cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8915892

(original article in Swedish that reported this)

Posting this because I hadn't heard about it before and I'm probably not the only Mullvad user here, so might as well.

I'm not Swedish, but going off NATOpedia, it seems like the party is basically reinventing fascism from first principles:

The party claims to stand for a "class-conscious populism" which according to party leader Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology and unites the "productive" classes of society against the "Transferiat", with the "Transferiat" being a term coined by Allard to describe the classes of society that lives off transfers that are a net negative for society such as those who, despite having an ability to work, live off social welfare benefits, as well as those who work "made-up services"[...]

The party differs from modern day left-wing parties by seeing the working class as co-dependent with people working in enterprise and business and instead sees the classes that "live off transfers", as specified, as a large economic net-negative and an obstacle for a functional society.

visible-disgust Their ideology is nonsense fake-marxist revisionism to redirect anger at capitalism and turn it against immigrants and people who need social welfare (though they do back some generally left oriented social policies, their main thing appears to be racism)

Even if you're comfortable with funding this, it still begs the question of just how trustworthy Mullvad actually is.

I guess this still beats any of the dozens of Israeli VPNs that definitely spy on you, but it's not great emilie-shrug

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[–] 18 points 4 months ago

Even bigger yikes.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

    So.. Is there any VPN provider without controversy?

    I think Mullvad was the last one I knew of.

    They're either lying about logging, lying about backdoors, or apparently Nazis?

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

    AirVPN is awesome, also port forwards are nice for p29p

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago*

    I just bought the 2/3 days and tried around 10 servers with wireguard and the best speed that I got was 500Mbit/s which is half of my speed.

    Also, most of them did not even pass 100Mbit/s.

    Am I doing something wrong? I had great speeds with mullvad with the respective set-up.

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

    That is a really difficult situation to be in, and I don't envy them. I'm struggling with coming up with a solution to this, when one of your co-founders, that you basically can't force out if I understand it correctly, is using his own money, he made from the company, but it's still his own, to go against your mission.

    If they can't convince him to not do that, there's not much they can do.

    I really like Mullvad, it's the only VPN that I feel kind of safe abiut and trust them, but if a part of my money goes directly to fund extremistic parties, then I simply won't do that and will be asking for a refund. I really hope they figure something out.

    But Mullvad could also react a little better, by emphasizing that they would remove him if they could, and that they are working on a solution. Because it kind of isn't their fault, and it sucks to be in a position like this. Currently it's like Tesla or SpaceX saying that they don't agree with Musk's values, and that he's spending his own money they have no control over, as if that was an argument why it's fiine to buy Tesla or invest into SpaceX.

    But unsubscribing from Mullvad is the best thing we can do now, hopefully the co-founder loosing his income will make him reconsider the PR of his personal spendings, and the dropping number will force him to reconsider.

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

    He owns 50% of the company. He would be legally within his rights to sack anyone moving against him. Short of him being visited by three ghosts and persuaded to change his ways/sell his share to someone more sympathetic to the company’s stated values/convert it to an employee-owned cooperative, there’s not much that can be done.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    There's still the second owner who can maybe convince him, or strike a deal.

    A lot of people boycoting Mullvad over it might be the motivation he needs, but it's not an easy position to be in, and I'm not getting my hopes up.

    He can also maybe just take/sell his half and fork out? But even to me, who knows nothing about running this scale of business, that sounds like something unreasonable.

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

    But Mullvad could also react a little better, by emphasizing that they would remove him if they could, and that they are working on a solution.

    Don't anthropomorphize companies mate. That's not how it works.

    Think about it, from inside the company point of view: who, exactly, would write and post something like that?

    Mullvad isn't a company with a board that can vote out a shareholder. Berntsson and Stromberg are the sole shareholders and co-CEOs, 50/50. There's no mechanism to "remove" a co-owner short of him voluntarily selling his stake or a negotiated buyout, and neither will happen because of some angry posts on the internet.

    Mullvad isn't a separate entity with its own thoughts and ideologies. It's two guys who hire people to offer a service

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    You are right, that's what I was trying to say that there's not much they can do about it. I haven't mentioned it directly, but by "Mullvad", I mostly meant the second owner. It's now mostly up to him to either somehow deal with his co-owner, or just loose hopefully a lot of customers.

    Lot of people boycotting Mullvad because of this is the only thing that may help in this regard, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    If it actually matters that you have privacy and anonymity it’s probably best to not switch.

    You know what’s best for you, but the guilt of knowing one drop of your money goes to someone whom you find repugnant is preferable to losing life or safety.

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

    I was judt thinking about this, especially considering that it's very probable that most of the money I spend are eventually financing lobyiing and who-knows what else, if you were to track them down simillarly.

    But, if it's true that 75% of the donations the party has received is from the Mullvad co-owner, there is a chance that it would allow them to keep on surviving even when they shouldn't, and if they manage to get elected (which unfortunately seems to be more and more of a trend), it can cause a lot more harm than a little bit of lost privacy.

    I don't know. I don't want to stop supporting Mullvad, but if that means also giving a far right party a better chance at surviving, then it sucks.

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  • [–] 203 points 4 months ago (68 children)

    This isn't good. It's also not entirely correct. Mullvad isn't financing this party directly. One of the owners took his money he made from the company and donated it to the loonies. He could've bought crypto with it, spent it in blow maybe, but he didn't. "Mullvad is financing this party" is not correct. "Your Mullvad fees may have ended up indirectly financing this party" is correct and an ongoing concern. So is their tepid response to the story breaking. I would still advise caution, hammer them with public outrage pressure on the socials, and hope they get rid of the loonie party donor before you bankrupt an otherwise serviceable VPN provider. If that guy is still there in a couple of months, by all means leave.

    There is no shortage of c@<%s in the tech sector.

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

    "Your Mullvad fees may have ended up indirectly financing this party" is correct and an ongoing concern.

    Is it really "may have"? Seems pretty clear that they have.

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

    Yeah, but his donation was something like 72% of the donations to that party by money given. That’s not just a donation; that’s him funding his own private far-right party. And if he wants his own far-right party, it’s probably not just for looks.

    This guy co-owns Mullvad. That all Mullvad is doing about it is wringing their hands and saying ‘oh, but it’s his money, there’s nothing we can do’ is, quite frankly, disgusting. It’s his money that he got from your company, in large enough quantities he can go out and buy himself some racists like Phil Knight buying himself a fucking basketball team.

    If a lower-level employee makes some shit-ass racist comment on their own time, they tend to get canned immediately. Yet all this asshole gets is Mullvad shaking their heads and saying ‘well, it doesn’t align with our values, but what you gonna do?’ Bullshit.

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

    Well, if he's the co-founder and the co-owner, the only thing "they" (I assume the 2nd owner/founder) can really do is try to convince him to leave.

    What else would you expect? That he shutdowns the company, drop their customers and fire their employees, then restart the same company with a different name without that individual?
    That would be a guaranteed lawsuit, and could actually break even more trust form all parties.

    Or just sells his shares and leaves, alone, so that Mullvad goes from "one co-owner funds a far-right nazi party" to "Mullvad now fully own by a nazi-fanboy"? (again: abandoning employees and customers to the good will of that charming individual).

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

    Berntsson apparently gets most of his income from other companies that he owns (in investments), with Mullvad not being run primarily as a dividend source, so Mullvad’s contribution to the money he donated to the Nazis was probably small. Still, a small amount of shit in the punchbowl is still faecal contamination, though it may be good to keep the facts in mind if weighing up Mullvad vs. Proton vs. Kape and evaluating acceptable compromises (ethical consumption under capitalism and all that).

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

    I don't know how much you know about Örebropartiet, but they've been described as both left and right populist with nationalist and marxist ideas. A study made at Lunds University describe them as "authoritarian left-populism". What they have in common with the actual Nazis is that they want less immigration. We could decide that anyone who wants less immigration is a nazi, sure, but that's a bit dishonest. The founder of Örebropartiet has his background in the Swedish Left party, where he was controversial in part because he defended leftist violent activism.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Honestly, trying to descend from Marx and wanting to deport migrants is a sign of poor intelligence. At some point, the German, during WW2 also had some social benefits, and still, nobody with a working brain considers that thc nazis where somehow leftists. I'd even say it makes Örebropartiet closer to Nazis than let's say the RN in France.

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  • [+] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    We don't have duopolies in Sweden, we have lots of parties and shifting constellations of parties pre and post elections, especially on a local municipality level.

    Their key issues are strong secularism, a 30-hour workweek with retained pay, lowered wages for politicians, expanded social housing, abolishing preschool-fees, making public transport free of charge, ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art and introducing free dental care.

    Would you say these are typical left or right stances? Their leader say: neither.

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

    I mean, it doesn't really matter who actively takes the stance or not. The only question that matters is where the money you spend ends up, and whether you want it to end up there. If you don't want your money to end up in the hands of a far right party, you probably don't want to pay the company that pays the guy who pays a far right party.

    Mullvad may say it doesn't support his views, but the main form of support is financial backing, and his own company is obviously going to pay him, so it does support him, regardless of whether or not it wants to take that stance. If you give the company money, then you're supporting it, allowing it to support him, regardless of whether or not you want to.

    It's like Harry Potter; even if no corporate announcement is ever going to be made to agree with JK Rowling's anti-trans beliefs, your money spent on merchandise for the franchise still ends up in her hands, and is subsequently moved into the hands of the anti-trans organizations she supports.

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

    I don't care about Mullvad, but this is an interesting philosophical question. How far does that chain of money carry responsibility? Like, what if you donate to a hospital, and a nurse at the hospital uses their wages to buy bread, and the owner of the bread factory is problematic?

    Definitely some fraction of my donation went to the bread factory owner's politics, but is it my responsibility? Should I withhold donations to the hospital until they've pressured the nurse to buy a different brand of bread, or let them go?

    Definitely the bread factory owner has a bunch of money, and money is power, and that money was given by customers in exchange for bread, so at some point if we want their power to diminish steps must be taken. But is the hospital donor's money the right lever for that? Does it outweigh the benefits?

    What if the bread factory's owner is fine, but has a worker who spends their money on a problematic cause. Is it still the hospital donor's responsibility?

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    I believe responsibility is a personal choice. How much something matters depends on how much it matters to you. The more important thing is that you ask the relevant questions to actually assess what matters and how you address issues that arise between what you're doing and how that affects the world around you.

    Do you consider the fraction of your hospital donation that goes to the nurse to be significant enough to change how you donate? And do you consider the nurse's bread purchases to be a significant enough portion of the bread factory's profits? And do you consider the significance of that to outweigh the significance of the nurse having enough to eat? And if something about this does reach that level of significance to you, is changing your donation to the hospital the method by which you want to address the issues with the bread factory owner, or is there another action that might be more effective?

    It's difficult to address these issues in daily life due to their emergent complexity, but the more we can do to be ethical, the more of a positive impact we can have on the world around us.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    That's kinda similar question I had while learning about veganism. It's not possible in absolute sense to get rid of animal cruelty, there's always going to have some indirect connection cause the way we have designed our system. So the general answer for me is; as practicable as possible and not letting perfect be the archenemy of good

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

    You may be as outraged as you want. I just pointed out that Mullvad didn't do anything (to their detriment, at this point) like the title of the post suggested. That's misrepresenting the facts. If you feel like that distinction (a company endorsement vs. a private donation) doesn't make a difference, that's fine. I get that. I left Proton when their CEO was praising the regime of 47 for tech regulation. I just believe we should be mad for the right reasons. Facts are good.

    It's been pointed out here in the thread that the majority of the donation to the horseshoe loonie party may in fact have come from other income streams, as Mullvad doesn't pay an awful lot. I don't know if that's true but that would put another spin on the story as well.

    There is no shortage of c@>=s in the author community either. Let's not mention her name again. She's probably a lot richer and therefore a lot more impactful with her magic money than this mad meatball. In my estimation, a dollar spent in the famous magician universe will have a lot more negative impact on the trans community than a comparable amount of kronor at Mullvad for immigrants to Sweden. The bigger threat there are probably the Sweden Democrats and they're already in parliament as the second largest fraction.

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

    The only question that matters is where the money you spend ends up, and whether you want it to end up there

    Serious question to that. How many degrees of separation does that account for? If I spent money at a random company, that does not endorse a far right candidate, but then it pays an employee and that employee then turns around and supports a far right candidate, is it still “my money”?

    Does it matter if they’re a front line worker or if they’re a manager or a C-level if it’s not done by the company directly? Do you have to vet out the buying habits of every employee at every company you spend money on?

    I think of Chic-Fil-A, which is different because money from sales goes straight to the foundation, which is used against LGBTQ+ people, but if someone were to be paid via paycheck and then spent it at Chic-Fil-A, is it my money anymore?

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago

    The amount of degrees of separation is going to have different weights for different people. My point is more concerning the knowledge of the situation, and how that might impact decision making moving forward. This guy spent the money he got from us on the far-right party, which means we helped fund it, but we didn't know at the time that our money would be used in that way, so we can't say we were responsible for that support. Now we are aware of that pipeline, and so we can no longer claim separation from it moving forward. There's still a debate to be had about whether it matters enough for us to avoid putting more money into it, and that cutoff is going to be different from person to person, but the pipeline itself is there and must be factored into our decision making moving forward regardless.

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

    They won't get rid of him if there is no threat of bankruptcy... "Lets not jump into action maybe they'll do the right thing" is not a good plan

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

    They can force him out as CEO, that can do nothing about his co-ownership though.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago*

    But that's even less reason to give them money, if he is a co-owner part of the profit directly funds fascism. It's not just about funding the parties, but having mullvad as the defacto gold standard, continuing to do business with them gives fascists co-ownership over parts of privacy-critical infrastructure. It's not a serviceable VPN provider if it's co-owned by fascists??

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  • [+] 9 points 4 months ago (35 children)
  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    You know, during the backlash against Musk and Tesla, I was wondering how many nazis there were in the board or among the executives of other car makers, and how many among the shareholders.

    What I'm getting to is there is no less reason now to trust Mullvad than before, and no less reason to trust more other VPN providers, just because you have no idea who their CEO/founders/owners are.

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  • [+] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Maybe I should have made myself clearer.

    My point is you indeed have no way to know for sure what your money contributes to.

    Large companies will have larger boards and many shareholders. That considerably increases tbe chances of giving money to nazis sympathizers. Up to what level would you screen thaem?

    Even in this case, where the problematic individual is a prominent figure of the company, how long could they operate without the general public learning about his ideology?

    You say you didn't trust Mullvad and they're not your provider of choice, and you do check compan=es. Do you mean you knew about their cofounder? Do you use a VPN service, and if yes, how did you vet it?

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  • [+] -4 points 4 months ago (25 children)
  • [+] 1 point 4 months ago (24 children)
  • [+] -4 points 4 months ago (23 children)
  • [+] 3 points 4 months ago* (22 children)
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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (15 children)

    If you’re looking for a replacement and don’t actually need the privacy/anonymity then ivpn might be a good choice. You can screw it up and set up an account that can’t possibly by as safe as mullvad but if you’re careful and know what you’re doing you can also get damn close to it. Theoretically.

    But if it matters it’s probably time to reup mullvad with a new account id and cash through the mail instead of whatever they refunded you through.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    What is wrong with iVPN? They are also no logs and take cash as far as I can tell. Them and AirVPN seem like solid alternatives.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I have used ivpn in the past. I currently use air for port forwarding stuff.

    There is nothing “wrong” with ivpn. You can, if you’re careful, avoid setting up an account, associating an email, choose a limited set of services and pay with cash and get, theoretically, what you get with mullvad.

    The difference is that with mullvad it’s much harder to do something you didn’t know was a problem. That’s not a thing that’s “wrong” with i. Lots of people expect to be able to log in to their account and recover their password with an email and use a bunch of additional nice apps and services like what i offers. That’s not wrong.

    I said theoretically above and above that because i has not been under the same degree of scrutiny as mullvad. So it’s kind of like the veteran choosing a dented shield over a newly built one because “i know this one has stopped a blow”.

    Air is… a piracy vpn. An eagle eyed user is expected to read between the lines to understand that and understand what it means.

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  • [+] 1 point 4 months ago (11 children)
  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (10 children)

    If you can tolerate using crypto instead of cash, ovpn has Singapore servers and that’s close.

    If you could be careful with your account information and send cash you could probably make proton work, they got lots of servers where you need them. You’d have to resist the temptation to add some newfangled service though.

    Ngl between your reply to me and others you sound like the kind of person who should stick with mullvad.

    I only recently started using the mullvad application as opposed to configs and maybe it’s because I was on configs for so long or maybe it’s mullvads app quality being better than average but I’ve been impressed with it across all platforms.

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  • [+] 1 point 4 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Oh, I keep windscribe for general purpose unimportant stuff. They have servers all over the place. No clue how well they hold up, only ever used em for geofencing bypass with scripts.

    They’re running a sale on whatever their pro service is and that gets you nz servers.

    I can fire up their app in a little bit and see how it works, what distribution are you running?

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

    Personally, if I was worried enough about various tracking, I'd want to use the configs with known vetted third party FLOSS apps vs their own built app. For instance, one of the concerns with SurfShark in those sites is the app isn't vetted and has some custom analytics. Using openVPN plus configs kills app level analytics.

    IDK how much I ought to or should not trust any VPN provider, but for what I need, SurfShark has been great and pretty cheap, though for other reasons I'm a bit disappointed no port forwarding. I would use other tech than commercial VPNs for "deep" privacy.

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

    No, the Mullvad company isn't sponsoring a nazi party, but the company is owned by 50% of the one who did it, $500k, money gained with this company. This rest for me also at least 50% of trust in this company. Its not the same, if a company with 100 employees has an employee nazi, as when the owner is one. Because this mean, every money which pay the user for an service, 50% serve to support a nazi party. Stop fooling around with "he used his private money", it's money he earned with this company, by donations, VPN and services, paid by the users. Brendan Eich was fired by Mozilla for less.

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

    Stop fooling around with "he used his private money", it's money he earned with this company, by donations, VPN and services, paid by the users.

    What you call fooling around I call a factual distinction. It's also been pointed out that Mullvad money wasn't possibly a big bulk of the donation. Because they're not raking in the dough.

    I'm not telling you not to be outraged. If I were a customer of theirs I'd be mad too. You draw your own line and that's just fine with me. Let me draw mine.

    I believe facts matter. Facts like Mullvad didn't directly fund a Nazi party, but one of their owners did. And it wasn't per se a Nazi party becausre they are more of the horseshoe persuasion where they try to marry ideas from the extreme right with those from the extreme left, which is an unfortunate trend in European politics right now. And I've pointed this out before: the real threat is already in the Swedish parliament as the 2nd largest fraction. They are the Sweden Democrats and they are probably more deserving of the Nazi label.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I understand your point of view, but I can only speak mine. The advance of the far right in Europe and the rest of the world is more than worrying and must be fought, not facilitated. A company must also look at its image in the eyes of the public and show ethics and respect for the customer and user.

    Mullvad is undoubtedly a technically good browser with excellent privacy-protecting features, but precisely for this reason it cannot be tolerated that its CEO supports a political party that promotes the exact opposite of what Mullvad claims to defend, because this takes away confidence in the future developments of this browser and what path it will take. The influence of someone who owns 50% of the company is surely not small and the influence and political orientation he has matters, even if it seems a good product.

    Eg. Starlink, for sure very usefull to permit the connection in a lot of countries without infrastructure, in catastrophes, in trains, flights, etc. but I see also a worldwide network controlled by one person, Musk. Right populism always use the Honeypot methode for it's advance.

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  • [–] 26 points 4 months ago

    Mullvad

    Reverse credit card charge

    Yeah... About that....

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

    I would love to take my money elsewhere, but... Where? Everywhere else is just as bad or worse. Half the VPN's are owner by one Israeli billionaire. I'm running out of options here.

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

    God dammit, I already switched away from Express VPN because they're owned by Israel, now I gotta switch away from Mullvad too??

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  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, just a weighing of compromises and complicities.

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

    That's the most important bit: Allard had private property (his capital) and he did with it however he pleased. This is a structural issue, which wont be solved by cancelling Mullvad.

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

    I think this is too quick to absolve the individual. Yes these are structural issues, but apparently his 5 mill kronor was 72% of the party's total donations from 2025. There is tangible effects that boycotts can have, and to me it seems worth choosing another VPN if the gold standard is funding a party that will strip away privacy rights the moment it has power.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

    I don't think this'll seriously impact MullvadVPN. But don't let me stop you from trying.

    I'm simply a bit weary. It seems a bit to me like a -irtue-signaling liberal cancel-culture move about a party that most people don't understand, because they don't speak swedish.

    I've read a bit about them in swedish until I found the damming policy propositions.

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

    I speak Swedish and Allard calls immigrants "fucking parasites" in language that's about as direct of a translation as you can get: https://www.etc.se/inrikes/martin-melin-om-parasit-kommentaren-borde-ha-markerat

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

    Insane amount of Nazi sympathizers in this thread. “Aw but poor baby is just the CEO!! It’s not his fault he’s a Nazi! Let him do what he wants!” Freaks.

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

    As far as I’m concerned, ‘liberal’ is the most meaningless word in the dictionary. History has shown me that as long as some white middle-class people can live high on the hog, take vacations to Europe, send their children to private schools, and reap the benefits of their white skin privilege, then they are ‘liberal’. But when times get hard and money gets tight, they pull off that liberal mask and you think you’re talking to Adolf Hitler. They feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long as they can maintain their own privileges.

    Assata Shakur

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

    I can't keep track of all the assholes. Going to need an asshole tracker soon.

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

    Once again, it feels like too much money and power just makes people into freaks. None are completely immune, too few are effectively resistant.

    When money makes you complicit in the system where money is power, there is no way to leverage money to fix the system unless you're somehow completely insulated from direct personal gain.

    Morality, ethics, humanity... These must be maintained, have we all just moved on? Maybe it's just me that's given up.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    I believe that a person's world view, ethics, moral system, etc is almost entirely molded to fit their incentives. When I was a manufacturing engineer, I was effectively automating people's jobs. I created an elaborate narrative that not only let me off the hook, but made me the good guy. I was making the workers more productive and therefore setting the stage for them to negotiate better pay or treatment. That plant closed down 3 years later.

    If everyone who punched a child in the face received $1000, people would initially be appalled by anybody who would take that money. After a while, people would start to fondly remember moments when they had been beaten or hurt. They would consider it a vital part of growing up. "Pain is what makes us strong". People would proudly announce how many children they had punched. It would completely change the morals of everyone with the opportunity to receive the benefit.

    Many people have personal evidence of this. A work friend suddenly becomes a prick when they get promoted to supervisor. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it". In this case, A CEO feels his power in society threatened and he adopts whatever politics is needed to ensure he retains power. He isn't doing this out of cold calculus. He will actually believe the politics because that's what fits his incentives and makes him the good guy, actually.

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