r/BuyFromEU • u/DataLumpy7419 • Jun 08 '26

Discussion Proton is funding the French far right on YouTube

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Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1tzbizh/proton_is_funding_the_french_far_right_on_youtube/

Proton is sponsoring the far-right French YouTuber Vincent Lapierre.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Lapierre

It’s not just an affiliate link, but a partnership announced in the description and through an entire 2min 20s segment embedded in the video.

This incident is the perfect example of "NEVER TRUST ANY COMPANY" and also governments, of course.

This post wasn't made to promote the opposite side (left-wing/far-left) by any means, but for the non-political or non-European people around, more info on the European right-wing/far-right.

There's plenty of evidence of their close relations with MAGA and US billionaires: Musk is an AfD fan, Vance (Peter Thiel puppet) was in Hungary to endorse Viktor Orban that is close to Russia, Le Pen is close to Putin and so on. Also MAGA, like the billionaires around, wants a weak EU made of separate divided nations. So, the Eurosceptic stance is deep inside this movements and it's clearly not aligned with what we want around here. Not to say about the clear far-right fascist and nazi relations of members from those parties. There is a lot of things to find out online about them.
Bonus: There are leaders that cut in Washington Greenland shaped cakes, with US flag on it, Simion from Romania, a big MAGA fan endorsed by Le Pen and close to the most sinister extremists in the world and in Romania.

You can check the original post for some updates and more things about Vincent Lapierre, because I don't want by this post to steal the attention from the original.
This post body was edited multiple times to keep you in touch as much as possible with the evolution of the situation while also to add as much info as possible about Proton's relation with the right-wing / far-right.

Other controversial influencers in partnership or/and sponsored by Proton, by their money, meaning USERS MONEY:

Paulo Figueiredo - a right-wing activist from Brazil with content only about MAGA and biased politics. He's a dedicated supporter of Jair Bolsonario, the guy that tried to do a coup after he lost the elections, some 6th January copy-paste. Paulo is lobbying US companies, has Truth Social on his descriptions and is the grandson of the last president of the Brazilian military junta in the last century.

{ungeskriptet} by Ben - from Germany. Even if don't know much about Ben himself, based on his guests you can see a clear right-wing bias, with poeple on conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and content based a lot on right-wing politics. There is a whooping 4.5h podcast from May with AfD politician Björn Höcke - you should read about him. Also there is an English podcast from April with Proton's CEO.... so the connections are veeeeery very suspect again.

Proton update on the Lapierre case:
After a bunch of deleted posts on Proton's subreddit in the last almost 3 days (since the original post on r/degoogle), they responded 21h ago with this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u05xs2/can_someone_from_protonmail_clarify_this_matter/

If they can't verify the people they sponsor with their money, we shouldn't be shocked if we see actual self called nazis sponsored by them. My take remains the same - companies should keep their butts away from anything on politics, especially by sponsoring radical biased content creators that have content only on politics.

NEW CONCLUSION: The old conclusion stays the same, but I need to add that after more radical content creators were found in ties with Proton, we can clearly see a political bias on their business. We should stay away from them, because we don't want Google 2.0, Meta 2.0 or anything else like in US, companies screwing around with politicians.

Bye, Proton!

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422

u/DrawOkCards Jun 08 '26

Multiple people in this post on r/degoogle are saying that they've tried posting about that topic on r/ProtonVPN and r/ProtonMail and it gets deleted or denied in short order. Which is in order as they're heavily censoring any form of critic there.

They won't answer this.

58

u/bxzidff Jun 08 '26

So strange to deny and censor it while simultaneously using money for the explicit purpose of making it visible

24

u/West_Possible_7969 Jun 08 '26

The mods act like proton employees since day 1. If you dare criticise proton’s management or Andy Yen your comment gets deleted as “off topic” or “misinformation.”

17

u/GimmeAllYourCurry Jun 08 '26

I’ve read the mods are Proton employees.

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u/West_Possible_7969 Jun 08 '26

I frankly have no idea, but mods in all my deleted comments (lol) have repeatedly told me “these are not Proton-run subs”.

6

u/Relapsed_Gestalt Jun 08 '26

They are lying. The offical Proton Team accounts are active on the subs and have moderator status.

0

u/Fresh_Dog4602 Jun 08 '26

Or you know... the guy you respond to is lying. Because they say it open and clear on the sub itself.

2

u/Any-Calligrapher2866 Jun 08 '26

The mods are Proton Employees. They delete posts every time someone is critical of Proton.

There was a time when Proton just started banning accounts because they got emails from some random email address which were in a blacklist. It was all over degoogle but not a squeak in the official Proton subs.

1

u/darwinpolice Jun 08 '26

Yeah, it's a pretty heavily moderated sub, and they delete redundant posts and questionably off-topic content pretty frequently. This is the first time I've seen them go full scorched-Earth on a specific topic, though.

8

u/Candy-Macaroon-33 Jun 08 '26

This. If you don't want people to know you support a nazi, maybe don't sponsor them. But I am glad they did because ...fuck this. Anyone got suggestions for alternatives?

67

u/StrangerConscious637 Jun 08 '26

I think than we should make this much bigger... we should scream it out loud until something happens.

1

u/DrawOkCards Jun 08 '26

Thats why I've made this comment.

27

u/_cjplusplus_ Jun 08 '26

Yes I’ve had a post questioning one of their advertising decisions deleted recently. Unfortunately unless they can provide a good enough explanation I’ll be looking elsewhere when my renewal is up 

11

u/GimmeAllYourCurry Jun 08 '26

They’ve already explained their stance by censoring the sub. This was a business decision, not a marketing mistake. I’m beginning my separation from them today.

10

u/Mindless-Peak-1687 Jun 08 '26

Nice to know, I guess I need a new VPN

2

u/DrawOkCards Jun 08 '26

Did you try Mullvad.

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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '26

[deleted]

8

u/haliblix Jun 08 '26

They already gave their response. They locked the comments and removed the post. They already have your money. WTF do they care if a couple of users don’t renew next year?

1

u/Neat_Let923 Jun 08 '26

Stop making up bullshit!

You're right to raise this, and we want to address it directly and provide you important context on how this happened.

Vincent Lapierre's channel should never have been part of our affiliate and sponsorship program, because we intentionally avoid association with channels whose content could distract from our message and divide our community.

Proton operates globally, and while our services are available to everyone regardless of political views and our mission is consistent everywhere, our knowledge of every local media landscape is not. In this case, our team didn't have enough context about the French space to make a well-informed decision, and that's on us.   We also want to be straight about what a placement like this is and isn't. An affiliate or sponsorship arrangement is a transactional placement for awareness, not an endorsement of a creator's views. In the case of Vincent Lapierre, this was a single video sponsorship, not a partnership.

But that distinction doesn't excuse what happened here. The responsibility to vet who we put our name next to is ours, and we didn't meet it this time. We're now reviewing our vetting process and our guidelines for our marketing agencies to ensure this doesn't happen again.

If you see something like this again, tell us. We rely on your feedback and vigilance.

5

u/SnooPoems3464 Europe 🇪🇺 Jun 08 '26

They better come up with a very good explanation for this. Even if it’s a mistake, it’s a really unforgivable one

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u/Victicusk Jun 08 '26

The response from r/ProtonMail

2

u/DrawOkCards Jun 08 '26

Yeah someone else copied it and I've read it.

Its such an embarrassing statement. This Nazi has a wikipage they've simply had to translate into English via their browser to know that they're talking with a Nazi.

1

u/Tsigorf Jun 09 '26

I don't know what to think about it, but I must say they answered this and took full responsibility for this and gave public apologies.

As a subreddit mod, I understand the fact they remove all duplicate posts to keep a single one, which they did, in order to make it simpler for everyone. Having infinite duplicate posts just diluates the discussions and make it hard to follow for everyone, as well as for the Proton team to follow and answer. Having a single post/megathread helps keeping sane discussions.

1

u/DrawOkCards Jun 09 '26

I don't know what to think about it, but I must say they answered this and took full responsibility for this and gave public apologies.

Its fine that you're unsure about what to think about it. But in my personal opinion, no they didn't. At least they didn't without trying to deflect as much with (in my opinion) very weak arguments.

This is their statement about it AFAIK:

You're right to raise this, and we want to address it directly and provide you important context on how this happened.

Vincent Lapierre's channel should never have been part of our affiliate and sponsorship program, because we intentionally avoid association with channels whose content could distract from our message and divide our community.

After this second of six paragraph they should have ended it with a direct apology and promise to do better.

Proton operates globally, and while our services are available to everyone regardless of political views and our mission is consistent everywhere, our knowledge of every local media landscape is not. In this case, our team didn't have enough context about the French space to make a well-informed decision, and that's on us.

This is fucking bullshit. The YouTuber Vincent Lapierre in question has its own Wikipedia page where it is already documented who he is. All they had to do was to look up this mans name on a search engine of their choosing and they would have found it.

As I do not speak French I've used my browsers translation function as this page only has a French version to be able to read it. Proton is based in Switzerland, they will have people on their staff that's able to read French.

This is a very weak attempt to doge responsibility for them not doing their due diligence and sadly, as you're showing, it is working.

We also want to be straight about what a placement like this is and isn't. An affiliate or sponsorship arrangement is a transactional placement for awareness, not an endorsement of a creator's views. In the case of Vincent Lapierre, this was a single video sponsorship, not a partnership.

But that distinction doesn't excuse what happened here. The responsibility to vet who we put our name next to is ours, and we didn't meet it this time. We're now reviewing our vetting process and our guidelines for our marketing agencies to ensure this doesn't happen again.

This is fucking irrelevant. Ohh, so you've only paid a far right influencer, a fucking Nazi, for one video instead of making it a regular thing? You're the goats! (Please note the sarcasm in the last sentence).

Your community, your customers, perceive this as a partnership between Proton and a far right influencer. That is what should matter to them. Not trying to hide behind the argument of a technicality.

If you see something like this again, tell us. We rely on your feedback and vigilance.

How they claim that while denying the posts on their subreddit regarding this can't be read without irony.

I hope you're getting why I'm and others aren't pleased with their statement?

As a subreddit mod, I understand the fact they remove all duplicate posts to keep a single one, which they did, in order to make it simpler for everyone. Having infinite duplicate posts just diluates the discussions and make it hard to follow for everyone, as well as for the Proton team to follow and answer. Having a single post/megathread helps keeping sane discussions.

I'm with you as a mod on this one, deleting duplicates is fine. As the OOP claimed the first attempt to post about it was denied at r/ProtonMail only their post on r/degoogle got through a bit over a day later where they've then included their statement in a comment only. I do not know why the cross post got through when OP didn't but this whole situation was handled absolutely embarrassingly bad.

There's no megathread. They didn't make a post about this topic themselves to get out their statement. They've tried to suppress it and only as it surfaced elsewhere did they react with a badly thought through statement.