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Proton is funding the French far right on YouTube

▲ 34 points 22 comments by partsch 9h ago HN discussion ↗

Pangram verdict · v3.3

We believe that this document is fully human-written

1 %

AI likelihood · overall

Human
100% human-written 0% AI-generated
SEGMENTS · HUMAN 1 of 1
SEGMENTS · AI 0 of 1
WORD COUNT 291
PEAK AI % 1% · §1
Analyzed
Jun 8
backend: pangram/v3.3
Segments scanned
1 windows
avg 291 words each
Distribution
100 / 0%
human / AI fraction
Verdict
Human
Pangram v3.3

Article text · 291 words · 1 segments analyzed

Human AI-generated
§1 Human · 1%

Edit for further details:

Proton is currently sponsoring the far-right French YouTuber Vincent Lapierre.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Lapierre

It’s not just an affiliate link, but a partnership announced in the description and through an entire 2min 20s segment embedded in the video.

I don’t want to provide a direct link to the video here so as not to help boost its visibility, but you can easily find it on YouTube if you want (the last week video). Here is the English translation of the text shown in the screenshot:

🔒 Thanks to ProtonMail for this partnership! Take back control of your digital life for free with Proton Mail by clicking here.

Vincent Lapierre’s Wikipedia page is quite explicit about his far-right positioning and includes numerous sources. He worked for several years for a far-right organization founded by Alain Soral, which promotes anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, conspiracist, sexist, masculinist, transphobic, and homophobic ideas, and who fled to Russia to escape justice.

He is close to Dieudonné) (a Holocaust denier). He founded Le Média pour tous, a far-right website that particularly targets anti-fascists and defenders of Jewish rights. He has always been close to conspiracist circles

It's not very surprising when you remember that ProtonMail’s CEO had already publicly expressed support on Twitter for a member of the Trump administration.

I initially wanted to post this information on the ProtonMail subreddit to ask for an explanation and find out whether it was a mistake, but they did not approve the post. I also tried on tech subreddits here, but they consider it off-topic and as "a conspiracy theory".

On the contrary, I think ProtonMail customers and potential customers should be informed about where their money goes and should be able to ask ProtonMail for explanations regarding these choices.