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"'I don’t like that he made this donation' — Mullvad CEO reacts to co-founder’s donation to controversial Swedish populist party" (www.techradar.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[+] -47 points 4 months ago (13 children)

So you believe that customers of a company should have a say how the staff uses their wages?

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  • [–] 96 points 4 months ago*

    You have that backwards. Customers of a company get to decide whether or not they want to give that company their money for any reason they fucking please

    I'd also argue that no one would care if this were some mid-level manager making a donation. This is the owner of a company, not "staff."

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

    Legally? No.

    Morally? Yes. Customers give their say as to whether or not they want to give their money to some specific company every single time they engage in a business transaction. There is also nothing wrong with telling others to make the same consideration.

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  • [+] -19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Are you contending unless otherwise specified, people should be mandated to continue spending money with companies?

    I'm allowed to do business or not do business with any company for any reason I like. Cofounder funding a political party with one of their goals being to brutalize immigrants? No thanks. Contractor wearing a company shirt was rude to me on the elevator? I'll check the competition. Maybe I just don't like the color of their logo?

    I'm allowed to define my morals and what I would consider violating those morals would be with monetary support and no half baked slippery slope argument is going to change that.

    What exactly is the allowed reasons for doing or not doing business with people?

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  • [+] -4 points 4 months ago* (4 children)
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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago

    The co-founder publicly stated he made the donation on social media. What made him obliged to disclose this? He seems rather proud of it, in fact.

    As a result, people feel they may have a moral obligation to not funnel money to him. Your stance also doesn;t really line up with your examples like

    Or say your customer base for any reason is in large part Vegan, should you tell your employee's to stop buying meat? Should they stop taking money from the non-vegan customers? How is anyone going to navigate this?

    You don't mention the specific problem you have with this, which would be mandated disclosure. By your own words, this is perfectly fine since people can chose the reasons "Anything, including having no reason at all, obviously." to not do business with someone so I'm not sure why it's a slippery slope to you.

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

    No. I'm just of the opinion that I'm in no way obliged to disclose to you what I spend my money on, just because I work somewhere you spend money on.

    That's not what you said though. I don't think anyone is arguing that employees of a company are obligated to disclose their spending habits, that would just be ludicrous. However, if that information was available or if the company itself made donations/purchases it's perfectly reasonable as a customer to decide not to support that kind of behavior by continuing to do business with that company.

    Just as one example Chick-fil-A is rather famously anti-lgbtq and regularly donates part of their profits to anti-lgbtq organizations. As a consumer it's entirely reasonable and moral to refuse to do business with them in order to reduce the money being funnelled to morally repugnant organizations.

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  • [+] -3 points 4 months ago (1 child)
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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago*

    I'm just of the opinion that I'm in no way obliged to disclose to you what I spend my money on, just because I work somewhere you spend money on.

    ...

    So you believe that customers of a company should have a say how the staff uses their wages?

    Can you see how these two statements are not the same thing? The former is not something anyone had said until you did so while the latter is what the entire rest of this conversation has been about until you tried to pivot to the former.

    Indirectly yes a customer absolutely has a say in what an employee spends money on if they are aware of it because it's the customer's money that's indirectly paying for the thing. An employee is a part of a business and when an employee engages in some activity even on their own time if people are aware they work for that company, then that reflects on the company and vice versa. That's one of the reasons companies have very strict rules about representing yourself as an employee or agent of the company.

    Furthermore the higher an employee's position in a company the stronger their actions reflect on the company. For someone like a co-founder, practically the highest position in a company, those actions reflect very strongly on the company. The only actions that reflect stronger are ones done directly by the company itself.

    This is why HR departments exist, they protect the business from the actions of its employees (or at least attempt to).

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