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Mullvad founder donated 5 million SEK to populist Örebro party (www.flamman.se)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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Daniel Berntsson, founder of Mullvad, gave a personal donation of 5 million SEK (roughly 450,000€) in 2025 to Örebropartiet. This enormous donation accounted for 72% of the party’s revenue in 2025.

How does this affect Mullvad’s legitimacy as a company advocating for a free and open internet, while also funding a political party whose agenda seem to contradict these values? The official party website (in Swedish) can be found via the link below.

https://orebropartiet.se/om-oss/

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[–] 20 points 4 months ago (14 children)

Im sorry, but people here in the comments seem to be complaining to complain. If both Mullvad and Proton are known to fund/support fascist parties, then what do you suggest we leftists use? And dont just blindly recommend eastern spyware VPNs either. Maybe we just go back to distributing newspapers and using radio, just like our comrades back then did

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Anyone have experience with iVPN? I've generally heard it's good, but I'm not sure how it compares. Looks like it's the same price as Mullvad at least, and also accepts cash and monero as payment options. I'm just wondering about how many servers they have comparable and how often they got blocked by major websites. I'm thinking that'll probably be what I switch to, unless it has some major problems I'm not aware of.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I is… okay if you’re doing piracy or trying to watch foreign media. It will keep the eyes of your isp off you but hasn’t been under the extensive scrutiny that mullvad has (which is why it can be used for such a broad set of goals imo).

    When I used it I ended up having to switch servers frequently, that was about three years ago though.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Seems like they have far fewer servers than Mullvad does, but at least they state who they're hosted with and it looks like they do have a multi-hop setup like Mullvad does. They undergo annual audits so I'm not seeing any major security red flags. I frankly would have stuck with Mullvad had they not pulled this shit, but I won't be made a hypocrite over this.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I use AirVPN, personally. They put money where the mouth is and haven't donated to any Nazis either.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    They look good from an ethics standpoint, but it looks like the only anonymous payment method they take is monero. I'm considering them, but I'm not super familiar with crypto and how to obtain monero. Looks like I'll need to do some research.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    And dont just blindly recommend eastern spyware VPNs either

    Do these even exist? Who gives a shit if the PRC spies on me? I'd happily use a North Korean VPN if they had IPs that weren't geoblocked.

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  • [+] -10 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Bruh Proton never gave money to fascist parties. In fact, if you look at their donations, they're all left wing.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    They may be talking about the CEO being on Trump’s dick, though that’s just a guess.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e

    Yeah Andy Yen was specifically talking about Gail Slater's antitrust support while the democrats had ties to corporate lobbies and voted on the wrong side of things. He apologized for appearing to be republican.

    If you look at proton's finances they all donate towards left organizations, promoting freedom and privacy, even donating to a liberal news organization.

    I'm sick and tired of all these people bashing on proton because of one tweet that was taken out of context.

    Bash on Proton for not being open source enough but don't bash on them for this same tweet over and over again.

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