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.
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.
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
Privacy is not something that neatly aligns with the left-right spectrum.
Far right needs to track their targets. The nazi had IBM census machines to better identify jews, and right now, Palantir fucking exists, and its founder is well aligned on left-right.
I’m very confused by what you mean with this. It’s like saying human basic needs doesn’t aligns with left-right spectrum, like no shit!
Nobody using Mullvad is going to have their credit card tied directly to it. Much less are they going to start calling financial institutions and government agencies and tell them they’re a Mullvad user.
You need to get way more subtle with your propaganda, corpos.
Sure lets entrust our privacy with infrastructure owned by a fascist…
clearly you don’t know how Mullvad works
Enlighten me how under a fascist takeover it couldn’t be undermined to track undesirables… even if, the owner is a fascist?! Clearly your life wouldn’t be in danger when tracked by a fascist…
Technically they could be lying about their privacy policy, and technically it’s not impossible that they’ve colluded with the government to lie about police finding nothing in raids, and saying “well they will lie about it because they’re fascists” is myopic and stupid. Moreso than being fascist, they’re fanatical about privacy. Everything runs on RAM. They couldn’t track you if they wanted to
saying “well they will lie about it because they’re fascists” is myopic and stupid.
Why?
Moreso than being fascist, they’re fanatical about privacy
and they will be forever and ever? There’s one move fascists have, coast on good will until it’s time for the rug-pull. A lot of fascists started out genuinely believing in some cause but sooner or later they all turn. What with contradictions sharpening and all
Why?
Because you don’t know anything about the infrastructure of their operation. It’s as yet impossible for them to track traffic through their servers.
and they will be forever and ever?
As long as it’s one guy making personal donations and not the company as a whole, yes
Enlighten me then? Simply calling others stupid and playing coy with your argument isn’t that convincing an argument.
As long as it’s one guy making personal donations and not the company as a whole, yes
that “one guy”? Oh he owns half the company, and we are very happy to run this operation with him don’t worry about him.
Explain to me how you activate an account on Mullvad. Right here.
Don’t Google it. Just explain it.
You create that id number thing and send them money. Do you think that means that your identity is completely secure?
Send them money in what form?
I was planning on sending them cash via mail
Do you write your name and address on the cash you send them?
No
This seems pretty sensationalized. Wikipedia does not classify them as a far right party. “Some key issues for the Örebro Party locally include 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,[4] ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art and introducing free dental care.”
Yeah those Nazis are always for sure advocating for social housing and a 30 hour work week. /s
Yeah and it’s not Mullvad itself but the cofounder with his personal money (which of course he has for being the Mullvad cofounder and handsomely paid co-CEO, I expect).
Still, nuance?
The post should have been deleted, it appears to be deliberately manipulating the discussion/reality.
Very convenient how you skipped the next sentence:
Nationally the party has set out large-scale remigration
Oh, wow. Remigration is a link to another wiki page. Let’s learn something about it:
Remigration is a far-right concept referring to the ethnic cleansing via mass deportation of non-white minority populations
Uh. That sounds pretty Nazi to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s not classify in the sacred text guys everyone calm down!!!
Based!
Looks like I am switching to Mullvad, especially since Mullvad’s response to this “matter” is to uphold free speech and not join in on cancel culture.
Anyone who complaining about this needs to grow up and learn to respect other people for their opinion. I am certain many snowflakes have shopped at stores were the owner would be considered a “facist”. I am certain I have shopped at businesses were the owner was politically different than me, but I won’t go on a crusade to get the owner to step down over opinions.
“B-b-but he is a nazi!” its 2026, everyone is a nazi now because of snowflakes pointing and sputtering.
You don’t have free speech when you’re made illegal, which is what far right parties like this one are doing to immigrants
Why not just cut out the middle man and join an ethno nationalist party?
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.
I’m using AirVPN since two years and I’m very happy with them.
That moment when you literally sent Mullvad a bunch of cash like two weeks before all of this came down and you know there’s literally no way to get your money back and it takes 2-4 weeks for money to get from your country to Sweden so you haven’t even started using the service.
They’ve claimed they’ll honor refunds,fwiw:
That doesn’t help the cash in an envelope with no return address crowd. Mullvad also doesn’t have any way to associate an account with a person.
So then their offer may not be genuine…bummer.
They refunded me the same day I requested the refund without issue, their refund offer is genuine.
It’s less of an ingenuine offer issue and more of a “there’s a way to pay thats anonymous and untraceable” problem.
There’s no way to privately and anonymously confirm that the person who paid cash and is asking for a refund is who they say they are. If you have them do that then now you have a record of who they are and that can be used by the cops when they cleverly hit you with a subpoena the month after your big scandal broke.
So if you’re committed to protecting customers privacy you can’t do refunds on cash.
Understood. I was replying more to the general inability for them to associate people with accounts,if I read you right.
Oh they can do cc and PayPal refunds. Probably monero and bitcoin too. Wire transfers you can’t usually reverse, cash you can’t either. Cooperative merchants can refund a wire transfer, but it’s not as cut and dry as the cc, PayPal or crypto process.
And it’s possible for a rep to decide a person is who they say they are and refunding the balance of an account somehow but that requires the person give up the shield of anonymity and who would do that.
That’s the whole point of paying cash. If your vpn account gets associated, just abandon it and move on. There’s no record of ongoing payment for an investigator to trace back.
This is why I don’t like any people and none of their parties.
Years of uncompromised world class service. Then a person there has the audacity of having a political view (shocking!)
Now they suck and should be boycotted. This is how ingrate you look, we were lucky we even had mullvad in the first place.
You’re going to die alone and lonely
why, just because you say so?
far away from you
You make me sick you Hitlerite apologist.
Not even wikipedia says what fucking side is on and I’m somehow… whatever I’m going to leave you and your shitty opinions.
chill. I’m definitely taking your word for it /s. If everything I don’t agree with is fascism, well that makes it easy huh?
Yeah, we get it, you love Nazis.
Even bigger yikes.
lets harass them!!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800
Hi,
Mullvad has two owners, founders, and CEOs - Daniel Berntsson, and me, Fredrik Strömberg. All posts I’ve seen yesterday and today, including the newspaper articles, talk about Mullvad as if Daniel is the single owner, founder and CEO. It should be obvious that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad’s values or mission.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns you’re welcome to comment on this thread, or email our customer support.
See below for the response you’ll get from support:
Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. These are firmly held values of the founders of Mullvad.
Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don’t agree with. We protect the right of everyone to access views we don’t agree with.
We also live these values by being tolerant in our daily work. Everyone is welcome to collaborate with Mullvad if they share these narrow core values. As employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, lobbyists, campaign partners or whatever it might be. No matter what their other opinions are and no matter whether the founders or anyone else in Mullvad dislike them. The founders themselves fundamentally disagree on several important issues.
This is what allows us to advance our common causes. Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking.
The more people do this, the better a place the world will be.
It should be obvious that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad’s values or mission, in the same way that someone’s opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn’t.
That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it’s important to honor that. In that case, reach out to support.
scummy af with this deflection. as if anyone would want the money they paid for a service funneled to bad actors regardless of who is doing it…
The reply is fence sitting/pr, it is a fair assumption that the choices of one of the co-founders has put the company into a very difficult position. I’m not a fan of the wording, not sure I would have done a better job though. After reading it, I applied for my refund yesterday, and it was approved yesterday.
I hope Daniel Berntsson is somehow removed (or does the right thing and removes himself) from the company.
It is definitely shitty to hold Mullvad accountable for this, but money paid to Mullvad has been used to fund the political party via Daniel Berntsson.
Anyone with any vpn experience should already be well aware that it is a dodgy industry, with the majority of available ‘information’ being transparent marketing. I wouldn’t trust 95% of companies in the industry, I would like to see Mullvad come out of this the right way up.
if the company put out a fencesitting statement instead of bringing him consequences, at best they don’t care
That assumes there is anything they can do about his actions in his personal life.
A clause in his contract that applies significant penalties if he brings the company into disrepute sounds cool, but also problematic, and may not even be a possibility, let alone a reality.
I want him gone, it may not be that simple though.
regardless, paying for a service that pays for fascism is something that might put them in trouble if they don’t deal with it.
that is if people care. that has to be a consideration these days.
It has already attracted negative press, some of it valid, some of it due to deliberate manipulation and idiots (op as an example of both), the effect on their reputation will not be short lived, and this issue will continuously resurface online. They still need to deal with it though, and soon.
It has already cost them business/money due to refunds ($$$ ???), and a short/medium/long term reduction in new customers.
“That is if people care” Always the issue with humanity.
People tend to be polar online, rarely fair, or decent.
if this amounts to something remains to be seen
“shitty to hold Mullvad accountable for this “ No. It’s not. Hold them accountable. Co-founder must have known that Berntsson has fascist tendencies. That’s kinda hard to hide
What country do you live in? I hold you personally, and completely responsible for its actions, you know its issues and crimes.
Fuck off idiot.
enjoy your ai trash.
By all accounts, he seems to have been a fairly standard TESCREAL-adjacent high-decoupling libertarian until now, like a lot of tech founders. While some of these end up steelmanning fascism and coming to the conclusion that it’s pretty neat, it by no means follows.
Well, it’s not like the other founder approved his political donations. I think it’s a fair enough point to make, it is a private donation, and not a company donation.
a private donation with our money.
In a privately owned company, the wishes of the owners are the wishes of the company. Especially with political actions, treating them as completely separate is just putting blinders on.
Sure, but there are two owners. It’s possible to start a company with someone that has different views, or ones that diverge over time. You can’t really blame the other guy for his partner’s opinions.
So what should they do? Liquidate the company? Should the reasonable person leave the company he built? The guy the internet doesn’t like might still be ok to work with, and equally not want to leave. Should you get in trouble for your coworker’s opinions?
Yes
Don’t tolerate the intolerant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Berntsson hides his fascist tendencies behind a thin veneer of free speech.
Strömberg obviously knows his bedmate and tolerates his tendencies.
Fuck them both. Delete Mullvad (which I used until very recently)
Don’t rely on a totschlagargument to to save yourself from thinking about the complex consequences of your choices.
Even if you think Popper was right that doesn’t mean you can just draw a line down the middle of humanity dividing the intolerant-because-evil and intolerant-but-only-to-other-group.
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.
Here’s the fix for you: “Giving your money to Mullvad is like drinking at a Nazi bar. The bar’s great, but it’s full of Nazis”.
Sounds more l ike the owner of the bar is a nazi than the bar being filled with nazis
The owner is definitely a Nazi. The bar staff? A little more suspect. He picked them out after all.
Feel free to drink at the Nazi owned bar I guess. Be prepared for when they go full Nazi on you and all that information you probably wanted private.
Oh my god, shuuuut uppppp
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.
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.
We don’t actually know what mullvad is doing, or can do about this.
The other CEO’s response… I really would have liked it to be a much stronger statement against the issue. People should also understand the position that mullvad has been put in is complicated, it affects them more than it affects us, hopefully they come out of this the right way up, that might not even be possible, even if they do everything right.
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?
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.
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?
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
This is just one step, though. Money to Mullvad goes in part to the cofounder who is a racist piece of shit.
But to your question, I think the “dilution” question has a different answer for everyone. Have you seen “The Good Place”? Philosophy is the major theme and this is one of the major philosophical questions they deal with. Great show, recommended if it’s unfamiliar to you.
Without spoilers, The Good Place is a good show.
In your hypothetical, it would be similar to a person buying a rose from a flower shop for their mother, but the money they earned supported a company that funds another company that bombs children and the flower came from a retailer that orders flowers from a garden in another country that uses child/slave labor to harvest the flower.
At what point is the person who bought the birthday gift responsible for the bombs dropped and the enslaved children?
But, essentially, this is the same question posed when looking at a health insurance CEO. He didn’t kill 640,000 people each year directly. Nor did the employees directly. Nor did the hospital or doctors refusing treatment without payment. The illness or injury did. But the health insurance CEO did make the decision to deny coverage as much as possible and to pay as little as possible for procedures and medications that would have saved lives.
At what point was the CEO responsible for the 640,000 deaths each year due to lack of health insurance coverage?
The difference, I believe, lies in severity. The person buying the rose does not have a severe impact on the outcomes of the choices made by these companies. They have a very high likelihood of not even being aware and that may even be on purpose, as the PR for said companies would do their best to avoid consumers understanding this. Thus is your nurse ans bread scenario. The choice is minimally severe and the individual is likely unaware of the greater mechanisms involved, meaning they won’t be making a fully informed choice. Once informed, they likely could make a choice, and that could be the only bread they can afford or maybe they’ll switch to a local baker, etc.
The healthcare CEO almost certainly is aware of the impact of his decision and he is able to have a large impact on the direction of the company and on the massive amount of harm caused. He is fully informed and makes his choice anyway out of selfishness and greed.
The nurse and the rose gift buyer shouldn’t be held fully accountable. The CEO is, in my opinion, most certainly accountable.
In the end though, there’s no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism. Does that mean we should forfeit our survival and/or not attempt the best we can through the methods that we can control? (A lot of comments I’ve seen say you have no choice and it’s stupid to think about. Or better yet, even with extra knowledge, they say it’s “based” to “remove those invaders” and “need to support them more, it’s not like lefties support privacy and free speech.” Fuckin wild stuff from the r/SomeOrdinaryGmrs sub.)
Great video from philosofree on the ethics of vigilante counter-terrorism. YouTube took it down and now it looks like even Patreon did too.
I don’t think it’s as hard to draw a line as you are portraying it. The hypothetical nurse and bread factory is a non-issue, we’re talking fractions of the bottom line of any of the involved parties. This mulvad thing is the majority of the financial backing of a party by one high level person, who’s made his money from this organization.
I’m quite comfortable putting them under the same umbrella, and quite comfortable ignoring the hypothetical.
But think there might be a philosophical question here, but I kinda think this is begging for one a bit.
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.
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).
lol. As if fucking Kape should even be a part of the conversation. Evil scum.
It is a very dodgy industry, that is not restricted to kape, although they are definitely a major part of it.
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.
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.
From what I have read, there is nothing remotely ‘left’ about them, aside from people labelling them as left.
Duopolies generally have 1 party labelled as left, 1 as right, but they are both always right, and their aim is to keep the government/country right wing. Labelling 1 party as left offers the illusion of choice to zombie voters.
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.
Their key issues are white power and weapon manufacturing.
The other things are voter manipulation that would be unlikely to ever be delivered. Political systems of course vary be location, but the politicians just look slightly different.
“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.
He may have other income streams, but it would be dishonest to suggest that mullvad customer money did not end up in the pockets of an absurd political party. I do have to wonder how many of the people ramping up about this also boycott the plethora of evil corporations, as well as the evil countries/governments.
As I wrote above: the “good” companies might actually be just led by nazis who are better at hiding their personal beliefs and donations…
Guaranteed.
there are political parties here in Australia with names like:|
- refugees are welcome here
- muslim votes matter
- save the environment
- free palestine
- companions and pets party
who solely exist to funnel preferential votes to right wing/racist political parties.
Humans are often trash, by choice.
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.
You are correct, but what exactly is the company meant to do about this? What can they actually do?
I really would have liked a much stronger statement from the other CEO, but he is also in damage control and is responsible for the survival of the company, and continued employment of its staff.
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).
Well there’s one thing I do know: I sure as hell wouldn’t trust that VPN operator
because one of their ceo’s is right wing trash?
how far would you push that then, there are other things he is a part of, a gender, a race, a country, a species…
Those things are more or less static, being a Nazi is a choice
It is a choice, but being a nazi doesn’t automatically mean that the country you live in is a nazi country, or that the company you co-founded is a nazi company.
being a nazi doesn’t automatically mean that the country you live in is a nazi country
True
or that the company you co-founded is a nazi company.
False
Maybe not if you have a hundred co-founders…but if you have one co-founder…you probably just founded a nazi company ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Mullvad doesn’t have 1 founder/1 ceo
“one co-founder” no sense
“one co-founder” means there’s at least two founders. And if one of them is a nazi, they founded a nazi company.
Huh? That’s an extremely odd comparison. Citizens of a country are not inherently fascist just because their leader is, but if they hold the same ideology they can go fuck themselves.
I didn’t say anything about the other co founder, but let me put it this way… The company is owned by both of them. One of them made a half million donation. By proxy it makes the other person look bad. Its as they say, bad for business. My overall point is that I would not trust my privacy with this company as one half of the owners have access to the prod environment, your logs and clearly wants to harm others based on his political views.
I’m really not sure what you’re playing devils advocate for. Are you worried that people will assume you hold those views? Do you own stock in the company? Are you worried about restriction of speech? Genuinely I’d like to know.
I am someone who uses mullvad, but after looking into this, I requested and received a refund for the 4 months of future use I paid for a week, or so ago. I now have 3 weeks left of mullvad use, and no replacement.
Do you really expect people to fall for your bullshit? Is this your first day online, or is that just your target audience? Are you keeping up with the kardashians?
Be honest, or be elsewhere.
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.
I asked you a few legitimate questions and just as it always is, you lost the intellectual race.
Go fuck yourself, Nazi sympathizer.
You completely ignored the argument above. Or didn’t read. Are you ok? Did you reply to the correct comment?
But no replacement?
Here:
How does this effect Mullvad’s tech or privacy policies?
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.
Sure, the product is still trustworthy and that it does what it says on the tin, the issue is knowing that part of your money goes to funding an extreme right-wing party.
Exactly, thanks!
I didn’t trust mullvad to begin with, its not my provider of choice. Did it ever occur to you that some of us do look at the political ideology of the companies we support? I don’t know about all of them, but if presented with new information that they might be Nazis I would make a choice pretty quick.
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?
Hopefully that information would be much more honest than the post we are all replying to.
So you did research, found nothing, and are still siding with Nazis?
Funny how you could draw that conclusion from what I wrote.
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
They can force him out as CEO, that can do nothing about his co-ownership though.
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??
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.
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.
Mullvad
Reverse credit card charge
Yeah… About that…
You mailed in cash didn’t you
Kinda their best feature
In the past they let you keep CC on file for monthly payments but now they’re prepay only and they delete CC info after 40 days. I think I prepaid for like a year and half before I knew any of this. Mullvad’s obsession with user privacy is completely unparalleled in 2026.
Monero
Like people care 😅 look around, Meta and Tesla are doing great! Both companies are sooo much worse, nazi and earning money on child sex ads … people don’t care, most are to hypnotised by their mobile.
Your headline is misleading.
One of the founders (and co-ceo) of Mullvad made a substantial donation to an unhinged political party. Mullvad did not, and Mullvad claim to be against it.
This has been all over mastodon for days.
But I need to be angry against something and isolate myself in a corner on society where everything is evil but me!
It has been here on Lemmy too, several threads on the front page without the misleading title. OP either did that on purpose (them not replying here at all gives that more weight IMO) or they didn’t even try to see if it had been posted and didn’t read anything in the article and posted without caring if the title is ture or not. The post should be removed.
I meant lemmy, I have only just started using both with the aim of dropping reddit and bluesky, and apparently I am confused.
I agree the post should be removed.
Mullvad has not claimed to be against it. Mullvad has pretty much said “if you don’t like free speach, we’re sorry you feel that way”.
Their statement reads
It should be obvious that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad’s values or mission, in the same way that someone’s opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn’t.
They’re pretty clearly saying that they as a company have no part in this political support.
True. But they did not say that they are _against_ the donation.
The original comment should simply be reworded to “and Mullvad says it has nothing to do with the donation and wasn’t aware of it” or something like that. Remove “
claim to be against”.They don’t plainly say against it no, but they’re still clearly distancing themselves from it. It’s not as good as outright denouncing it, but much better than staying silent.
Absolutely. IDK why me or you are getting downvotes tho. Did they claim to be agai st as the original commenter said? No. Did they distance themselves and clearly separate themselves? Yes.
“It should be obvious that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad’s values or mission.”
It isn’t obvious though because it’s the fucking cofounder that’s doing it and they keep misrepresenting it as a speech issue. It isn’t some random employee, it’s the people who invented and make the decisions for the service, and it’s a massive amount of money as well
Nothing is obvious for multiple reasons, one of them is that people are deliberately trying to manipulate this to be ‘Mullvad is the nazi party’
The headline of the thread we are commenting on is pure trash.
I requested and received my refund, I hope many others are doing the same with the aim of pressuring his removal from the company
The headline isn’t trash, it’s accurate. If Mullvad didn’t exist, the majority of the party’s funding wouldn’t exist.
“Mullvad is apparently the main financier of a Swedish far-right party”
you are dodgy
You’re moving the goalposts. Claiming to be against it and saying they had nothing to do with it aren’t the same thing.
Their response quoted here was too subtle, but you know it is pr for a very serious issue for the company.
“not part of Mullvad’s values” ,perhaps we interpret this differently because we are different people. If something is not part of my values, I am against it, because I am value based, how I interact with society is completely defined by my values.
For all I know you are corn chip based, maybe even a corn chip cooked in palm oil, using child labour, purchased from amazon, and delivered by ubereats.
If they wanted you to think his actions were against their values, they would have said “against”. The fact that it’s a company owner and CEO, means that the company values and the owner’s values are the same, whether they publicly state it or not. That’s why they’ve made such a fence-sitting PR statement. Even when they’re trying to downplay the link between the company values and the owner’s values, they don’t commit because the owner’s values are the company’s values.
