That article is such bullshit. That anonymously submitted medium article that gets floated around ignores Internet Association, so wouldn’t be shocking if it was from proton attempting to do PR damage fixating on identity politics with intentional omission of Internet Association involvement.
Yen conveniently ignored that after working at the FTC, Slater become the vice-president for legal and regulatory policy for the Internet Association lobby group. Which was founded by “small business” like Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook.
And involved in trying to infringe upon privacy rights. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/lawmakers-must-not-let-internet-association-weaken-california-consumer-privacy-act
So yeah, proton founder cherry picked information that tried to make it seem like it was acceptable to praise the pick when reality is the past is too murky to endorse in any manner.
Now seeing straight up bribing and gifts from corporations not even hiding it the whole thing aged like milk.
I found it odd back then that they shifted to strategy of saying how could he support Trump if Yen isnt sexist and isnt homophobic when uproar was Slater’s anti consumer past being ignored. And they kept shifting away from Slater career criticism like some form of gaslighting and ignoring it. And it worked on some people, since they forgot about the positive endorsement of Trump’s pick while omitting Slater’s murky past because look how not racist Yen is.
But, Tim Cook groveling before Trump showed that people who’s goal is to make more money will sell themselves out to try and get within the inner circle if it is more financially advantageous to do so regardless of their personal ideologies. Money and power rules them. It’s fortunate for Proton the sucking up didn’t get them any further, since who knows if Yen would be giving golden gifts at Trump’s dinners if he’d been invited into the fold. “Dear Mr. President you are the most privacy respecting leader in the world and here is a golden statue as a gift.”