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
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.
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.
They refunded me the same day I requested the refund without issue, their refund offer is genuine.
Although this was a private donation and not Mullvad as a company, it’s still bad. I’ve been a Mullvad user for a few years now and I dislike the idea that some of the money I’ve paid to them, no matter how little overall, might have been used to support a political party that pushes for “remigration”.
I may have very indirectly helped finance a fascist party, and I’m not okay with that. I’d like Mullvad to take steps to ensure that this can’t happen again. Until then, I can’t be sure where my money will end up.
You can really tell how cut-throat and efficient the free market is when founders just have millions spare knocking around to play at Blackshirts.
The company Mullvad do not support nor like Daniel Berntsson’s donation which is a personal donation from Daniel himself.
Mullvad as a company do not support far-right.
https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.html
So long as Daniel is paid from Mullvad, Mullvad financially supports the far right by proxy.
That is true, but since the other employeers at Mullvad don’t like Daniel’s donation, they don’t take his side. Of course it’s very shameful that he did that donation, and I truly hope he gets fired.
But one thing must be clear: facts should be just that: facts! Daniel took his own money and personally donated it to that shitty party - not Mullvad!
I use sometimes only an Proxy to skip country restrictions, I don’t use a VPN. If I need an VPN, I would probably use the SPN from the Portmaster which I use anyway.
Consumers are nothing but fish in a barrel these days
Idc
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.
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.
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.
Be CEO of privacy company
Donate $500k to a right wing party publicly
I can’t keep track of all the assholes. Going to need an asshole tracker soon.
That would be a fun website. Asshole tracker for Companies & Politicians and others?
Could do an Assholes Wiki and make it community contributions lol
Title is incorrect, it’s not Mullvad donating the money but one of the owners.
They even released a statement regarding this.
I wonder if people will do this for my business. “It’s not the business! It’s the owner!” (The owner is the business…) I could get away with a ton of shit.
How many owners does your business have?
Mullvad has more than one.
Where does he get the money he donates?
He gets his money from multiple sources apparently, mullvad obviously being one of those sources.
This is true, but it a co-founder with 50% ownership. Musk has like a 15% ownership in Tesla, yet they are the modern day Nazi car. Surely if half the ownership of a company supports fascists that kind of makes it a racist company.
This post is blatant disinformation.
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.
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My phone company is evil, sure. And individual consumer choice has limited utility in a world where all the phone companies are evil, which is why consumers should get organized.
But if I find out that my evil phone company is the primary financier of my or another country’s most prominent Nazi party that’s advocating for Nazi policies, I’m switching to the other evil phone company. Not a difficult decision?
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Try reading my comment again.
Some of us try to make conscientious choices though, we do not assume that every dollar that flows through our hands doesn’t have blood on it, but we make choices based on the information we find.
Your ‘argument’ while accurate, is also encouraging apathy.
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In reality nothing
I was refunded, I was not apathetic, I make conscientious choices based on the information I am able to obtain.
‘If in doubt, find out, or go without’
I’m never going to assume I know everything, or that everything is static, but I approach corporations, governments, social media, humanity, cynically… for good reason.
Yet you participate in society. Curious.
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Yet you’re still participating in this thread. Curious.
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
