The guy went on a lobbying trip to DC and was heard by GOP folks and not dems. So what? That’s all we know. Were dems busy that day? Did he try a different approach when he talked to the right. Anyone can go to DC and be heard or ignored on a lobbying trip.
Also, the content creator of the video was not vetted for sponsorship because they don’t usually do that. They admitted fault and are changing procedures to appropriately vet moving forward. I think their marketing team might even be external. Also, fascists never admit fault or accept accountability.
This sounds like big tech doesn’t want competition. You’ve seen google prevent side loading, and do a ton of shady things at this point. Why not a smear campaign too?
Thus guy might be a raging fascist dickhead for all I know. I’m just pointing out that the supposed evidence falls short and proves nothing.
Concerns I see are that Proton encourages you to import spam from your last account
They were lobbying in the US (there are good reasons to do that though)
They send your gmail notifications that you have new Proton emails along with details of that email if you use your old gmail as a recovery while transitioning - just use a different recovery email
None of those actual concerns have anything to do with far right ideologies.
Given the political direction most Westernised countries are heading, the kindest possible interpretation of that is breathtaking naivety on their part. Of course people are going to question why on earth far-right extremists are allowed to have unvetted ability to sponsor software.
To me, the essence of privacy software is the ability to ‘verify, not trust’ which is why the ties between privacy and open source are so strong. Proton are currently doing the opposite of that in how they run their company. A lot of people have had enough of tech companies half-arsing their approach and now refuse to just let these seemingly small things slide - mainly because they sometimes snowball into much larger things.
None of this is a smear campaign, its just a valid take on what people see unfolding in front of them.
Because as socialists/anti-facists we do kind of suck at putting money where our mouths are.
And as socialists/anti-fascists we also have orders of magnitude less money to same-put our mouths on.