they have backed away from this position and made clear that proton in politically neutral.
They never backed away from this position. Andy doubled down over and over, even after being brought up to speed by more knowledgeable people. They kept saying “this is not political” despite that very obviously not being the case. Andy may have learned his lesson about staying in his lane though.
I see this as bad PR and on the spectrum of someone saying something stupid on twitter and then regretting it, but some people are treating it as an existenial threat for proton and a huge red flag.
It’s not just “bad PR”, these are the people responsible for the privacy and sovereignty of all of their users. How can they protect you or advocate for anything if they don’t even understand what’s happening?
Some additional context that you left out is that Andy responded from the official Proton account and said “this is our official statement”, defending Andy’s words, then deleted it and said it was NOT an official statement.
I mostly agree with you but:
They never backed away from this position. Andy doubled down over and over, even after being brought up to speed by more knowledgeable people. They kept saying “this is not political” despite that very obviously not being the case. Andy may have learned his lesson about staying in his lane though.
It’s not just “bad PR”, these are the people responsible for the privacy and sovereignty of all of their users. How can they protect you or advocate for anything if they don’t even understand what’s happening?
Some additional context that you left out is that Andy responded from the official Proton account and said “this is our official statement”, defending Andy’s words, then deleted it and said it was NOT an official statement.