Proton launches privacy-first alternative to Excel and Google Sheets
> Swiss company Proton is further expanding its productivity suite. In addition to an email service, calendar, VPN, password manager, and drive, Proton Sheets is now available. It is an alternative to Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, an increasingly important advantage as countries take sovereignty more seriously.
Proton Mail has long positioned itself as an apolitical company, dedicated solely to safeguarding user privacy. That’s why many were surprised when [Jan 2025] CEO Andy Yen posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the political landscape in the U.S. had shifted, stating, “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
This statement quickly went viral, leading to further controversy when Proton’s official Reddit account reinforced Yen’s sentiment. The now-deleted post suggested that Republicans were more inclined to take on Big Tech monopolies than corporate-aligned Democrats. However, within hours, Proton removed all traces of these remarks from its social media platforms.
Proton? No.
People found AI config files in their public repos. When they were found, Proton deleted all discussion of it and then altered the repository history to pretend the config files were never there.
Shady, scummy behavior. They’ve tried to do the same ‘delete everything and ignore it’ when their CEO publicly praised Trump and the Republican party, and then kept doubling down in reddit and mastodon comments until someone on the PR team wrested the account away from him and started mass-deleting all of it.
> ::: spoiler Transcript > A post by [object Object] (@[email protected] [/u/[email protected]]) saying: > courtesy of @[email protected] [/u/[email protected]], Proton is now the only privacy vendor I know of that vibe codes its apps: > In the single most damning thing I can say about Proton in 2025, the Proton GitHub repository has a “cursorrules” file. They’re vibe-coding their public systems. Much secure! > I am once again begging anyone who will listen to get off of Proton as soon as reasonably possible, and to avoid their new (terrible) apps in any case. https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/114961415946154957 [https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/114961415946154957] > > It has a reply by the author saying: > in an unsurprising update for those familiar with how Proton operates, they silently rewrote their monorepo’s history to purge .cursor and hide that they were vibe coding: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients/tree/2a5e2ad4db0c84f39050bf2353c944a96d38e07f [https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients/tree/2a5e2ad4db0c84f39050bf2353c944a96d38e07f] > > given the utter lack of communication from Proton on this, I can only guess they’ve extracted .cursor into an external repository and continue to use it out of sight of the public > :::
Is this a trustworthy analysis? I wanted to understand what happened. I am confused after reading this a while back, but still seeing people actively saying he praised Trump. I do what to know exactly what happened in the end to make a judgement.
lemmy.zip/post/30061526 lemmy.zip/post/30250238
Decide for yourself. There are screenshots and web archives scattered across the comments.
BrikoX
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underisk