There seems to be a lot of confusion here about the ownership structure of Proton… “the CEO is beholden to shareholders!!!”, etc…
Proton is not a publicly traded company… The largest shareholder is the non-profit whose mission is as follows:
Proton was created to serve the world, and the non-profit Proton Foundation ensures that this can never change. As Proton’s primary shareholder, the foundation exercises its control to ensure that Proton does not deviate from our mission to build a better internet that serves the interests of all of society. Our legally binding purpose is to further the advancement of privacy, freedom, and democracy around the world.
please contact the Board of Trustees and ask for the removal of the CEO and CTO
mailto: foundation@proton.me
At least one of the Board members is on Mastodon
Tim Berners-Lee: https://w3c.social/@timbl (yes, THAT guy… the inventor or the mother-flipping internets world wide web)
Email alternatives are incredibly hard to build… it’s not like forking a software repo if the devs go off the deep end. Proton is worth trying to save if the alternatives are going back to google or switching to some other small time player who is equally suceptible to having a CEO ruin everything without the governance structure to make changes like Proton (in theory) has.
Let’s at least try
I wrote to them and let them know that if Yen is still there when my account comes up for renewal, I’m gone.