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Comment by fnordsensei | Hacker News Reader

For context, people were upset about using the official accounts to endorse a party wholesale, in direct violation of their charter.

A subset were also upset with the nature of the endorsement.

And then you could also discuss whether a CEO of a company has to consider what they say, regardless if they're using an official account or not. This is more of a gray area, and has people divided.

I'm personally of the opinion that, as a CEO, you're always representing your company when speaking to the public to some extent.

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Andy did not endorse Trump, just the Republican nominee for antitrust. Nevertheless, we have retracted the statement, which was put out by mistake due to an internal miscommunication. Proton is not controlled by any single person but by the nonprofit Proton Foundation, which has neutrality in its governing principles, and that remains the case today.

To give more context:

Andy, or someone else, posted what can be read as an endorsement[1].

> Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.

Putting aside that this was a divisive statement, the problem emerged when this was posted by the official company account.

For the duration of time that this was the official response, it's not unreasonable for the public to assume that Andy, or someone else, endorsed a political party using the official company account.

This is the core of what caused the incident to escalate.

It was later retracted, and followed up with a statement[2] on the incident.

[1]: https://archive.ph/2yWGz

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_poli...

The irony is that this was already changing: anti-trust has been massively empowered under Biden and Lina Khan. Trump is certainly attempting to bandwagon this tide, but the appearance of so many Big Tech leaders in VIP seats at his inauguration does not lend a favourable hindsight view to Andy Yen's statement.

Is that really true? What did Lina Khan do to thwart big tech and enforce antitrust laws to a greater extent? I feel like there was mostly blockers for M&A that allowed startups to exit, but little real impact on big tech.

The most vocal supporter of Lina Khan's work over the last few years has been JD Vance... while I can't remember a single democrat voicing even close to the same support.

JD Vance vocally supported her, then the administration he is part of fired her as soon as it was able.

By contrast, Democrats nominated her to be commissioner, officially it was Biden who did so but Elizabeth Warren, another Democrat, is the one who really pushed for it.

Words don't mean shit compared to action.

With your kind of reasoning its pretty obvious why America is currently driving itself off a cliff.

She led the FTC to bring lawsuits against Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. Although two of the cases have been blocked in the courts, this alone was unthinkable in previous administrations. She's also helped enforce policies like right-to-repair and click-to-cancel which threaten big tech's market share. Like it or not she's played a massive part in shifting the narrative on antitrust. Trump's dismissal of her along with Big Tech's front-row seats at his inauguration and general sycophantism are not good signs for antitrust.

Sorry, your CEO tainted any respect I have for your organization. I was planning on move to your service this year. Now I am looking else where.

The statement maybe retracted but the message and statement and ideology remain. I cannot trust your organization based on your CEO.

The irony is the collection of big-tech that showed up for and financially supported Trump. This has a great profound outlook on real antitrust action towards those individuals and their organizations. Actions are more verbose than words but often ignored.

In this case though... the actions you are referring to are the words Andy Yen used?

As a long-time user and a volunteer on the translation team, I can't begin to express my disappointment with this.

I've subscribed to Proton for several years, and I now deeply regret my decision. Regardless of any explanations about the removal of the statement or internal miscommunication, the damage is already done.

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