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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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[–] 27 points 4 months ago (19 children)

Wondering if it's time that we as an anti-authoritarian left community, establish our own VPN...

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    Anything shared here would inevitably be (or become) a honeypot. If you want a community-driven VPN, it would need to be something like Tor. Individual nodes being hosted by the community, and a zero-trust system to ensure no single node sees enough traffic to ID users.

    But the issue with this is that a malicious actor (like the government) could simply spin up enough nodes to be able to capture the system. A zero-trust system like Tor is only secure because it is large. It’s not economical for a single actor to run enough nodes to reliably capture all three connections in the chain. But if it’s a small group (like Lemmy) starting up their own system, then it would be trivial for a larger organization to simply outnumber the two or three dozen safe nodes.

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

    So... A honeypot?

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    If it's a honeypot for fascists but not one for antifascists, maybe. But I'd prefer no honeypot at all, rather one where governance is from the labourers, to the labourers.

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

    A VPN operated exclusively for a single political group would flag everyone using it as that group.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    True, I suppose a VPN operated by those supporting that group, then.

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

    Not a honeypot, but a target. I see.

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

    What do you suggest otherwise? I don't want my money to go to fascists or surveillance states.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    You don’t get that choice. Beans soak up the flavor of the broth, rocks get thrown out in the trash.

    I’m not trying to be a jerk, but you literally have no control over what other people do and the whole point of a marketplace is to drill the social relationship down to cash.

    A vpn service with a political angle like you suggested would immediately be targeted.

    It’s why you can buy a che tee shirt but not actually ship oil to Cuba.

    If you need the security of mullvad then i recommend you use it.

    Now a communist vpn would be a great piece of political theater! Get one going then get black bagged over it, run a social media campaign to raise awareness, levitate the pentagon, it’d be fantastic!

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    What do you consider to be "anti-authoritarian left?"

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (5 children)

    Anarchists

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

    Is authority just having a government?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    "Authoritarian" is type of government, which Anarchists oppose.

    If you define "government" just as a way of organising society, then Anarchists want a decentralised, non-hierarchical "government".

    If you define "government" as a hierarchical institution with centralised power, anarchists don't want that.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    So, in essence, opposition to authority is opposition to hierarchy, right? What about instances where hierarchy is less a matter of class interest and more of logistical necessity? Why the opposition to collectivization, and instead a push towards communalization?

    I'm a Marxist-Leninist, and a former anarchist, so I'm aware of how I used to personally think, more wondering what you're specifically thinking of here.

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