Proton

I mostly agree with you but:

they have backed away from this position and made clear that proton in politically neutral.

They never backed away from this position. Andy doubled down over and over, even after being brought up to speed by more knowledgeable people. They kept saying "this is not political" despite that very obviously not being the case. Andy may have learned his lesson about staying in his lane though.

I see this as bad PR and on the spectrum of someone saying something stupid on twitter and then regretting it, but some people are treating it as an existenial threat for proton and a huge red flag.

It's not just "bad PR", these are the people responsible for the privacy and sovereignty of all of their users. How can they protect you or advocate for anything if they don't even understand what's happening?

Some additional context that you left out is that Andy responded from the official Proton account and said "this is our official statement", defending Andy's words, then deleted it and said it was NOT an official statement.

My problem is that he didn't just double-down. He made statements. Didn't clarify those statements when he continued making statements using the official company reddit account, doubled down using that account, revised his statements when he received backlash, and then when asked specific questions and presented with specific evidence that conflicted with his statement and apparent worldview, he stopped responding.

The company hasn't made sufficient statements about their political stance or lack there of to divorce themselves from his personal statements, which to me means that he intended those statements to be taken as the company's view not just his own.

They may or may not see a dip in users from this. But I for one will not be spending the money I was considering spending to move to their services.

but some people are treating it as an existenial threat for proton and a huge red

Agree, Proton is not even American Company. I guess.

Same here. He's not American, why would he care about Trump?

Also we've seen this with Twitter. Technology should be neutral in that case and stick to what they sell: security and privacy, but it could go down the toilet very fast.

including using his birth year in his new Reddit nick, when that birth year is also a well-known nazi dogwhistle (88, code for the 8th letter in the alphabet, as in HH, as in "Heil H…"))

Is it true?