Meanwhile, over on reddit, Proton has launched a bot-assisted astroturfing campaign to refute the spreading narrative. It takes the form of a missive from a "staff engineer" who's shocked and angry at how much his dear CEO has been clipped out of context.

In the first 10 minutes after the post went live, it had dozens of comments from posters saying things like, "Wow! Thank you for the truth!"

Five hours later the post's upvote counter is over 3k.

Totally fake PR damage control.