Also, as a non-american why would I care until Proton product is good?
Two things:
In the worst case, where they support fascists, they’ll also likely not provide the protection from fascists that a lot of users are expecting and paying for. E.g. trans people might be using the service to protect themselves from an administration that is trying to erase them. Will the service actually be safe for them? Can people trust that fascist supporters won’t break their own product to support fascism?
We’ve seen lots of cases of tech companies and CEOs having a deleterious effect on politics. Is this a sign that proton will be yet another of those companies? Swiss law seems to work in our favour here, but if the company is rotting from the head, it won’t be enough.
It could be that this is just a series of clumsy actions from the CEO (including using his birth year in his new Reddit nick, when that birth year is also a well-known nazi dogwhistle (88, code for the 8th letter in the alphabet, as in HH, as in “Heil H…”)), it could be him showing his true colors.
As an existing customer I’ve taken a sort of wait-and-see stance; I likely wouldn’t become a new customer right now.
Same here. He’s not American, why would he care about Trump?
Also we’ve seen this with Twitter. Technology should be neutral in that case and stick to what they sell: security and privacy, but it could go down the toilet very fast.
including using his birth year in his new Reddit nick, when that birth year is also a well-known nazi dogwhistle (88, code for the 8th letter in the alphabet, as in HH, as in “Heil H…”))
It’s been a thing for a long time. I know several people who ended up abandoning favored, long-held user accounts that they had ending in their 1988 birth year because they kept being mistaken as nazis… typically by nazis who thought they had found ‘brethren’ and started spewing some hateful shit.
Two things:
It could be that this is just a series of clumsy actions from the CEO (including using his birth year in his new Reddit nick, when that birth year is also a well-known nazi dogwhistle (88, code for the 8th letter in the alphabet, as in HH, as in “Heil H…”)), it could be him showing his true colors.
As an existing customer I’ve taken a sort of wait-and-see stance; I likely wouldn’t become a new customer right now.
Same here. He’s not American, why would he care about Trump?
Also we’ve seen this with Twitter. Technology should be neutral in that case and stick to what they sell: security and privacy, but it could go down the toilet very fast.
Is it true?
Depending on which part you asked about:
The only part that’s not true is that it’s “well-known”. I’ve literally never heard of this before.
It’s been a thing for a long time. I know several people who ended up abandoning favored, long-held user accounts that they had ending in their 1988 birth year because they kept being mistaken as nazis… typically by nazis who thought they had found ‘brethren’ and started spewing some hateful shit.
I’m sure it’s been around for a long time. That doesn’t make it well-known.
./shrug It’s always seemed well known to me, but like I said I also know a LOT of people born in 1988 who ran into it.