This tweet happened right after trump picked for the antitrust position. The “time” is completely logical, the “place” is a tweet and the manner is a short statement supporting that pick. Also proton is a US company, so it doesn’t have the same reason to “bend the knee” as other US big tech are doing.

So it’s not that I am ignoring context, I genuinely don’t see relation. He praised something that he pushes for years, he did not suddenly switch to “free speech” like Zuck.

Yes, a public figure, whose data can be discovered in few minutes, considers his birth year a secret. Also nobody ever used the birth year in their username on the internet.

Also ANDY = 1 + 14 + 4 + 25 = 44, which is half of 88 and contains 14, another nazy symbol. He is trying to pass it off as his name, but who uses their name on the internet? I will check the cabala now, because I am sure there is more.

God, I hope Nick Fury is already grouping the avengers, because Hydra is really making a move here.

Added for completeness. Lots of people got pissed because they assumed he meant that in general republicans stand with the little guy, prompting comments such as “what about trans/immigrants/etc.”.

You did not do that, of course, but you can see how your comment could reinforce this opinion in people who didn’t read the actual tweet and discussion and were just looking for reasons to get angry.

I thought the whole point stood on “company whose main point is privacy”. In this case, his views on antitrust may be naive, but it’s quite easy to see how what he thinks might happen with antitrust/big tech is indirectly benefiting the privacy of users (worldwide). So doesn’t it fit directly with the opinion of a CEO of a company whose main point is privacy? Ultimately proton didn’t change product because of this trump decision, didn’t change internal policies, terms, privacy policy, nothing.

He praised one thing, and motivated that praise. It’s 100% possible to disagree, but I don’t find it concerning at all. I find it reasonable, because proton can better protect the privacy of users if more people can choose freely privacy oriented tools (like proton). Hence, if Trump does or says something that can help moving in that direction, it can be labeled as a good thing. Not every sentence is a collective or global assessment of all things considered.

When Trump wants to break up big tech it’s because he wants to eliminate the competition to his concentration of power.

• this is something US citizens should concern themselves
• it is only tangentially irrelevant
• if by breaking up monopolies people will be able to choose more privacy-preserving services, what you think is Trump’s goal will fail anyway. More privacy and less data is also a way to limit the amount of demographic targeting he uses so well in his campaigns.

So I am good with him doing the right thing for the wrong reason, and I wish him a swift failure afterwards.

doesn’t understand this or doesn’t care is deeply concerning

Have you considered that he might not agree with what is just your opinion? Obviously you are free to draw any conclusion you want and not use them.

That’s not context, that’s a superficial observation. Zuck kissed the ring by changing Facebook policy to align with trump/musk posture on “free speech”, Andy said he likes the antitrust pick. They are completely different things.

I know what happened, I followed quite thoroughly.

He thinks that republicans are now the ones with a higher chance to push antitrust cases against big tech (I.e., work for the little guy - EDIT: source). He thinks this based on the last few years and a few things that happened. He likes the nomination from Trump. How is this a full support to Trump? How believing that republicans will do better - in this area - equals being a Nazi?

Of course I believe that there is a fuss over nothing. The above statement has been inflated and I have already read “he applauded to Trump antitrans policies”, " posted Nazi symbols" and other complete fantasies.

Many people, who are on the internet on a perpetual witch hunt decided to interpret a clearly specific tweet (about antitrust and big tech) as a global political statement, and read that “little guy” as “common man” or - I have read it here on Lemmy - “working class”. Basically everyone tried to propose ideas about why that post was so awful, rather than first trying to understand what the hell he meant. I will agree the first tweet is ambiguous, but that’s because it’s a 200 characters tweet, he then explained his position quite clearly, and the summary above is what he actually meant.

This “context” added doesn’t move my post a centimeter IMO.

If that motivation still leads to work against tech monopolies, good. Can’t wait for people to do the right thing for the right reason. If that won’t happen it will be criticized as a lack of action.

Ultimately the benefit for the population is having as much freedom and fair competition in the tech space as possible. If that comes from Trump hallucinations, from a dream or from something else, who cares…?

He actually didn’t touch privacy, he touched antitrust and monopolies. The whole benefit to privacy is indirect by means of a level field.

He believes that republicans will do better than dems in terms of fighting big tech monopolies.

You are right about the generalization on parties, but the “little guy” he meant are small tech companies opposed to big tech. It was clear to me in the context, and to clear any doubt, he explicitly said that in a reddit comment.

I want to specify because this has been stretched on here as far as “he said republicans care for the working class”.

So, to get this straight, for you it’s impossible to recognize that a pick for a position is a good pick in the Trump government, by definition, without consideration of the actual pick?

To me this is religion, not politics or ideology (which I both consider very good things). To be even more clear, I consider Andy’s position completely rational and legitimate in this case. I believe it’s absolutely legitimate to be happy Trump picked someone good for a position and at the same time not support the rest 98%. At most, the interesting debate is why that pick is not good, which is 100% opinable and worthy of a discussion.

But saying that any statement, in any context, whatever narrow and specific equal full support is completely insane to me.

Yes, some of them were. They migrated and then didn’t have a country anymore after it dissolved. Many acquired Italian citizenship, but some are stateless.

Small numbers (few thousands) -> https://index.statelessness.eu/country/italy

I think it is different in some way. I can’t speak for Britain or Germany, but in Italy the situation with Romani, Sinthi or Caminanti (the three ethnicities of “Gypsies”, not sure how they translate to English) is a mix of political failure, policy issue, integration gone wrong and finally racism. The thing is, the majority of people of those ethnicities live and work in society, and you wouldn’t be able to point out someone being a sinthi, unless they would tell you. Most of these people don’t get any hate, and they wouldn’t in most cases even if people would know. However the “visibile” part of this population is the minority that lives in “camps” (policy failure), is generally a completely separate community and lives a completely different lifestyle including begging and petty crimes. These are the ones that get alla the hatred, and not even in all cases, there are success stories here too. Many people consider them subhuman, and this is racism 100%. Some people hate what they do (I.e. what they think they do based on some true fact, lots of stereotypes and collective attribution), but race has not much to do with it. There is a racist component in extending stereotypes to all the community, of individual crimes to the community, of course.

The problem is also quite hard to fix, because many of them (again, of those living in camps) are country-less after Yugoslavia dissolved, they don’t speak the language and they have super low scholarisation. Nobody wants to invest resources, so these people live as they can, which reinforces the stereotypes etc.

Anyway, my point is that most people have or would have absolutely no problem with gypsies that they meet in regular contexts. Most people though simply don’t even know they exist outside the camps. This makes it a very weird form of racism, that also varies across Europe. For example my mom lived in Portugal in a community where gypsies were integrated in some way (going around with horses and stuff!) and she was friends with them. Completely different from the ones in our area in Italy.

No.

All that happened is that the official social media account on mastodon and reddit reposted what was Andy’s reply as an official message. It was some internal fuck up apparently, and that’s why they deleted it.

Even in the worst case scenario, the board has nothing to do with it, because this would be the Proton company, not the nonprofit (which controls the company).

Please, don’t make stuff up…

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.

He already clarifies that it’s his personal opinion and not a company position, which has the policy to maintain political neutrality (whatever that means), which is the reason why they deleted replies from official accounts. See the reddit post he did or his comments.

On what ground anybody should demand his removal? Based on a personal opinion expressed on twitter, which is at most a naive speculation of what the Trump administration will do in the area of antitrust and big tech?

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/

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.

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.

The thing is, I don’t really care about her, I don’t know what she is going to do. My focus in this whole debacle has been mostly on making sure we are discussing about what was actually said. Anybody can have their own opinion on what she is going to do or not do, and it’s totally fine to have a conversation about that and dissent. They are speculation either way and fully opinable on both side, we can only wait and judge actions anyway. However, thinking that she is going to do well is not equivalent to be a Nazi by association, supporting Trump in general or anything like that.

To me this is complete nonsense.

It’s absolutely possible to disagree with 99% of what a government does and still agree on a 1%, by coincidence or something. This doesn’t mean “sitting at the table” in any way, which I think would be an overall endorsement. If that 1% would be use to fully endorse the government then it would implicitly mean the support (or at least passivity) towards the rest 99%. This is not the case.

Let’s talk hypotheticals for a moment: let’s sat Trump will actually do something and break up tech monopolies, google for example, or decrease their power and create a fairer market. In this case, saying “good policy” would make you a Nazi? For me, this is simply absurd, and it is very very similar to what is happening.