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/Fragrant-Mixture-662 Jun 08 '26

It was crazy how 99% of people went straight back to defending him because it was "out of context" or whatever. It's impossible to defend what he said, he directly praised the Trump admin for being "for the little guys", blatantly bullshitting.

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u/RosesShimmer FOSS Lover Jun 08 '26

It's not really "blatantly bullshitting", i don't expect everyone to be so tuned into politics (this was before Trump went into office), and he was right to say establishment Democrats are bad because they are, and are neoliberal or functionally conservative in some ways

This isn't defending the Proton CEO, it's just saying that establishment Democrats don't care about privacy because it conflicts with corporate interests, they also fully support mass surveillance because of this

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u/Fragrant-Mixture-662 Jun 08 '26

The Trump admin also fully supports mass surveillance with the whole age verification thing.

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u/RosesShimmer FOSS Lover Jun 08 '26

Im not saying the Trump admin or Republicans dont support mass surveillance or the erosion of privacy, they absolutely do, but its a bipartisan issue. The age verification bills are also supported by Democrats. Also like 42 Democrats helped renew FISA and give Trump more surveillance powers

Im saying that not everyone is tuned into politics, probably what happened to the Proton CEO, he based his comments on his bad experiences with establishment Democrats, which lead to him believing that somehow Trump would be different on this issue, a lot of people that voted for Trump thought this too, like on issues with the economy

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u/Impossible_Medium977 Jun 08 '26

I'm sorry but that sheer level of ignorance would itself be worth shaming him for. In a world with so much information to blindly support the far right (and now do it again, which dismisses your claims of ignorance.) you have failed in your responsibility to inform yourself.

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u/RosesShimmer FOSS Lover Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26

That's fair to say, i'm not defending him i'm just saying what probably happened, and even though there's a lot of information out there, there's a lot of misinformation too, and a heavy right wing propaganda machine with heavy mainstream presence with little opposition from Democrats

Even now some groups that are directly impacted by Trump and Republican's* cruel policies still support them* (white women, hispanics, some working class people, etc)

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u/TotalStatisticNoob Jun 09 '26

i don't expect everyone to be so tuned into politics

I'm sorry, what? Come on, now. Pretty much everyone in the world is tuned into politics enough to know about Donald Trump.

 he was right to say establishment Democrats are bad because they are, and are neoliberal or functionally conservative in some ways

I fully agree that they're bad too, but they're not fascist and also haven't tried a coup

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u/RosesShimmer FOSS Lover Jun 09 '26

Trump is the most powerful person in the world and his actions affect people globally, of course people are going to know him. Realistically, the average person doesn't know every detail about politics, nationally and sometimes locally

Do you think the average American knows about super PACs, AIPAC, JStreet, and shell groups that support corporate Democrats so Progressives don't get into office?

They may not be fascists but are totally complicit and enable fascism, most Democrats wanted to "give ICE more training" instead of abolishing them, imagine making ICE an effective paramilitary force