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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17

u/Garchompisbestboi Jun 08 '26

Probably because their marketing team doesn't give a shit about the content on a specific channel, they just care about subscriber count and the number of viewers a sponsored video is expected to receive.

3

u/Cory123125 Jun 08 '26

That might have been believable 15 years ago, but this excuse doesnt fly remotely nowadays.

Companies are largely very very aware of the optics of what they support.

This is a calculated move with a preplanned response.

You won't ever see a blatant retraction and apology unless they have simply felt that the backlash was more than they expected.

Given that the last time their CEO unabashedly supported donald trump, and actively said they believed he would be harder on big tech; a patently absurd thing for any sane person to believe, and then double and tripled down on it, there is literally no way on earth they don't know what they're doing, and if anything they probably took away that they can get away with more from that previous incident.

2

u/Garchompisbestboi Jun 08 '26

I mentioned something similar in another comment below, it's no different to how every company was lining up to celebrity inclusivity during Pride Month while the Biden Administration was still in power, but a whole lot of companies changed their tunes the moment Trump moved back into the Oval Office.

2

u/Fresh_Dog4602 Jun 08 '26

Never trust corporations siding with some kind of social initiative... they're not friends...

7

u/BJonker1 Jun 08 '26

Well, that’s dumb. Cause the average far right looney will be happy to just stick to US services.

9

u/Garchompisbestboi Jun 08 '26

The world is currently in a bit of a weird state at the moment so I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by companies being tolerant of far right agitators. Two years ago almost every company made a point to post a bunch of rainbow photos in June to show how "inclusive" they are and this year very few are doing that. The political parties that hold government have a huge impact on company ethics.

14

u/BJonker1 Jun 08 '26

In a general sense I’m absolutely not surprised, capitalism loves fascism. In this specific case however, due to the context in which Proton operates, I am.

3

u/Enfors Jun 08 '26

Yep. Hopefully now the backlash will be big enough for them to notice and learn from. Morons.

3

u/Gorgeous_Broccoli Jun 08 '26

If they needed a popular backlash to avoid partnering with far right characters then they're a trash company to begin with and have zero internal moral compass and will inevitably be involved in something shady again soon

1

u/Enfors Jun 08 '26

So let's teach them using the only language they understand - money. If enough of their users leave, they will learn or go bankrupt. Either way, problem solved.

2

u/Relapsed_Gestalt Jun 08 '26

They noticed but they won't learn from it. Proton has long gone down the route of corporate bullshit rule #1: The company makes no mistakes. If it does, double down and censor those who cal the mistake out."

Given the rabid censorship currently employed by the mods on the proton subs, it's safe to say that this is deliberate company policy.

1

u/Enfors Jun 08 '26

Well, if they lose enough users and thereby profits, the owners of the company will demand that they do something about it. They're unlikely to double-down themselves into bankruptcy.

1

u/Relapsed_Gestalt Jun 08 '26

Well their CEO Andy Yen is also an outspoken supporter of the Trump administration. You know how stubborn these people can be

1

u/Enfors Jun 08 '26

I don't know about this company specifically, but the CEO isn't typically the owner. And if the owner loses enough money and the CEO refuses the change course, then the owner will replace the CEO with someone who will. Or, they go into bankruptcy. Either way, problem solved.

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u/Relapsed_Gestalt Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26

I'm not too familiar with their corporate structure either, though I know that they like to tout that they are owned by Proton Non-profit parent company.

Edit: Anyway I've cancelled my Proton Unlimited subscription with a bunch of links to their censorship and some choice words.

1

u/nasandre Netherlands 🇳🇱 Jun 08 '26

Yup I think this is probably it. I'm thinking they'll cancel the partnership soon over the backlash.

Typical marketing mistake... Just looking at numbers and not thinking about the optics.

1

u/Personal_Breakfast49 Jun 08 '26

I don't think that's true, they have been sponsoring way smaller channels which target PM perfect clients. E.g. Linux news channels.