Proton is ok with Nazis, but I feel people wanted them to be also “anti-Trump”, even if Trump does something to benefit privacy (which, as you hinted, is a neutral action that also benefits anti-Nazis).
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That was probably their thought too. However, they have misjudged the Lemmy (and I think reddit) population on this, and I would argue that worse than the initial comment is the absolute lack of recognition (in follow up comments) that what they said could be taken as an endorsement of a government that is trying to actively harm a significant portion of the US Proton users.
I think he actually acknowledged that fact in later comments. Anyway, this is a far smaller sin than all the stuff people are creatively accusing him of.
Apparently now he is a Nazi, and I think this case was the last nail in the coffin for me to think that political discourse can exist.
If it helps, most people don’t follow politics at all. And their votes are based on very little knowledge of what they are voting for.
I’m still a believer that if you put people in a room together instead of online, you’d get both sides of the aisle agreeing on 95% of things, once each side had a chance to explain their viewpoint (and made sure google was available to settle most disputes).
Americans are not flirting with Nazism. They dated it, married it and had many children with it.
He’s kind of right on the money and kind of being completely dumb.
The fact of it is that Republicans don’t want to help privacy or take down big tech’s abuses, they want to make it worse. All of the reasonable things Andy has said have taken place past that, so in a way the entire conversation is talking past the point.
The question is, how can somebody so influential at a major privacy company not have such a pre-school understanding of major world figures’ relationships to his core business?
