A Follow Up on 'Does Proton Still Stand for Anything' ?

Andy Yen responded to me on LinkedIn, and I wanted to share my thoughts on our conversation.

A few days ago, the CEO of Proton, Andy Yen, praised Donald Trump’s nomination of Gail Slater as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division on his personal Twitter account. This, along with a number of now deleted follow-up posts from Proton’s company account on Bluesky, were perceived as pro-Trump endorsements by quite a few of us, and a betrayal of what the company stood for — namely privacy, fundamental rights, and transparency.

As a Proton customer, I was rightly outraged, and wrote about it here:

Does Proton Still Stand for Anything?

I also followed up with a direct message to Andy, and to the Proton Foundation, who exercises control over the corporate arm, Proton AG.

In the days following the initial shitstorm, both Andy and Proton spent time in damage control mode, trying to reframe the narrative and confirm their larger commitments to the company’s core ethos. For them, it was less about praising Trump or the Republican party writ large, and more about praising the nomination of Slater for Assistant AG, and the GOP for perceived efforts to ‘protect small companies’.¹ Whether Yen / Proton’s view is grounded in reality or tunnel-vision is still up for debate. Ditto for whether the Democrats singularly have been captured by Big Tech en masse (as Proton asserted before deleting their posts).

To his credit, Andy reached out replied to my DM on LinkedIn² a few days ago, and we had a tense, but in my opinion, overall constructive conversation. I won’t relay all of it, but I did want to share my updated priors in light of what he shared and my observations going forward.

Update: I want to take a moment to express that I am not giving Andy/Proton a pass here — only pointing out that he offered some context. Take from it what you will. This is not, and was never intended to be, an apologia post. I have made a few updates to this post in light of comments expressed on the various socials, calling me out for not being harsher / more unequivocal in my position.

1. I no longer believe Yen is ‘Firmly in Trump’s Corner’. But I do think he’s very naive / ill-informed: Throughout our conversation, Andy stated (rather emphatically) that he was just as likely to call out Republicans as Democrats in the US, and that he asserted Proton’s track record has firmly demonstrated this in the past (including the ‘Swiss Neutrality’ post I referenced.
   
   Clearly, Andy is frustrated by the inaction and political opportunism that permeates US government, a sentiment I see expressed by many ‘Little Tech’ companies. And he’s not wrong! Big Tech’s power has only grown, and the Biden administration & Congress did very little, despite many opportunities. However, he wrongly assumes this is somehow unique to the Democrats, and is not indicative of who’s in power and the impact of lobbying and regulatory capture generally.
   
   Consequently, there's a lot of naivete/wishful thinking by folks like Yen concerning the consequences of right-wing, authoritarian/oligopolist rule generally, and Trump in particular on speech, the press, privacy, civil liberties, and minority group protections.³ This combination of frustration + wishful thinking has caused many to buy the lie that 'anything different is better than what we've got', without fully appreciating that different does not guarantee better.
   
   It’s also worth noting that he dismissed my question about whether he’d make a similar statement of support if Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping had they done something similar. His response was to mostly dismiss the question: “no, because they have zero track record for being pro-privacy.”⁴

2. Proton’s response was bad optics, and they should own that: During our conversation, Yen was adamant that Proton remains politically neutral. He characterized critics (including me) as misinterpreting or misunderstanding what he and the company actually believe.⁵
   
   While it’s always true that stories have two sides, and that his statements may have been misinterpreted by some, Andy fundamentally ignores the optics problem: Namely, it doesn’t matter what you intended to say, it matters how people interpret what you said. And the optics problem in this case stems from Proton’s avowed commitment to Swiss Neutrality on political issues. In 2016, Yen wrote of the company:
   
   ”It is important to note that as a Swiss company which benefits from Swiss government support, Proton Mail follows the Swiss policy of neutrality. We do not take any position for or against Trump, nor any position for or against any particular country or government. We believe privacy is an universal value, so we do not take any sides.”
   
   I get that he earnestly believes that he didn’t argue for a political position in this case, but the bottom line was that many reasonable people didn’t see it that way. This was exacerbated by the company’s posts which much more clearly emphasized the perception that the company believes that Trump & the GOP would be better for the little guy compared to the Biden/Democratic administration.

   

   This still looks rather sus to me, even if it was deleted.

3. I am taking a wait-and-see approach with Proton: As a paying customer, I need to be mindful where I spend my money (and with whom I trust my personal data). Proton is my main workhorse email provider. All of my various domain MX records go through Proton. While I have a Gmail account, I don’t use it for much. I also use Proton’s other services (including Drive and Proton VPN) regularly.
   
   I continue to trust in the technology, their implementation of GPG for encryption, and I know Proton (the company) has a solid track record of defending human rights and privacy. Also, I stand behind my general philosophy that nobody deserves to be crucified for one or two dipshit posts on social media.

   
   Still, I can’t help but be a bit more cautious all the same. I have started looking into other providers (like mailbox.org and Tuta ) and will be looking at Proton’s actions more critically going forward. Regardless of my choices, I do hope that Andy & the Proton Team continue to prioritize privacy, human rights, freedom of speech & expression, and the protection of vulnerable users, over other business interests. I hope that they continue to act responsibly and stand up against authoritarian and totalitarian regimes who seek to undermine our rights. As he said elsewhere, “privacy is a universal value.” Ceding that so that you get a favorable outcome in some other area would be a terrible signal.

4. Finally, Andy asked me plainly what else he could do, and I didn’t have an answer at the time. But I did think of something over the last few days: I would love to see them work / fund / support development of E2EE with providers outside of Proton, maybe by integrating with tools like FlowCrypt. Update: He complained that Proton was already doing this, and did so before the ‘controversy’. It felt a bit like an attack (that I somehow didn’t report this on purpose). Anyway.
   
   One thing I love about Proton is that they have made E2EE email service easy to use — but inertia is still a strong force. For people who use Gmail (either because they feel stuck, or they literally can’t move to another provider), having a seamless E2EE integration that protects user privacy and keeps data out of the hands of authoritarian governments (and Big Tech!) would represent a big win for privacy and data protection. It’s also politically neutral. And that’s what we’re all about, right?
   
   

1. “On Politics and Proton - a Message from Andy” (Reddit).

2. One of “a few pedantic things” (his words) he brought up in subsequent messages to me, along with a mention that I should have somehow known that Proton’s recent fundraising efforts included FlowCrypt and other open source projects as recipients. I’ll note for the record, that this detail was not mentioned anywhere that I was able to find, but Andy seemed upset that I didn’t know this fact.

I have made a few updates throughout this post. If someone wants a previous version, I’m happy to share.

3. A good example was that Andy linked to this Economist post, which implied that Trump (through his appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence), would pursue ending Section 702. However, a quick Google search indicates where Trump is likely to stand on Section 702, considering he re-authorized it in 2018.

4. I forgot to include this in my mention — it’s less a signal that he’s a true believer, and more an indication that he is just fundamentally misinformed/uninformed about Trump’s track record. The FISA 702 example was merely one — but recent EOs abridging human rights and infringing privacy that will likely come in the next few months of the Trump administration clearly suggest otherwise. It’s also hard to imagine that any sort of mass deportation or return to the Comstock Act / anti-abortion crusadership can be undertaken without invading privacy and other fundamental rights. For example, this TechRadar post sheds some light on past and future Trump actions.

5. I am being extremely charitable here, and I’ll leave it at that.