Proton’s mission, funding sources, independence, and community are some of the reasons we’re more resilient than other privacy-first companies.

  • bloup@lemmy.sdf.org
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    9 months ago

    In the early days […] we often received a question along the lines of “I love the product and what Proton stands for, but how do I know you will still be around to protect my data 10 years from now?” […] Ten years and 100 million accounts later, we would like to think we have proven the point with our track record, but actually the question is just as relevant today as it was 10 years ago[.] […] Proton was not created to get rich[, …] but rather to address the […] problem of surveillance capitalism. […] Proton has always been about the mission and putting people ahead of profits […] and there is no price at which we would compromise our integrity. Frankly speaking, […] if the goal was to sell for a bunch of money, we could have done that long ago. […] Most businesses are built to be sold — we built Proton to serve the mission.

    My problem is there’s literally ways you can organize a business that makes literally impossible to legally do these things. When businesses say these things, but don’t acknowledge the reality that they could always recharter the business in such a manner where you don’t just have to trust them to behave with no recourse if they don’t, I always have to add “but we still will continue to reserve the right to sell you out but pinky promise we won’t ever do it”

    • xylogx@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      “ …ways you can organize a business that makes literally impossible to legally do these things. ”

      Not disputing this is true, but could you provide some examples?

      • CrayonRosary@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        They’re talking about making it a nonprofit, I’m sure. People working for nonprofits can have good salaries so its not like they’re not good to work for, and any profit can be reinvested into the company or donated to other nonprofits. But you can’t sell the company to a for-profit (I don’t think), and the ownsers can’t take all of the profit for themselves.