Objective

The VPN market on X is a sea of sameness: generic “stay safe online” copy, stock imagery, and brands that go silent whenever real censorship happens. In 2025, Proton VPN set out to prove that a VPN brand could become a genuine voice for internet freedom—fearless enough to name names, human enough to earn trust, and entertaining enough to make people actually want to follow a VPN company.

Our four objectives for @ProtonVPN on X were:

1. Build a values-driven challenger voice that speaks plainly about censorship, surveillance, and platform overreach—with receipts, not platitudes.
2. Become the go-to real-time source during internet shutdowns by turning Proton VPN Observatory data into accessible, shareable threads—often in local languages.
3. Make a VPN brand culturally relevant, using humor, memes, and Big Tech dunks to earn attention from mainstream audiences who would never follow “a security company.”
4. Convert voice into community and revenue, getting users to publicly say “I’m upgrading because of this post”—not just engage, but act.

The benchmark: our 2024 baseline of 13.2M impressions, 631K engagements, and 175K followers across 525 published posts.

Strategy

Three Rules for the Voice

The @ProtonVPN persona was built on three non-negotiable rules. 

1. Never hedge on values: if something threatens privacy or free access to information, say it clearly. 
2. Humor with receipts: memes, dunks, and banter are always grounded in facts, links, and data from the Proton VPN Observatory. 
3. Human first, brand second: no corporate “we at Company X” voice, just a sharp, opinionated presence that replies, quotes, and debates in real time. 

We coordinated closely with legal, PR, and product to ensure call-outs were accurate and defensible, and created internal guardrails: punch up never down, receipts over insinuation, no jokes about vulnerable groups.

Content Pillars in Action

Our content operated across four pillars, each with standout moments in 2025:

• Censorship watchdog (3.2M + 2.2M impressions): Minutes after the UK Online Safety Act took effect, we published real-time Observatory data showing UK signups surging 1,400%. When PornHub blocked France, we reported registrations from France up 1,000%. We also published threads in Spanish (Venezuela, 420K impressions), Turkish (Türkiye, 267K), and Portuguese (Brazil, 53K)—reaching affected populations directly.

• Big Tech accountability dunk (1.7M impressions, 254K engagements, 15% ER): Our top engagement post of the year—a two-word quote-tweet (“Ya think?”) reacting to age-verification overreach—outperformed every competitor’s best post in the entire tracking set. The Chrome VPN extension exposé (359K impressions) and Discord age-verification thread (311K) showed the same pattern: sharp commentary backed by facts.

• Brand-to-CEO moment — The Perplexity exchange: When Perplexity’s CEO criticized us for sharing a TechCrunch interview about his ad plans, we didn’t back down. The back-and-forth, later amplified by the main Proton account, became a brand-defining moment, flooding replies with users calling Proton “based,” “gangster,” and “one of my favorite companies.”

• Conversation, not broadcast: Of our 2,730 sent messages in 2025, the majority were replies. We show up in the mentions—engaging trending conversations, amplifying community takes, and answering in real time. This is how the account earns repeat engagement and converts followers into advocates.

Overcoming Challenges

The hardest line to walk: fearless vs. reckless. Covering real-time internet shutdowns in authoritarian countries demands accuracy. Getting a fact wrong doesn’t just embarrass the brand—it could endanger the people we’re trying to help. Our solution: pre-agreed “safe zones” (anti-censorship, pro-access, documented shutdowns) so we could react within hours while legal and product verified the technical claims. 

Results

From January 1 to December 31, 2025, @ProtonVPN on X:

Objective 1  |  Values-driven challenger voice: Ranked #1 in public engagements per post (357) across 20 tracked competitors—12x the competitor average (29.79). Competitors tracked include NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, CyberGhost, Gmail, Notion, 1Password, Dropbox, and others. Our “Ya think?” age-verification post alone (254K engagements) outperformed every competitor’s top post.

Objective 2  | Go-to source during shutdowns: 24.8M impressions (+88% YoY from 13.2M). Our top two posts were both censorship watchdog content: UK Online Safety Act (3.2M impressions) and PornHub blocking France (2.2M, 81K engagements). Threads published in Spanish, Turkish, and Portuguese reached affected communities directly.

Objective 3  | Cultural relevance: 1.19M engagements (+89% YoY from 631K) with 629K video views (+964% YoY). Engagement rate held at 4.8%—maintaining quality while nearly doubling output to 1,154 posts (+120% YoY). Posts more than doubled, engagement rate stayed flat: every new post earned its keep.

Objective 4  | Convert voice into community: Net follower growth of 21,170 to 196,195 total—#2 among all 20 tracked competitors (behind only Notion at +21,898), while the competitor average was -54K. Users publicly tied our voice to purchasing decisions: “After this reply I’m upgrading and moving my email to you as well,” “I used your free VPN, now I’m going to buy the paid tier.”

All growth was 100% organic. Zero paid promotion. Achieved by a five-person in-house team also managing Proton’s main brand account plus eight additional product accounts across six platforms.

Media