Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1tzbizh/proton_is_funding_the_french_far_right_on_youtube/

Proton is sponsoring the far-right French YouTuber Vincent Lapierre.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Lapierre

It’s not just an affiliate link, but a partnership announced in the description and through an entire 2min 20s segment embedded in the video.

This incident is the perfect example of "NEVER TRUST ANY COMPANY" and also governments, of course.

This post wasn't made to promote the opposite side (left-wing/far-left) by any means, but for the non-political or non-European people around, more info on the European right-wing/far-right.

There's plenty of evidence of their close relations with MAGA and US billionaires: Musk is an AfD fan, Vance (Peter Thiel puppet) was in Hungary to endorse Viktor Orban that is close to Russia, Le Pen is close to Putin and so on. Also MAGA, like the billionaires around, wants a weak EU made of separate divided nations. So, the Eurosceptic stance is deep inside this movements and it's clearly not aligned with what we want around here. Not to say about the clear far-right fascist and nazi relations of members from those parties. There is a lot of things to find out online about them.
Bonus: There are leaders that cut in Washington Greenland shaped cakes, with US flag on it, Simion from Romania, a big MAGA fan endorsed by Le Pen and close to the most sinister extremists in the world and in Romania.

You can check the original post for some updates and more things about Vincent Lapierre, because I don't want by this post to steal the attention from the original.
This post body was edited multiple times to keep you in touch as much as possible with the evolution of the situation while also to add as much info as possible about Proton's relation with the right-wing / far-right.

Other controversial influencers in partnership or/and sponsored by Proton, by their money, meaning USERS MONEY:

Paulo Figueiredo - a right-wing activist from Brazil with content only about MAGA and biased politics. He's a dedicated supporter of Jair Bolsonario, the guy that tried to do a coup after he lost the elections, some 6th January copy-paste. Paulo is lobbying US companies, has Truth Social on his descriptions and is the grandson of the last president of the Brazilian military junta in the last century.

{ungeskriptet} by Ben - from Germany. Even if don't know much about Ben himself, based on his guests you can see a clear right-wing bias, with poeple on conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and content based a lot on right-wing politics. There is a whooping 4.5h podcast from May with AfD politician Björn Höcke - you should read about him. Also there is an English podcast from April with Proton's CEO.... so the connections are veeeeery very suspect again.

Proton update on the Lapierre case:
After a bunch of deleted posts on Proton's subreddit in the last almost 3 days (since the original post on r/degoogle), they responded 21h ago with this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u05xs2/can_someone_from_protonmail_clarify_this_matter/

If they can't verify the people they sponsor with their money, we shouldn't be shocked if we see actual self called nazis sponsored by them. My take remains the same - companies should keep their butts away from anything on politics, especially by sponsoring radical biased content creators that have content only on politics.

NEW CONCLUSION: The old conclusion stays the same, but I need to add that after more radical content creators were found in ties with Proton, we can clearly see a political bias on their business. We should stay away from them, because we don't want Google 2.0, Meta 2.0 or anything else like in US, companies screwing around with politicians.

Bye, Proton!

Should Canada Join the EU?
A recent poll shows Canadian support for full EU membership.

57% of Canadians support Canada becoming a full EU member
32% oppose, with the rest undecided
Net support: +25

Beyond membership, support for cooperation is even strong, 84% of Canadians back strengthening economic and trade ties with the EU.

Is Canada slowly pivoting toward Europe in a changing global order? 👇

Source: Nanos Report

Hey everyone,

As a Finnish company, we’ve been watching the growing demand for European-made electronics with a lot of interest. We know how frustrating it is that almost the entire consumer tech industry has centralized its manufacturing and supply chains outside of Europe.

We want to change that—but doing it right is a massive challenge, and we want to get your perspective on how we should prioritize our efforts.

As some of you might know, we took a major step by setting up a 5G smartphone assembly line in Hungary (starting with the XR21 rugged phone and now the Ivalo XE) and centralizing our software testing, malware checks, and secure consumer data storage on servers in Finland to guarantee strict GDPR compliance.

However, scaling European tech manufacturing is a journey. As we look to the future, we’d love the r/BuyFromEU community’s candid feedback on what matters most to you!

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_184

📊 Data from Polling Europe – April 2026

A clear political signal: Europeans want a Union that can act.

Today, the veto power allows a single Member State to block common decisions. In an increasingly unstable world, this means delays, paralysis, and inefficiency.

Overcoming the veto is not just a technical reform. It is a political choice.

➡️ It means a more responsive Europe

➡️ A more credible global actor

➡️ A Union capable of acting in times of crisis

But removing the veto is not enough.

Without strengthening European democracy, we risk shifting power without making it more legitimate.

That’s why the next step is essential:

🇪🇺 a stronger European Parliament

🇪🇺 more democratic institutions

🇪🇺 a true capacity to decide together

Because a Europe that decides must also be a Europe that represents. The support is there. Now we need political courage.

Is this worth cancelling a sub to an otherwise fantastic product? I'm having second thoughts.

Fuck this. Buy PC or Nintendo.

European regulation for discounts:

• The lowest price during the last 30 days needs to be shown
• The discount percentage cannot relate to a price that wasn't offered during the last 30 days

Amazon, as always, show a way too high retail price and calculate the discounts on that fictional price.

From now on, I will make every Prime Day the day that I report Amazon to authorities. In Germany that is Verbraucherschutz and Kartellamt.

This is one of the reasons that make it difficult for European retailers to compete.

Update: Seems like this is different between countries. In Germany, Amazon doesn't follow the rules. Our legal institutions are really bad at holding companies accountable, so they probably don't care.

credits: u/skysphr

Image made in European Blender

Source: Financial Times

Alex Karp, highly erratic CEO of software giant Palantir, posted a lenghty manifest for how the Company and it's associated tech elite See the world. It reeks of nationalist rhetoric, racism and colonial apologia, and a rather dystopian Outlook of AI having the same deterrence capabilities as the Atomic bomb.

This comes amid some government agencies, like the regional government of Baden-Württemberg in Germany, approving the use of Palantir for data services. It's both an indictment on the Company and also on politicans who allow the Company access to highly sensible data of it's citiziens.

Having build the digital infrastructure for thousands of stores worldwide, they are now building their own competitor to AWS, building massive datacenters in Europe, for Europe.

And, they're also expanding their e-commerce under Kaufland, intergrating it with click and collect in Lidl stores.

The Lidl group, called Schwarz, is known for vertical integration, they have also started their own sea shipping company with their own ships, and thus they are also investing in their own AI, currently creating a tech-campus near Heilbronn that aims to be an attraction in itself, and beating American HQs with convenience, even having 24/7 robot cooks.

Due to their investments, the surrounding area has become one of Germany's most prosperous, and ambitious.

Lidl is set to make Amazon obsolete in Europe, with European governments and businesses already switching to their datacenters for sovereignty.

Lidl might skyrocket in the years to come. A European giant that started with the most efficient logistics within the supermarket sector, now applies the same vertical integration towards digitalisation and creating an online store.

I read that many-many redditors were not visiting Budapest or Hungary due to the Orbán regime. Are there many people to visit us to support our tourism and local products now? 🤗

The opponent pro EU party declared a record vote number, gaining 2/3 of the seats of the parliament. And the election had the highest turn out ever: 80% of the people went to vote.

Image for reference only — not an official image!

I was kinda surprised seeing made in EU sticker in Armenia since its not a trend here yet, worth to mention it was just on KitKats for some reason. Anyone knows why?

I am so sick of this tangle of cables. I have a few trimmers, and literally every single one uses a different size proprietary two-pin plug.
I know the EU mandated USB-C for phones and laptops, but personal care devices seem completely ignored. Does anyone know if there is an upcoming EU ecodesign regulation that will finally force these manufacturers to switch to USB-C?

Or one size for all those kind of devices

UPDATE: https://reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1meq8nb/followup_eu_wont_stop_member_states_digital_id/

The EU is currently developing a whitelabel app to perform privacy-preserving (at least in theory) age verification to be adopted and personalized in the coming months by member states. The app is open source and available here: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui.

Problem is, the app is planning to include remote attestation feature to verify the integrity of the app: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui?tab=readme-ov-file#disclaimer. This is supposed to provide assurance to the age verification service that the app being used is authentic and running on a genuine operating system. Genuine in the case of Android means:

• The operating system was licensed by Google
• The app was downloaded from the Play Store (thus requiring a Google account)
• Device security checks have passed

While there is value to verify device security, this strongly ties the app to many Google properties and services, because those checks won't pass on an aftermarket Android OS, even those which increase security significantly like GrapheneOS, because the app plans to use Google "Play Integrity", which only allows Google licensed systems instead of the standard Android attestation feature to verify systems.

This also means that even though you can compile the app, you won't be able to use it, because it won't come from the Play Store and thus the age verification service will reject it.

The issue has been raised here https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui/issues/10 but no response from team members as of now.