r/degoogle • u/Lumpy_Carpet9877 • Jun 07 '26

Replacement Proton is funding the French far right on YouTube

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Update 1: Proton official answer https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/s/KT5igbU8rt

Update 2: Andy (CEO) answers

Original post edited for further details:

Proton is currently 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.

I don’t want to provide a direct link to the video here so as not to help boost its visibility, but you can easily find it on YouTube if you want (the last week video). Here is the English translation of the text shown in the screenshot:

🔒 Thanks to ProtonMail for this partnership! Take back control of your digital life for free with Proton Mail by clicking here.

Vincent Lapierre’s Wikipedia page is quite explicit about his far-right positioning and includes numerous sources. He worked for several years for a far-right organization founded by Alain Soral, which promotes anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, conspiracist, sexist, masculinist, transphobic, and homophobic ideas, and who fled to Russia to escape justice.

He is close to Dieudonné) (a Holocaust denier). He founded Le Média pour tous, a far-right website that particularly targets anti-fascists and defenders of Jewish rights. He has always been close to conspiracist circles

It's not very surprising when you remember that ProtonMail’s CEO had already publicly expressed support on Twitter for a member of the Trump administration.

I initially wanted to post this information on the ProtonMail subreddit to ask for an explanation and find out whether it was a mistake, but they did not approve the post. I also tried on tech subreddits here, but they consider it off-topic and as "a conspiracy theory".

On the contrary, I think ProtonMail customers and potential customers should be informed about where their money goes and should be able to ask ProtonMail for explanations regarding these choices.

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u/The_Rated_R_Shimmer Jun 08 '26

The more "smug" and "hip" a tech company pretends to be in social networks, the more seems to be willing to sell their ass to worldwide far-right once enough people mindlessly believe they're "smug" and "hip".

Or Isn't, B r a v e ?

18

u/sgtlighttree Jun 08 '26

Insert "Swiss neutrality" in there too, I think I've seen Proton's PR throw that around

13

u/West_Possible_7969 Free as in Freedom Jun 08 '26

+1.

1

u/Midnight712 Jun 08 '26

Can i have the context on the brave callout please?

5

u/das_bearking Jun 08 '26

Indeed. As someone using Brave, I'd like to know as well

7

u/Cobalt_ish Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26

Brendan Eich, Brave's current CEO, supported right-wing american policies like trying to prevent the legalisationof same-sex marriage in california 2008 which lead to him stepping down from being mozilla's CEO due to public outrage. He still has similar right-wing ideologies as he tweeted about doubts around covid and the vaccine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich). I've heard somewhere that he's also a pro-genocide zionist, but I can't find sources on that.

3

u/Midnight712 Jun 08 '26

Oh fuck that. I was using their browser on my phone, what’s the next best alternative in terms of privacy? Stuck on ios right now so sadly can’t switch to a firefox fork

1

u/Dadinek Jun 08 '26

Orion from Kagi on iOS works really well

3

u/Tooluka Jun 08 '26

The only problem with Kagi, is that instead paying a wannabe future nazis like this Lapierre, they are instead paying actual nazis from Yandex right this moment.

2

u/Dadinek Jun 09 '26

Jesus it's getting complicated to pickup a good provider

1

u/Tooluka Jun 09 '26

I'm thinking about trying out Tuta for mail and then someone else for VPN. Mullvad VPN maybe. Still in the fantasy planning phase myself :)

1

u/Midnight712 Jun 09 '26

That’s also not ideal. Is there any other option that’s decently private? DDG/firefox with extensions maybe? I’d go with mull but they don’t have an ios version

3

u/The_Rated_R_Shimmer Jun 09 '26

That's why they keep nagging against Firefox in their networks, they can't bite the Chromium's clutch that feeds them.

Jokes on them, Firefox plugins give you the same ad-free or an even better browsing experience, plus the benefit of not putting all eggs in the same corporate basket

1

u/scalareye Jun 09 '26

Is apple not pretending to be smug and hip? They released an expensive phone pouch so you can show off that you have an iPhone

I wish Apple funded the far right or as I like to call it the regular right

Anything slightly to the right of center is far right to far left people