Yes, in the context of him selling a tech product and in the context of him having nothing else to say about Trump, Vance, and the Republican establishment, his praise is clear.

Focusing on corporate Dems, ignoring appointees like Lina Khan, and requiring them to change, was the only condition in the original statement. Which is ironic because now that you admit Republicans are bad (and I repeat, everybody knew this back then, just read the comments), Dems have gotten worse overall so his statement still remains.

What part of “the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses” sounds like the praise of just one thing and not a blanket endorsement

If you actually believed this after four years of the Trump presidency, you are either extremely gullible or dishonest in your framing.

And yes, praising the actions of Trump and his admin is equivalent to praising the entities themselves. Don’t be obtuse.

It was never true, despite your historical revisionism.

I just linked the original post of Proton CEO Andy Yen praising Donald Trump for you too.

Yes they have. In fact if you read the other section I bolded for you:

the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.

As a bonus, here is Andy Yen praising Donald Trump for appointing a corporate-captured Republican judge

I think he gave it a fair shot (including spending money on Microsoft apps!), although plenty of the complaints are from the perspective of a Linux user migrating to Windows. For example, the average Windows user won’t worry about dual booting.

Personally, I think the biggest mistake was to not try out FOSS versions of things like Firefox and Thunderbird, but I appreciated the insight into Edge for example.

In the increasingly slim chance you aren’t just pretending to be ignorant, the official Proton statement makes it clear that all Republicans are the better option, so yes this is praise of Vance.

The cope is the most important part. They aren’t criticizing Democrats in a vacuum, they’re doing it to say JD Vance, the Trump administration, and (in the post that sparked this) Donald Trump and his corporate captured Republican judge are all good.

I put the JD Vance praise in bold so you could see it.

I botched my comment when I initially wrote it, the confusion is all due to me

That’s because on competing platforms like Reddit, this criticism is censored while the latest Proton company line (from their official accounts) is given preference.

If you want to see some real AstroTurf in action, check out the official Proton deferral to a completely anonymous and poorly written Medium post.

That’s untrue: they said far more. It’s really strange to me how Proton defenders never show you their official statement. Here is one (emphasis mine):

Here is our official response, also available on the Mastodon post in the screenshot:

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.

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.

Wait, since when does Windows install apps and not just device drivers?!

Best AI news I’ve heard recently!

I agree with you that nobody here should purchase a subscription with any of these companies, but I will watch happily from the sidelines while AI fanatics engage in this exact behavior, jumping from loss leader to loss leader.

The companies learned that they needed to let the concept wait a few years before being reintroduced

I was thinking about how maybe they should change their name before they got hit with the fine, but that too.

Twitter has a wealth of information on CSAM produced through their website and AI, and they’ve been fighting law enforcement tooth and nail on that. No fines in sight.

If you think that’s bad

In May, the regulator fined porn company YoungTek Solutions £600,000 for not putting systems in place to make sure UK visitors were over the age of 18.

It’s a good thing that we don’t need any doctors to train the AI or verify its results afterwards, because otherwise you’d be dangerously wrong with this comparison.