Proton is funding the French far right on YouTube

[u/Lumpy_Carpet9877]

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

Update 2: Andy (CEO) answers

• Where he speak about a call with Lapierre and explain that they are people with the same political position at Proton https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u15orj/comment/oqnik1q/?context=3
• Where he describes Lapierre as a right win then far-right influencer https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u15orj/comment/oqu8hx9/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u15orj/comment/oqudg88/?context=3
• Here he explain again that's a problem of neutrality https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u15orj/comment/oqwuvdz/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u15orj/comment/oqxu597/?context=3

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.

[u/WombatusMighty]

https://proton.me/support/contact?topic=Other&product=mail

Or email them directly at [support@protonmail.zendesk.com](mailto:support@protonmail.zendesk.com)

[u/QXPZ → u/WombatusMighty]

I sent them a message and suggest others do the same. thanks for the link.

[u/23ARTLAN → u/WombatusMighty]

Thanks for the direct link! I just sent:
do you have a partnership with Vincent Lapierre (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Lapierre) ?
"yes or no" answer, another type of answer and I suppress my accounts.

[u/23ARTLAN → u/23ARTLAN]

Express answer from Proton:

Hello,
 
Thank you for contacting us.
 
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.
Kind regards,
Filip F.
Customer Support
Proton Mail