Unnecessary and deeply concerning bow to the new “king”
Update: position got backed up by an official Proton post on Mastodon, it’s an official Proton statement now. https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
Update 2, plot-twist: they removed this response from Mastodon - seems they realize it exploded into their face!
I genuinely don’t see anything inherently suspicious about advertising through YouTube videos. Yes, there have been a few big name ones that were problematic, but that’s going to be true with most advertising, I’d think.
The other big one coming to mind being the Scottish titles thing. Which, I never thought it was legit, and anyone thinking it made them a real Lord or Lady was foolish, but in Scotland it’s illegal to subdivide property that much and sell it as souvenir plots of land. And people’s coverage on the topic really annoyed me because they focused so much on some Scottish titles organization saying they didn’t recognize land ownership as meaning you had a title, which, to me, is far less of an issue. Like, if you’re selling me something and saying that it makes me very distinguished to own it, I know that’s bullshit, but I’d expect to actually own the thing in the end.
It’s a very expensive form of advertising. It means you have to have margins. There are a bunch of VPNs out there, so you’d expect the space to be competitive, but somehow a couple of them can spend like half their revenue on advertising?
Though I did just now realize that they do it instead by having enticing start-up prices and really expensive prices after the fact, so maybe they don’t have to supplement their income by selling data after all.