[noirbot]

The CEO posted something, and then the official Proton account also followed up with a multi-post writeup of how democrats were all captured by big tech as if the appointed person in question wasn't a former tech lobbyist.

I don't think it should follow them forever, but for a company a lot of people are looking to to protect them against US government intrusion, picking this time specifically to @ mention Donald Trump and praise him appointing a big tech lobbyist and then have official company account defend him is certainly a bad look even if it mostly got deleted.

Things like email security and VPNs are 99% a business of "do you trust this company to defend you against a nation-state as best they can" and injecting themselves into what, for them, is international politics at very least shows questionable judgement.

If it was a post now about the action against Microsoft, sure. But preemptively praising someone's appointment feels very "kissing the ring" in a way that I don't want my trusted security company to be doing.

[WithinReason]

to quote the CEO:

Second, regarding the message that was mistakenly posted from Proton's Reddit account, that message was not approved to be posted. I was unaware that it was posted, and I asked for it to be removed as soon as I saw it. We apologize for this failure in internal controls.

[noirbot]

So, I think that's referring to a different message though. Most of what I referred to was from the official Mastodon account: https://archive.ph/LlbSj

Either way, it wouldn't have been much better if he'd personally posted the things the official account posted, or if the official account had posted that political rant with a "A response from our CEO:" at the top. Endorsing specific governmental actions would be something I could be fine with them doing, but calling out specific parties and candidates just feels like poor judgement.