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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by inlandempire@jlai.lu to c/protonprivacy@lemmy.world

Video description explicitly mentions a partnership (not just affiliate link) + 2min 20s segment embedded in the video.

The person in question: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Lapierre

User Lumpy_Carpet9877 shares more info:

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

I'll add that if you dare venture on his youtube channel (at the risk of ruining your suggestion algorithm like I did to provide the screenshot), you'll see that most videos are typical far right content / talking points

Update: read Proton's response below

You're right to raise this, and we want to address it directly and provide you important context on how this happened.

Vincent Lapierre's channel should never have been part of our affiliate and sponsorship program, because we intentionally avoid association with channels whose content could distract from our message and divide our community.

Proton operates globally, and while our services are available to everyone regardless of political views and our mission is consistent everywhere, our knowledge of every local media landscape is not. In this case, our team didn't have enough context about the French space to make a well-informed decision, and that's on us.

We also want to be straight about what a placement like this is and isn't. An affiliate or sponsorship arrangement is a transactional placement for awareness, not an endorsement of a creator's views. In the case of Vincent Lapierre, this was a single video sponsorship, not a partnership.

But that distinction doesn't excuse what happened here. The responsibility to vet who we put our name next to is ours, and we didn't meet it this time. We're now reviewing our vetting process and our guidelines for our marketing agencies to ensure this doesn't happen again.

If you see something like this again, tell us. We rely on your feedback and vigilance."

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[-] KiwiTB@lemmy.world 159 points 3 months ago

Hes in their partner program which anyone can sign up to from what I saw, not being directly sponsored.

[-] imahappyguy@lemmy.world 83 points 3 months ago

Yeah, checked out the link and it's just a sign up for proton mail. He probably just signed up for their partner program and Proton has put in zero effort into seeing who signs up.

[-] JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.net 43 points 3 months ago

How dare you suggest tech journalism isn't just trying to sensationalize a nothing burger without doing more than 10 minutes of research??

[-] PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 75 points 3 months ago

Not worth the post. The guy just automatically got their link.

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[-] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 65 points 3 months ago

Seems like a decent response to me.

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[-] Jerry@feddit.online 35 points 3 months ago
[-] inlandempire@jlai.lu 21 points 3 months ago

Thank you! I'll update the post

[-] Jerry@feddit.online 27 points 3 months ago

Apparently this is a false alarm.

For all those going off on being negative about Proton based on an ambiguous post, this is the best explanation of Proton's political position: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e

[-] zeezee@slrpnk.net 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

TLDR: my conclusion is that it is far more likely that Proton and its CEO are actually liberals.

😔😔😔

[-] egrets@lemmy.world 22 points 3 months ago

An affiliate or sponsorship arrangement is a transactional placement for awareness, not an endorsement of a creator's views. [...] The responsibility to vet who we put our name next to is ours.

I'm willing to give Proton a fair amount of the benefit of the doubt (albeit a little less after the Trump-endorsing antitrust tweet by Yen a few years ago), but this is a baffling set of statements.

"The type of people we pay to plug our services doesn't indicate that we endorse their message. I mean, obviously it does, but we don't care enough to manage it closely."

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[-] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 16 points 3 months ago

The majority of the time youtube sponsorships have almost no where near enough over-site into who they are sponsoring. Its commonly a shotgun approach. Hell half the time companies arn't even doing it driectly but going though a middle man company that sends out the emails and all they have to do is sorta review it once and a while to make sure that company is doing their job.

It's extremely obvious this is yet again another great example of that. The number of times companies have found themselves sponsoring someone they don't agree with or would never do in any other circumstances is staggering on youtube. It's basically a running joke at this point.

This is basically a fat fucking nothing burger beyond "yet again a company fucks up due to language barriers and poor management." Honestly i wouldnt be half surprised if they review their process fix it and then it goes right back to being half broken in 6 weeks.

Its basically youtube sponsership 101 at this point.

[-] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 8 points 3 months ago

over-site

oversight

The majority of the time youtube sponsorships have almost no where near enough over-site into who they are sponsoring. Its commonly a shotgun approach

Exactly. I don't think any reasonable person can expect that a relatively small company knows and understands the ins-and-outs of every country's political spectrum.

The number of times companies have found themselves sponsoring someone they don’t agree with or would never do in any other circumstances is staggering on youtube. It’s basically a running joke at this point.

Especially because, like you noted, they mostly do that through third parties. And a third party might be super comfortable supporting someone like that. How often does anyone pay enough attention to call them out on it?

[-] ironycanal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah. Never mind last time.

[-] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

At first glance I thought that was Billy Mays

[-] YaksDC@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago
[-] GMac@feddit.org 7 points 3 months ago

Decent response but they need to do better.

[-] Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago

Their response sounds like what AI would say when it's called out.

They should do better and they should make public what they'll do so it won't happen again

[-] okamiueru@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Oh? Doesn't seem like that to me at all. In fact, it was a pretty decent response.

[-] Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago

They admitted they were wrong, what corrective action will they take?

[-] felbane@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Did I hallucinate this or are you intentionally ignoring the very specific action they said they were taking to address this?

The responsibility to vet who we put our name next to is ours, and we didn't meet it this time. We're now reviewing our vetting process and our guidelines for our marketing agencies to ensure this doesn't happen again.

  • The fact that they said "marketing agencies" strongly suggests that they're using third-party providers, which is pretty common for running affiliate programs. This would be in addition to any internal marketing team, if they have one.
  • Until this incident, clearly they just trusted that the third parties would vet the affiliates - and clearly they were wrong.
  • The first step in an incident like this is to determine what went wrong, which they're doing. It's very rare to get a "we've identified the issue and here's how we're fixing it" in an initial quick response like this.
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[-] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 4 points 3 months ago

Proton has started advertising on leftist channels within the last month or two, which doesn't make Proton leftist. IMO, what it really means is that there is greater distrust between political views - we got rightwing crazies wanting to ICE people, and so naturally their minority opposition wants more privacy. In turn, the crazies also need to cover their own ass, so they use VPNs to hide their search results of [insert local school, minority, or individual here] from potential leaking to government.

Point being, such fear and hatred is a good opportunity for arms to be supplied to every side. Those arms, in this case, being encrypted privacy. Proton is being pragmatic.

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this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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