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Mullvad on the Donation Controversy (www.mullvad.net)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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[–] 90 points 3 months ago (27 children)

There is no stance that Mullvad can take on this in order to make me want to stay with them, since this is not an abstract, philosophical matter. It's simple: Daniel partially owns a pro profit company. I pay Daniel's company some money. Daniel reaps - as he should - parts of the company's revenue as wage (which is my money). Daniel uses that wage to fund whatever the hell he wants - as he should - with my money. I'm either fine with contributing to this or not. Period. I am not fine with it, so I'm flirting with IVPN.

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  • [–] 18 points 3 months ago (16 children)

    Thought experiment time…

    part of the company’s revenue as wage

    How far down the chain does that count for you? If there was a VP, Manager, or Individual Contributor that took their (personal) wages and donated to a cause you didn’t like, would you still pull your money?

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  • [–] 23 points 3 months ago (15 children)

    Good question! I guess it does matter that he's a cofounder and CEO. I honestly don't know how I would react if we were talking about an employee instead. I'd deliberate and make up my mind there and then. Which sheds light on the fact that the matter isn't as black and white as my comment made it sound.

    Possibly off topic:I work within the criminal justice system and I believe cops are pigs, while I know for a fact that there are good people on the force too. I wouldn't give up my current position just because another "lowly" employee is rotten.

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  • [–] 34 points 3 months ago

    It's also the scale of the donation for me. He didn't just make a donation the way you or I probably would - his donation accounted for 72% of the party's entire income for 2025. So the money that Mullvad makes is now tied to the continued existence of the party, albeit indirectly.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (13 children)

    It was something I didn’t have a good answer for either. I think ownership is a good criteria but then I was trying to figure out why it was to me. Since it’s passed to an individual, via salary, is it still “my money”?

    Amount could have something to do, but it’s possible for a highly paid IC to donate quite a bit.

    The one that is cut-and-dry for me is something like Chic-Fil-A. My money is going directly to their foundation, which is used against LGBTQ people, so that’s an immediate hard no.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (12 children)

    He is providing that political party with over half of its income if I recall correctly.

    If Mullvad’s janitor were someone doing that and Mullvad refused to terminate them, I’d quit Mullvad.

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

    If Mullvad’s janitor were someone doing that and Mullvad refused to terminate them, I’d quit Mullvad.

    It's Swedish company, there(and probably in most of the world) it's illegal to fire someone for such reason, worker’s rights and all that.

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

    Then I’d quit them….

    Don’t fund the guy funding the white nationalist party. That’s rule 1 and we can sort the rest out later.

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

    How would you do it? There's no way to "quit them" unless they want to quit themselves, it's not the US. If you think you can fire them and pay some fines, that's not the case, you'll pay them fines AND will be required to rehire them. Like the only way is to shut down the whole company or make them a super sweet offer, both require giving them a lot of money.

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

    Miscommunication… I’d quit Mullvad as a customer. I have done that and received my refund.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Ah, sorry. Which service did you move to? Because given the statistics of far right support there's a very good chance there's at least some employee in that company with those views as well. Still better than their CEO or founder though.

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

    Just to make sure I understand, you do support employer discrimination against employees, just only for the political beliefs you find offensive. Do I understand that correctly? While I believe the only good nazi is a dead one, I alao believe the systems we set up generate the crap we have to deal with later.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    It’s Karl Popper’s tolerance paradox. To answer your question, yes I am in support of discrimination against anyone using their salary to fund over half the annual budget of a white nationalist political party.

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

    I, for one, am in support of your ability to stop giving mullvad money as a consequence, but not in support of anyone being fired over a political donation regardless. I don't want to be fired over donating to causes I support, and there is no universal moral judge to say what is fine to donate to, even if I have pretty strong opinions on the matter.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    I think we can find some lines though. We aren’t talking about political disagreements on the marginal tax rates or how to fund schools.

    We are talking about donations to a political party calling for ethnic cleansing.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    In any sane country a "national socialist" aka nazi party is illegal, an employee funding a party like that are committing a crime so any morality bullshit about freeze peach is beyond that.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (9 children)

    How’s I been treating you?

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    wat

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

    Ivpn, how’s it working out?

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

    I thought one of us is tripping 🤣

    We haven't even gotten to first base yet, because I have several routers and hosts configured with my Mullvad account, some of which I don't have immediate physical access to, so switching over is going to have to be a project for my upcoming vacation in September.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    I made a couple of accounts with them but havent messed with their config generator or apps yet. Still trying to figure out how to allow a pc to select a vpn server but never drop the vpn even through root user intervention.

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

    Can't help you there. My endpoint hosts are Android devices and Windows systems and on them, using the Mullvad app with its killswitch, connections are blocked while it changes Mullvad server.

    As for the routers, I configured them following more or less this guide: https://mullvad.net/en/help/running-wireguard-router

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

    If you’re using wrt or pfsense or something (no word on if their tomato guide works for freshtomato devices yet), you’ll probably like ivpns router support: https://www.ivpn.net/setup/router

    They even have instructions for asuswrt-Merlin which I always thought of as niche.

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

    Cool! 😁 IVPN +1

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