Proton Mail Says It’s “Politically Neutral” While Praising Republican Party
theintercept.com
The “privacy-first” company surprised its user base when CEO Andy Yen lauded Trump on social media.

Summary

Proton Mail, known for its privacy-first email services, faced backlash after CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party and its antitrust stance.

The company initially posted and deleted a statement supporting Yen’s comments, later claiming an “internal miscommunication” and reiterating its political neutrality.

Critics question Proton’s impartiality, particularly as it cooperates with Swiss authorities on legal data requests.

Privacy advocates warn that political alignments could undermine trust, especially for Proton’s users—journalists and activists wary of government surveillance under administrations like Trump’s.

    • synicalx@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      21 hours ago

      I’m not the person you were asking, but I recently tried tried Tuta with my own domain and decided to look elsewhere due to a few things;

      • No way to import mail, despite it being announced as “worked on” back in 2022. This is a fairly huge blocker IMO.
      • Email rules don’t seem to apply until you view (and I assume decrypt) your mailbox. This led to some annoying behaviour like push notifications for emails that should have had rules applied to them.
      • Spam filtering is all over the place - it’s overzealous and filters legitimate emails, and at the same time it lets in plenty of actual spam.
      • The mobile apps are odd - you get realtime push notifications, but when you open the app and view your mailbox, it takes 20-30 seconds for it to show the email it just notified you about (even if you tap the notification).
      • Their history of outages and instability are a big cause for concern IMO. Email is a crucial service, so uptime, deliverability, and data integrity are paramount.

      For routine/non-sensitive email, they feel like too much hassle for the average punter in my opinion. And if I put on my industry hat; their frequent downtime is a huge red flag, and a sign that they either don’t know what they’re doing or don’t have enough cash to operate properly.

      Having said that, I still think they’re the best current option if privacy/encryption is your only concern - to the best of my knowledge no one else takes that quite as seriously as they do.

    • Eezyville@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      9·
      1 day ago

      I’ve been using Tuta since 2018 so I’ll give you some of my gripes:

      • The domain gets blocked by spam filters when I email other people. Not necessarily Tuta’s fault but annoying.
      • I get a ton of spam and phishing emails. A ton. Everyday I’m flagging like 4-5 of them.
      • Tuta just got labels. I can now label my emails but Proton had it for years (I also use Proton)
      • Tuta constantly have outages. I hope they improve their infrastructure.
      • I personally like Proton’s UI/UX better
      • I use the desktop client in both Windows and Linux. The Linux one is an Appimage that I have to run using --no-sandbox and I just don’t feel comfortable doing that. Proton has Proton Bridge which I can use to interface with Thunderbird which I prefer. Now whether it’s as secure or not I don’t know because security isn’t my specialty but I like using Thunderbird for my email client.

      Edit 1: fixed typo

      • dan@upvote.au
        2·
        22 hours ago

        The domain gets blocked by spam filters when I email other people

        Do they not let you use your own domain name? I wouldn’t use an email provider that forces you to use their domain… It makes it a pain if you ever want to switch provider.

        • Eezyville@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          22 hours ago

          They let you use your own domain now. But I’ve been using this provider since 2018. The article I linked to was written in 2022 so 4 years later. I was already established so I’ll have to go through a lot of services to change it. But if I change everything to my domain then what is preventing that domain from getting flagged? I don’t know enough about spam filters.

          • dan@upvote.au
            3·
            21 hours ago

            But if I change everything to my domain then what is preventing that domain from getting flagged?

            You likely won’t ever be sending spam, phishing emails, viruses, etc from your own domain, so it has no reason to get flagged.

            It’s worth the pain to switch to your own domain, since you’ll likely never have to change your email address again. I’ve used several different email providers over the years, but if you email me at an email address I used 20 years ago, it’ll still get to me today.