[noirbot]

https://archive.ph/LlbSj

Here's the archive. Do you really think I'd write up all of that just completely making it up?

Most of the rest of it is from a reddit thread here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_poli...

Throughout, he doesn't really give any actual justification for why he thought the original post was correct or remotely well informed. I haven't seen anything from him that acknowledges that he's praising an ex-lobbyist as being good for antitrust, or any explanation of why he'd think it was actually a good appointment for his asserted values. The only stated reasoning was "democrats bad, republicans good". There's no discussion of the role Musk and Thiel and Bezos played in electing Trump. There's no discussion of any Biden-era anti-trust action and why he'd think Trump's folks would do more.

It's hard for me to come away from it with a positive opinion of the CEO's decision making and judgement.

[illiac786]

Tone deaf maybe, but his arguments are solid I find – most of all when compared to the reactions int eh thread.

(And I profoundly despise Trump, he’s near the bottom of my scale when it comes to politicians)

[noirbot]

I may have missed it in the thread, but I didn't really ever see an argument. Just a "I trust the republicans and their pick". There was no deeper discussion or assertion of why this was a good pick. All of the followup was about how he disliked the democrats and liked Vance.

That's not really a solid argument to me. No part of the original post or the followup helps me understand why he thinks a former lobbyist for Amazon and Google would be for anti-trust action against them.

Most of the responses on reddit, while overblown, are generally pointing out that most of big tech was funding Trump and Vance's election. If most of the CEO's argument is how much the democrats are in the pocket of big tech, that seems quite relevant. A pretty substantial percentage of the money spent to elect Trump was from Musk and other VC folks, and Bezos notably killed an endorsement of Harris at the newspaper he ran.

As someone said in the thread, it feels like the CEO took a "the enemy of my enemy must be better" in this, when it's entirely correct that both US parties are in the pocket of corporate interests. He's not wrong about the Democrats, but that definitely doesn't mean Trump's appointments are better. He could have just decided to sit this out and say nothing, which makes it all the more objectionable that he decided this was his time to show up and publicly try to get Trump's attention to praise him. As far as I know he wasn't @ mentioning Biden to praise the various anti-trust actions that were taken over the last few years.

[illiac786]

He wrote, she has a good track record. Which is true.

> My post is talking about Gail Slater, who is by all measures, actually a good pick, with a solid track record of being on the right side of the antitrust issue. Yes, she happens to be nominated by Trump, but her record speaks for itself.

And just looking at where proton puts its mouth and money, it’s obvious they cannot be MAGA, it just does not fit at all. They commit 10% of their benefit to Ukraine, as an example.

Hence, the post was out of touch a bit, badly formulated, but that’s it. Hence could indeed have simple said nothing, I agree.

[noirbot]

I mean, maybe, but as folks in the comments pointed out, she literally lobbied on behalf of Amazon and others against regulation on big tech companies. She worked against a number of EFF efforts, for instance.

To be clear, I don't think this is some hidden effort to secretly support Trump, but it's such an obviously bad move that was then defended that makes it hard to understand what he was possibly thinking.

If he'd been deep in the comments talking about how he personally knew this lawyer and laying out why he was convinced she was a good pick, then maybe. But outside of him saying "solid track record", I don't think I saw any actual articulation of the record he's saying she had, and plenty of people calling out the things she did that were as pro-Big Tech as Chuck Schumer's daughters that he called out as marking the decline of his support for democrats.

Which is the additional part of this being horrible judgement. If it was just "This person is someone I think is good" then sure. Maybe he's wrong, but it's a defensible position. Publishing a detailed explanation of why he's disowning an entire political party that had literally just had Lina Kahn doing some of the most aggressive anti-trust prosecutions in decades is wild. There's a space to just cheer for people doing things well that your organization agrees with, but he chose to issue statements condemning entire parties and praising others by name.