Key facts
- 404 Media reported Yen called a pentest request "loser thinking" and said speed and security are compatible.
- A Proton feedback forum proposal calling for Yen to step down had 2,020 votes when reviewed.
- Proton canceled re-interviews that would have required staff to explain their AI use, per 404 Media.
- Technology chief Bart Butler wrote that developers should direct large language models rather than write code by hand.
- Butler said expertise and testing remain essential and engineers stay accountable for work models cannot handle.
- Proton told 404 Media management had sometimes communicated too bluntly and employees were anxious.
Proton users reported canceling subscriptions and demanded new leadership after 404 Media reported that CEO Andy Yen pressed engineers to adopt AI faster and dismissed a request for extra security testing, the outlet said. The report, which drew on nine current and former employees, internal messages and meeting recordings, said a Proton employee asked in August for a few days to pentest new code, meaning specialists would try to break into it before release.
Yen replied that the request was "bullshit and loser thinking" and said it was possible to be fast and secure, according to 404 Media. He also urged staff to stop writing code by hand and use more AI, and said he would re-interview staff about how they use AI, the outlet reported. Yen canceled the re-interviews on October 30.
The backlash centered on Proton's main selling point, that customers can trust it with information they want kept private. Its encrypted email service scrambles messages to protect their contents. A proposal on Proton's feedback forum calling for Yen to step down had 2,020 votes when reviewed, alongside comments from users saying they had canceled subscriptions or would not renew. Those posts document anger rather than a verified count of departing customers, and canceling a paid plan does not necessarily mean deleting an account.
On November 1, technology chief Bart Butler published an engineering manifesto arguing that developers should direct large language models, AI systems that generate text and code, rather than treat them as occasional assistants. Butler compared manual coding to memorizing phone numbers and envisioned eventually ending most human code review, while insisting that expertise and testing remain essential. "Your job has fundamentally changed. It is no longer to write code, and LLMs are not here to help you write better code faster," the manifesto reads. "Your job is to help the LLM write better code faster."
Proton told 404 Media that management had sometimes communicated too bluntly and that employees were anxious. Its manifesto argues that failing to adopt AI quickly threatens the company's ability to compete. Proton's Lumo chatbot includes protections against using conversations to train AI, but internal AI use was not among the company's selling points.