Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.
Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidently has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote.
At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
1/2
[email protected] - @jonah By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.
Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
“Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
That has to be one of the most retarded things I have ever read. You would have to ignore the last 50 years and have a lobotomy to believe that nonsense.
Not entering in the details of the argument, but are you seriously answering an argument that includes “noticing a change in the last years” with “look at the previous 50 years”? From a purely methodological point of view seems completely illogical to do so.
Not all of us are young people who have no recollection of the history of the Republican party. Pretending that there has been some dramatic shift in the last few years is simply false.
Even more false is stating that Republicans are the party of the common man or that they will be the ones to regulate big tech to fix the issues we are facing.
Pretending you can critique an argument without the knowledge of the past and an unwillingness to discuss the details is something else. Truly some peanut gallery level of nonsense.
It’s not a matter of pretending. The fact that there has been a shift is his/their point. If there is a shift it’s implicit that before the shift the situation was different, hence the absurdity of “consider the last 50 years”. You want to contest the fact that there is been a shift, that’s great. But trying to debate the whole argument with “look at the last 50 years” doesn’t touch their argument at all.
Also, in the context of his tweet “the little guy” are small businesses, not the common men. He clarified this point in a reddit comment somewhere, where he mentions small businesses vs big tech. You can go check it out.
Pretending you can critique an argument without the knowledge of the past and an unwillingness to discuss the details is something else. Truly some peanut gallery level of nonsense.
I am not sure what obsession you have with “pretending”, but I was not pretending anything. Arguments can be debated in the method or in the merit. In your case the method seemed to be wrong to me and I stated that. Logically was just inconsequential. This is something that doesn’t depend on the validity of the argument or on my position, it’s just a methodological observation.
You might be right as far as I am concerned, but your argument was absurd nevertheless.
This is because they want social media to stop fact checking and moderating their users so they can spread misinformation aka lies. They don’t want a level playing field. They want to spread misinformation and then control the truth.
So saying they are going to regulate big tech is really just code for threatening them into allowing them to openly lie to people. This is fucking ridiculous.
As typical, conservatives always lean into the small business mantra. That Republicans really care about small business owners whatever the fuck that means. While you won’t discuss the details you are ready to throw some classic Republican propaganda at everyone.
Small business ownership has shrunk dramatically in the last 20 years (oops brought up history) and will continue as the too big to fail billionaires and their megacorps suck up all the capital. You would think that a supposed billionaire who only puts his wealthy friends into power would be a red flag for small business or the little guy.
Not for Sudneo though, he thinks billionaires care about him. He probably thinks Muskrat is worried about his well being and free speech rights. Yeah there is a lot of pretending going on for sure.
I also find it bizarre to say the Democrats need to get rid of their “corporate” support. Apparently they are Dinos because every Democrat must be a left wing liberal socialist. Funny that the Republicans don’t need to do this though. Apparently there are no big corporate Republicans, thank God.
Politics don’t exist just in the moment and I find it disturbing you don’t care about history. Perhaps it is a defense mechanism as the Republican party has been on the same trajectory since Reagan. I guess if I was a conservative trying to rewrite reality I would try to discredit or ignore history as well.
Perhaps this is all driven by the thought that this administration is different. I don’t mean to make fun of people but God damn you would have to be a dumb motherfucker to expect anything different in this administration from last time. Stocks up, regulations down, massive fuckups, and politicize everything. I mean if your kink is being governed by clowns maybe it would be great.
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2024/10/the-u-s-economy-performs-better-under-democratic-presidents
The truth is a hard pill to swallow I guess and you can see why the Republicans have committed to a war on truth. They simply cannot exist without their lies and the gullible people who believe them.
This of course is exacerbated by the truly awful people we have allowed to control the next administration. I am no fan of Democratic people but the garbage that is the apparatus of our AOTUS is without parallel. I mean you basically have to be a rapist to get a spot in his cabinet.
Ahaha you still didn’t get it.
I don’t care if there was a shift or not. That was their argument, not mine. However, whether the shift was there or not, IT IS IMPLICIT in an argument that mentions a shift that before the shift this didn’t apply. Therefore it’s simply useless to counter THAT argument with “you missed the last 50 years”.
I didn’t throw any propaganda. I didn’t even make an argument. You are just trying to pidgeonhole me into a stereotypical position to attack me, because apparently you can’t understand what a methodological remark is.
I will skip over the next paragraphs where you talk about " regulating tech" but you talk about free speech and fake news (that has NOTHING to do with antitrust and monopolies). I do that because I agree, but it’s a completely separate conversation, that has no relationship with the context of Andy’s tweet or our discussion.
really just code for threatening them into allowing them to openly lie to people
You are saying this as if this didn’t regularly happen for years though…
Not for Sudneo though, he thinks billionaires care about him.
I am a communist lol. I would like to see Musk 3 meters under the soil. Please stop making shit up to attack people.
Politics don’t exist just in the moment and I find it disturbing you don’t care about history
See the beginning of this comment. It’s not about not caring, is that what you think is an argument against THEIR position is actually PART of their argument already. Again, a LOGICAL issue. I don’t care about discussing if dem or rep are pro big or small businesses and in which measure, for me American politics is small flavours of right wing, and I have the fortune of not having to vote there.
Perhaps this is all driven by the thought that this administration is different.
Yet another fallacy. have you even read the tweet? Like I do agree with you, but holy shit at the end of a 200 characters sentence the guy said that the antitrust against Google or something was started during the Trump administration. So no, it’s not about being different, I guess, it’s about continuing with what the guy (him, not me) says it’s a trend. You disagree and that’s great, go debate him on why it won’t happen.
Personally, and THIS is my opinion as an outsider, I think this administration is awful and it’s going to fuck up so many things. That said, I will be pleasantly surprised if it will work on breaking some monopolies, even if for all the wrong reasons.
Oh I get it, you just like to keep saying that it’s is not your argument and then you talk about semantics. I will just skip this because you have already said it and it is boring.
I like that you start referencing history yourself though, I appreciate the nod even if it is unintentional.
You remind me of all those sycophants for Drump who are always saying he didn’t mean that or he clarified himself later on. The kind of capitalist bootlicker that pretends to be a communist because it’s edgy. Hey whatever floats your boat I guess.
I think his original statement stands just fine on its own and I think I have made it clear why it is so distasteful.
As someone who was seriously considering signing up for their service seeing them suck up to the right wing is very worrying. I have already left every other social media platform because of their toxic behavior.
At any rate it appears we agree on everything except your obsession with semantics. Stay shifty!
I like that you start referencing history yourself tho
Please, please tell me you are not referring to highlighting what the guy wrote.
To be honest I don’t care what I remind you off. You hallucinate worse than chatGPT, and you seem to have really hard time reading what other people write, both me and Andy Yen.
You are one of the many people whose heart is in the right place, but for some reason feel the need to make stuff up to make their argument more compelling. It’s not an “obsession for semantics”, it’s an allergy for bullshit.
This is a lot worse look than Andy saying something on Twitter. It’s one thing for a board member to express an opinion as an individual, it’s another to have an explicit corporate position… I don’t even think the usual big tech suspects are this stupid to publicly support an administration like this.
These fuckers act like they’ve never heard of Lina Khan. Let’s see if Republicans try to replace her with someone with a stronger track record. Or, if they’re so serious about tech competition maybe they’ll get on board with net neutrality.
And look, I actually like Gail Slater (the Trump nominee that kicked off this thread). She’s got some bona fides, and I welcome Republicans taking antitrust more seriously, and rolling back the damage done by Robert Bork and his adherents (including and probably most significantly Ronald Reagan).
But to pretend that Democrats are less serious about antitrust than Republicans ignores the huge moves that the Biden administration have made in this area, including outside of big tech.
By my lights your response is quite effective, and while I appreciate the modesty I think it’s appropriate to bring it over here:
Unfortunately, there’s a line beyond which it’s not okay to view a political party through one issue, and IMO the Republicans have crossed that line.
Privacy is a human rights issue. Republicans have signaled very strongly that they’re going to violate more human rights. It’s a net loss for privacy if that happens, even if big tech is a bit more restrained.
I’m sorry @protonprivacy, you’ve failed this test IMO. It would be one thing to say that given that the Republicans are in power, that Gail Slater is a good pick, but that’s not the stance you took.
The election already happened. Therefore it’s not a matter of picking.
With regards of antitrust and big tech, Trump can do nothing, worse or better. In case of “better” there are indirect privacy wins. Everything else is completely unrelated, it’s not like the Trump administration will break up a monopoly every 3 other human rights he violates.
So what does it mean
Privacy is a human rights issue. Republicans have signaled very strongly that they’re going to violate more human rights. It’s a net loss for privacy if that happens, even if big tech is a bit more restrained.
If “big tech is not restrained” it’s going to be the same or worse, so why we wouldn’t be happy at least if that happens?
I didn’t read a celebration of Trump as a win for human rights tout court, which could have prompted this response (I.e., hey, might be a win for privacy, but it’s a loss for x, y, z).
In what sense does the election being over render it not a matter of picking? Slater’s selection is a nomination, you could select one person at the expense of another, to better or worse ends, so in any ordinary english language sense, there is indeed a pick.
With regards of antitrust and big tech, Trump can do nothing, worse or better.
Again: what? Trump gets to appoint the DoJ’s Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, Solicitor General, 93 DoJ Attorneys, heads of a bunch of individual departments in the DoJ which each have hundreds of staff, and will likely appoint hundreds of new judges. Not only can Trump do something, his actions will be the single most dominating force determining the trajectory of anti-trust environment.
What’s more, as a commenter above noted, Lina Kahn is a perfect example of how influential these appointments can be, as we’ve seen some of the most ambitious anti-trust action in decades.
If “big tech is not restrained” it’s going to be the same or worse, so why we wouldn’t be happy at least if that happens?
They’re probably not even right, in the first instance, that big tech will be better restrained. The elephant in the room rendering this whole line of thinking preposterous, is Lina Khan’s extremely aggressive record on this won’t be matched even by a “good” Trump appointee, and in fact has been vehemently opposed by R’s through her whole tenure.
I didn’t read a celebration of Trump as a win for human rights tout court, which could have prompted this response
Right, but that’s the point. Nobody would credit Trump as a champion of human rights, which reveals why it’s so short-sighted to uphold him or R’s as leading lights on a topic such as privacy, which falls under the umbrella of a subject matter that we’re all agreeing he doesn’t care about.
It’s precisely because of the absence of consistent commitments on every other front that also belongs in the same category, that of human rights writ large, that it’s silly to celebrate the one exception to an otherwise negative record. And it’s hard to take statements seriously that treat that totality as if it embodies a pure commitment to virtues of an ideal, free and open internet.
Fuck, they are dumb and bad businessmen. What’s the reason still to chose their product over Tuta, Posteo, Mullvad? They have lost their unique selling point as at least pretending being a neutral instance providing private services. Plain stupidity.
So sounds like their main concern is addressing the abuses of the FAANG monopolies, and only a Republican has talked to them about it.
I guess that is understandable in that very narrow lens, but it’s a bit laughable considering how all the big tech companies are also cozying up to the Trump administration. All this has done for me is make me wary of anything Proton does now.
Actually I disagree on the latest part. I actually questioned, why google and Facebook had to go kiss the ring and pay some bucks to Trump, and didn’t have to do that before? This for me is a sign of a disalignment between big tech and the administration.
That said, it’s very much possible (I would say likely) trump won’t do shit and he just happens to have the “correct” position on this particular issue because it can be used to attack the Californian elite (I.e. dem elite). But it’s a matter of fact that it’s auspicable he will follow up with action on his words on this, even if for the wrong reasons.
Yeah but why they wanted to please him? What’s the benefit for them? Why they wouldn’t want to please previous administrations? The other user mentioned that Trump is very transactional, and that sounds quite right too.
Either way, look at Facebook, literally went through a shitstorm to align, that is a sign of weakness in my opinion.
Why they wouldn’t want to please previous administrations?
Those administrations weren’t targeting them.
I think it’s always about the money, plain and simple. If there is a threat to their gravy train, they will bend over backwards to keep it going. Otherwise, they don’t care about you.
OK, but then that was exactly my point. Antitrust is one way to target those companies, hence they had to suck up. Therefore them paying (peanuts in the grand scheme of things) could be seen as the exact opposite of “they are all in the same team”.
Right, I follow your take here as the one that makes the most sense. This makes a lot more sense as the tech companies attempting to head off a potentially adversarial relationship.
Its more that trump is very transactional. He couldnt give to shit if corpations are fleecing people so as long he gets a peice. Its like businesses paying the mafia for “protection”.
Exactly this. It’s not necessarily that he’s like a better enforcer, but he’s just a different type of enforcer that plays by different rules, which is to say compromised ethics, transactional exchanges, and so on. Tech companies absolutely had a difficult time under Biden, but the way they played that game was with legal filings, with negotiations where they attempt to offer something they hope will improve the perception of competitive balance.
It’s just a difference in channeling these things through rule of law on the one hand and through transactional exchanges and gestures of fealty on the other.
And I think if you think the Trump style reflects a more effective approach to handling antitrust, it’s kind of telling on yourself in terms of being able to comprehend the value of one type of transaction, but not the other.
That’s some interesting perspective, I hadn’t thought of it that way. With Trump it’s really hard to know what is coming until it happens, but it’s nice that some people see a silver lining.
Also the obviously reactionary and self-interested history of right wing reaction to FAANG, which largely has been fueled by a backlash to restraints on misinformation, and is riddled with special case exceptions (e.g. Palestine).
N.B. I originally went looking for a reason that maybe it was okay that Andy Yen was giving the thumbs up to Gail Slater. I thought this was an unfair internet pile-on. I think now it’s a fair internet pile-on.
The official @[email protected] account replied and doubled down
(Less importantly, my response)
Did they just remove their comments?
“Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
That has to be one of the most retarded things I have ever read. You would have to ignore the last 50 years and have a lobotomy to believe that nonsense.
Not entering in the details of the argument, but are you seriously answering an argument that includes “noticing a change in the last years” with “look at the previous 50 years”? From a purely methodological point of view seems completely illogical to do so.
Not all of us are young people who have no recollection of the history of the Republican party. Pretending that there has been some dramatic shift in the last few years is simply false.
Even more false is stating that Republicans are the party of the common man or that they will be the ones to regulate big tech to fix the issues we are facing.
Pretending you can critique an argument without the knowledge of the past and an unwillingness to discuss the details is something else. Truly some peanut gallery level of nonsense.
It’s not a matter of pretending. The fact that there has been a shift is his/their point. If there is a shift it’s implicit that before the shift the situation was different, hence the absurdity of “consider the last 50 years”. You want to contest the fact that there is been a shift, that’s great. But trying to debate the whole argument with “look at the last 50 years” doesn’t touch their argument at all.
Also, in the context of his tweet “the little guy” are small businesses, not the common men. He clarified this point in a reddit comment somewhere, where he mentions small businesses vs big tech. You can go check it out.
Edit: see https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/m7hfhdh/
I am not sure what obsession you have with “pretending”, but I was not pretending anything. Arguments can be debated in the method or in the merit. In your case the method seemed to be wrong to me and I stated that. Logically was just inconsequential. This is something that doesn’t depend on the validity of the argument or on my position, it’s just a methodological observation.
You might be right as far as I am concerned, but your argument was absurd nevertheless.
I have already said there was no shift. I will pretend you can follow along. The conservatives have threatened to take away Section 230.
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/27/brendan-carr-makes-it-clear-that-hes-eager-to-be-americas-top-censor/
This is because they want social media to stop fact checking and moderating their users so they can spread misinformation aka lies. They don’t want a level playing field. They want to spread misinformation and then control the truth.
So saying they are going to regulate big tech is really just code for threatening them into allowing them to openly lie to people. This is fucking ridiculous.
As typical, conservatives always lean into the small business mantra. That Republicans really care about small business owners whatever the fuck that means. While you won’t discuss the details you are ready to throw some classic Republican propaganda at everyone.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/big-lie-conservative-policies-good-small-business/
Small business ownership has shrunk dramatically in the last 20 years (oops brought up history) and will continue as the too big to fail billionaires and their megacorps suck up all the capital. You would think that a supposed billionaire who only puts his wealthy friends into power would be a red flag for small business or the little guy.
Not for Sudneo though, he thinks billionaires care about him. He probably thinks Muskrat is worried about his well being and free speech rights. Yeah there is a lot of pretending going on for sure.
I also find it bizarre to say the Democrats need to get rid of their “corporate” support. Apparently they are Dinos because every Democrat must be a left wing liberal socialist. Funny that the Republicans don’t need to do this though. Apparently there are no big corporate Republicans, thank God.
Politics don’t exist just in the moment and I find it disturbing you don’t care about history. Perhaps it is a defense mechanism as the Republican party has been on the same trajectory since Reagan. I guess if I was a conservative trying to rewrite reality I would try to discredit or ignore history as well.
Perhaps this is all driven by the thought that this administration is different. I don’t mean to make fun of people but God damn you would have to be a dumb motherfucker to expect anything different in this administration from last time. Stocks up, regulations down, massive fuckups, and politicize everything. I mean if your kink is being governed by clowns maybe it would be great. https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2024/10/the-u-s-economy-performs-better-under-democratic-presidents
The truth is a hard pill to swallow I guess and you can see why the Republicans have committed to a war on truth. They simply cannot exist without their lies and the gullible people who believe them.
This of course is exacerbated by the truly awful people we have allowed to control the next administration. I am no fan of Democratic people but the garbage that is the apparatus of our AOTUS is without parallel. I mean you basically have to be a rapist to get a spot in his cabinet.
Ahaha you still didn’t get it. I don’t care if there was a shift or not. That was their argument, not mine. However, whether the shift was there or not, IT IS IMPLICIT in an argument that mentions a shift that before the shift this didn’t apply. Therefore it’s simply useless to counter THAT argument with “you missed the last 50 years”. I didn’t throw any propaganda. I didn’t even make an argument. You are just trying to pidgeonhole me into a stereotypical position to attack me, because apparently you can’t understand what a methodological remark is.
I will skip over the next paragraphs where you talk about " regulating tech" but you talk about free speech and fake news (that has NOTHING to do with antitrust and monopolies). I do that because I agree, but it’s a completely separate conversation, that has no relationship with the context of Andy’s tweet or our discussion.
You are saying this as if this didn’t regularly happen for years though…
I am a communist lol. I would like to see Musk 3 meters under the soil. Please stop making shit up to attack people.
See the beginning of this comment. It’s not about not caring, is that what you think is an argument against THEIR position is actually PART of their argument already. Again, a LOGICAL issue. I don’t care about discussing if dem or rep are pro big or small businesses and in which measure, for me American politics is small flavours of right wing, and I have the fortune of not having to vote there.
Yet another fallacy. have you even read the tweet? Like I do agree with you, but holy shit at the end of a 200 characters sentence the guy said that the antitrust against Google or something was started during the Trump administration. So no, it’s not about being different, I guess, it’s about continuing with what the guy (him, not me) says it’s a trend. You disagree and that’s great, go debate him on why it won’t happen.
Personally, and THIS is my opinion as an outsider, I think this administration is awful and it’s going to fuck up so many things. That said, I will be pleasantly surprised if it will work on breaking some monopolies, even if for all the wrong reasons.
Oh I get it, you just like to keep saying that it’s is not your argument and then you talk about semantics. I will just skip this because you have already said it and it is boring.
I like that you start referencing history yourself though, I appreciate the nod even if it is unintentional.
You remind me of all those sycophants for Drump who are always saying he didn’t mean that or he clarified himself later on. The kind of capitalist bootlicker that pretends to be a communist because it’s edgy. Hey whatever floats your boat I guess.
I think his original statement stands just fine on its own and I think I have made it clear why it is so distasteful.
As someone who was seriously considering signing up for their service seeing them suck up to the right wing is very worrying. I have already left every other social media platform because of their toxic behavior.
At any rate it appears we agree on everything except your obsession with semantics. Stay shifty!
Please, please tell me you are not referring to highlighting what the guy wrote.
To be honest I don’t care what I remind you off. You hallucinate worse than chatGPT, and you seem to have really hard time reading what other people write, both me and Andy Yen.
You are one of the many people whose heart is in the right place, but for some reason feel the need to make stuff up to make their argument more compelling. It’s not an “obsession for semantics”, it’s an allergy for bullshit.
Aaaaaaaand it’s deleted.
Insane that an official company account posted this.
Seems like they have deleted it now. Link is dead. Has there been any further comment?
This is a lot worse look than Andy saying something on Twitter. It’s one thing for a board member to express an opinion as an individual, it’s another to have an explicit corporate position… I don’t even think the usual big tech suspects are this stupid to publicly support an administration like this.
That is somet nieve horseshit. Goddammit I don’t want to switch email providers again!
These fuckers act like they’ve never heard of Lina Khan. Let’s see if Republicans try to replace her with someone with a stronger track record. Or, if they’re so serious about tech competition maybe they’ll get on board with net neutrality.
And look, I actually like Gail Slater (the Trump nominee that kicked off this thread). She’s got some bona fides, and I welcome Republicans taking antitrust more seriously, and rolling back the damage done by Robert Bork and his adherents (including and probably most significantly Ronald Reagan).
But to pretend that Democrats are less serious about antitrust than Republicans ignores the huge moves that the Biden administration have made in this area, including outside of big tech.
So we can say that Bork borked things up?
It’s accurate cause that’s where it came from.
That is amazing. TIL!
By my lights your response is quite effective, and while I appreciate the modesty I think it’s appropriate to bring it over here:
The election already happened. Therefore it’s not a matter of picking. With regards of antitrust and big tech, Trump can do nothing, worse or better. In case of “better” there are indirect privacy wins. Everything else is completely unrelated, it’s not like the Trump administration will break up a monopoly every 3 other human rights he violates.
So what does it mean
If “big tech is not restrained” it’s going to be the same or worse, so why we wouldn’t be happy at least if that happens? I didn’t read a celebration of Trump as a win for human rights tout court, which could have prompted this response (I.e., hey, might be a win for privacy, but it’s a loss for x, y, z).
I’m having a lot of trouble parsing any of this.
In what sense does the election being over render it not a matter of picking? Slater’s selection is a nomination, you could select one person at the expense of another, to better or worse ends, so in any ordinary english language sense, there is indeed a pick.
By contrast, Lori Chavez-DeRemer was selected for labor secretary, which has been celebrated by people who are normally Trump critics. Because there are such things as better or worse picks.
Again: what? Trump gets to appoint the DoJ’s Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General, Solicitor General, 93 DoJ Attorneys, heads of a bunch of individual departments in the DoJ which each have hundreds of staff, and will likely appoint hundreds of new judges. Not only can Trump do something, his actions will be the single most dominating force determining the trajectory of anti-trust environment.
What’s more, as a commenter above noted, Lina Kahn is a perfect example of how influential these appointments can be, as we’ve seen some of the most ambitious anti-trust action in decades.
They’re probably not even right, in the first instance, that big tech will be better restrained. The elephant in the room rendering this whole line of thinking preposterous, is Lina Khan’s extremely aggressive record on this won’t be matched even by a “good” Trump appointee, and in fact has been vehemently opposed by R’s through her whole tenure.
Right, but that’s the point. Nobody would credit Trump as a champion of human rights, which reveals why it’s so short-sighted to uphold him or R’s as leading lights on a topic such as privacy, which falls under the umbrella of a subject matter that we’re all agreeing he doesn’t care about.
It’s precisely because of the absence of consistent commitments on every other front that also belongs in the same category, that of human rights writ large, that it’s silly to celebrate the one exception to an otherwise negative record. And it’s hard to take statements seriously that treat that totality as if it embodies a pure commitment to virtues of an ideal, free and open internet.
Fuck, they are dumb and bad businessmen. What’s the reason still to chose their product over Tuta, Posteo, Mullvad? They have lost their unique selling point as at least pretending being a neutral instance providing private services. Plain stupidity.
Their unique selling point is having a suite of integrated privacy products under a single moderately-priced subscription.
Also, Mullvad disabled fort-forwading whul Proton has not
So sounds like their main concern is addressing the abuses of the FAANG monopolies, and only a Republican has talked to them about it.
I guess that is understandable in that very narrow lens, but it’s a bit laughable considering how all the big tech companies are also cozying up to the Trump administration. All this has done for me is make me wary of anything Proton does now.
Actually I disagree on the latest part. I actually questioned, why google and Facebook had to go kiss the ring and pay some bucks to Trump, and didn’t have to do that before? This for me is a sign of a disalignment between big tech and the administration.
That said, it’s very much possible (I would say likely) trump won’t do shit and he just happens to have the “correct” position on this particular issue because it can be used to attack the Californian elite (I.e. dem elite). But it’s a matter of fact that it’s auspicable he will follow up with action on his words on this, even if for the wrong reasons.
Nobody had to go kiss the ring they payed for his campaign because THEY WANTED to please him. Edit: Typo
Yeah but why they wanted to please him? What’s the benefit for them? Why they wouldn’t want to please previous administrations? The other user mentioned that Trump is very transactional, and that sounds quite right too.
Either way, look at Facebook, literally went through a shitstorm to align, that is a sign of weakness in my opinion.
Not being targeted by a President.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/29/business/ceos-trump-revenge-nightcap/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/05/politics/trump-prosecute-political-opponents/index.html
Those administrations weren’t targeting them.
I think it’s always about the money, plain and simple. If there is a threat to their gravy train, they will bend over backwards to keep it going. Otherwise, they don’t care about you.
OK, but then that was exactly my point. Antitrust is one way to target those companies, hence they had to suck up. Therefore them paying (peanuts in the grand scheme of things) could be seen as the exact opposite of “they are all in the same team”.
Right, I follow your take here as the one that makes the most sense. This makes a lot more sense as the tech companies attempting to head off a potentially adversarial relationship.
Its more that trump is very transactional. He couldnt give to shit if corpations are fleecing people so as long he gets a peice. Its like businesses paying the mafia for “protection”.
Exactly this. It’s not necessarily that he’s like a better enforcer, but he’s just a different type of enforcer that plays by different rules, which is to say compromised ethics, transactional exchanges, and so on. Tech companies absolutely had a difficult time under Biden, but the way they played that game was with legal filings, with negotiations where they attempt to offer something they hope will improve the perception of competitive balance.
It’s just a difference in channeling these things through rule of law on the one hand and through transactional exchanges and gestures of fealty on the other.
And I think if you think the Trump style reflects a more effective approach to handling antitrust, it’s kind of telling on yourself in terms of being able to comprehend the value of one type of transaction, but not the other.
That’s some interesting perspective, I hadn’t thought of it that way. With Trump it’s really hard to know what is coming until it happens, but it’s nice that some people see a silver lining.
Also the obviously reactionary and self-interested history of right wing reaction to FAANG, which largely has been fueled by a backlash to restraints on misinformation, and is riddled with special case exceptions (e.g. Palestine).
N.B. I originally went looking for a reason that maybe it was okay that Andy Yen was giving the thumbs up to Gail Slater. I thought this was an unfair internet pile-on. I think now it’s a fair internet pile-on.
EVERYONE! GET IN HERE!