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
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.
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.
I can’t keep track of all the assholes. Going to need an asshole tracker soon.
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.
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?
SOCKS
i would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)AirVPN is awesome, also port forwards are nice for p29p
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.
Windscribe have a good rep. Maybe
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.
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 would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)I’m using AirVPN since two years and I’m very happy with them.
How many degrees of separation do y’all deem acceptable and why? If Mullvad donated that money directly, that’s bad. If the owner donated that money, that’s also bad. What if the owner instead bought something from another company and the owner of the company donated the money? What if this second owner then bought something else from yet another company and the owner of that company donated the money? When can you stop saying “my money is used to fund this thing I don’t want”? Because money will spread so fast in the economy that inevitably, no matter what choices you make, your money will fund things you don’t like. For example, should the “true scotsman” vegan never buy anything because it is pretty much guaranteed that their money will end up in the pocket of someone who will spend it on meat? Again, I am not criticizing anyone, I am simply asking: where do you draw the line, why, and why not draw the line one step further than you currently are?
I think information is useful. I see no problem giving people the information and vehicles for making decisions… but as a society I do think we need to get to a place where we acknowledge that everyone has their own line and trust they are making the best decisions they can be, given the information they have.
I’ve asked the same question for situations where the court of public appeal has changed the donation decisions and yet people choose to castigate because they believe repreations to counteract their donations are due. I believe progress is progress and it should be rewarded, that is my line. Others will disagree and that’s fine.
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.
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
Quite a poignant quote.
IIRC it is not the CEO but a co-founder. The CEO condemned it. But it’s all the same, money flowing into Mullvad floes into a neo-nazi group.
That ideology sounds wild lol. Almost literal “national - socialism”?
The issue is rich people using undemocratic power to fund things like this. Which ironically sounds exactly like the “Transferiat” siphoning money and power from VPN users to funnel it into unwanted, fringe channels.
I was just thinking, the “transferiat” sound exactly like the wealthy ownership class
To be fair, much of this could be flak, deliberate distortion and slander by the neoliberal forces in Sweden. You can’t trust the mainstream media not to trash anything that isn’t neoliberal.
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.
This all sounds great.
Nationally the party has set out large-scale remigration, closing the Swedish borders to immigration, a stricter assimilation policy and ending taxes on energy and fuel as some of its key issues.
And I suspect a clear majority of Europeans are also against immigration or reducing how many refugees we take in thanks to fucking imperialist wars by the elite. There is nothing “far right” about this. I’m also for sending refugees back (EDIT: After it’s safe to send them back!) and strictly limiting immigration in my country. The only real issue is that “remigration” is apparently code word for ethnic cleansing.
The larger issue is that this ideology sounds pretty half baked and too simple for the complexity of the current state of things.
The only real issue is that “remigration” is apparently code word for ethnic cleansing.
Yeah, just the small issue of genocide, but other than that, the rest of their policies are only moderate white supremacist ones.
Calling everything genocide robs the word of all meaning.
Ethnic cleansing is genocide. Genocide is a term that has an actual meaning, it’s not just “bad things”. Please educate yourself before correcting people on the term.
Ethnic cleansing can mean mass deportation, like in the US right now. You really think that genocide? Would deporting the 1.1 million Ukrainian refugees in Germany back to Ukraine be genocide?
Ethnic cleansing sounds vile enough. No need to call it genocide, which it isn’t.
Erm…“remigration” is the dogwhistle for concentration camps, though? I mean, you do you, but as far as classifying something as “far right”…talking about remigration easily tops that list ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From what I read remigration is ethnic cleansing by mass deportation. I hadn’t even heard of the term before. I guess detention (or concentration?) camps are then inevitable too, we’re seeing remigration right now in the US. Everyone just watches and lets it happen.
It should go without saying that I’m sarcastic and absolutely against such inhuman policies and that it’s an entirely different thing from being against immigration and unlimited refugees in Europe. Different to the USA which is still mostly empty and an immigration country.
Sweden is now 8.1% Muslim. Even if most are moderate or non-practicing, that’s well past a limit where you can expect “assimilation”. Whatever that is supposed to mean, are we the Borg?
Does your own country and it’s culture mean anything? Are you allowed to have and preserve a cultural identity? Does ideal diversity and internationalism mean homogenity globally? I don’t think so.
So yeah, remigration is a far right dogwhistle, but calling anyone in favor of sensible limits on immigration/refugees a racist or xenophobe is a neoliberal talking point.
Anyway, climate change could create something like a billion refugees until the end of the century. That would make ideology pretty much irrelevant.
I guess detention (or concentration?) camps are then inevitable
Yes, those are inevitable. Even the death camps within, it’s not about detention. Like, the “real nazis” themselves wanted to “remigrate” jews to Madagascar. That was their original plan to get rid of them
Didn’t work, so they needed to genocide. And that shit will happen again while we all watch and debate whether “remigration” is a far-right thing and whether donating to a literal nazi party makes you a nazi ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Didn’t the swiss banks enrich themselves with Nazi gold?
Sure, it was acceptable in the 1930s. But what does that have to do with what I wrote?
It’s pretty easy in my opinion. We see, that right wing shit spreads around the world.
My consequences will be: Any company supporting this shit (even indirectly) will not be paid with my money in the future.
Too bad my subscription for a year has been paid a few weeks ago…
They’ve offered refunds for those who are upset about the owner’s actions. Not condoning anything, but maybe worth getting your money back.
my refund was accepted the same day I requested it, without issue, or argument.
Yeah, I will take a look into that. Thanks!
With this the only European browser is Vivaldi, by its own structure as a cooperative, owned by the employees, quite far from the right. The only thing they sponsor is a local football club in Iceland.
I hope that KDE would improve one day its independent Konqueror browser (KHTML/ Qt engine, ancestor of WebKit and Blink, Linux only), to have some more alternatives in the EU. It works as browser AND file manager, but due to a good improvement very slow nowadays.
Mullvad browser is still mostly maintained by the Tor project and doesn’t phone home, still one of the best choices for a no fingerprint browser even if you use a different vpn for it. Biggest downside imo is it’s not on Android. It’s entirely FOSS and again, no phoning home on an action, so it doesn’t matter what the creator thinks.
My personal use case for tracking is different from others, I mostly want to avoid surveillance capitalism. It’s genuinely a problem for my PTSD, if I talk about my PTSD on a corporate app I’ll get spammed with triggering shit 24/7 because they like to spam you with “solutions” and self help and news for crimes against women like it’s my special interest. Obviously I would love to avoid state surveillance but you’re not getting that from any vpn server domiciled in the west, it’d have to be in a geopolitical enemy of the west e.g. Russia or China or Serbia and most people would not like the latency that involves.
FOSS nowadays is less and less a guarantee, since Google, M$, Amazon and Fakebook are one of the biggest contributers of FOSS (naturally all with their corresponding tracking APIs). Currently the company ethics, transparency and trust are a very important. At least for me, it’s not acceptable when a service is used to sponsor right wing or nazi parties. It’s not direct Mullvad, but their CEO paid by this product. Faschism is advancing in a creepy manner and at least I’m not willing to support it in any way.
PD. TOR was developed by the US army and secret services and they still owned the onion server. The future and free internet will not be the Onion, but I2P and decentralized networks, out of the reach from big brother corps.
The person talking about bufferbloat is making a good point and if your router can run even something like freshtomato then you can use cake aqm and make life better.
If you cut out buffer bloat it’s easy to forget that everything is only slightly slower, it’s the inconsistency in the latency that makes you really notice. With a base of ~130ms when it doubles for those first couple of packets of every page load you really feel it, as long as it’s smooth, your brain can adjust.
I have it for my whole house and no one notices/complains.
https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat https://github.com/lynxthecat/CAKE-autorate
That said, it’s kind of niche then more niche to run it on the VPN too, I wish it were more accessible.
Title is incorrect, it’s not Mullvad donating the money but one of the owners.
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.
Where does he get the money he donates?
He gets his money from multiple sources apparently, mullvad obviously being one of those sources.
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.
They even released a statement regarding this.
This post is blatant disinformation.
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.
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.
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.
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).
I would like to see ‘mullvad’ without the issue, if that means a new company, then yes I am all for it. Much better if the problem is removed, or removes itself from the company. Strangely enough I am not an expert on mullvads contracts, or Swedish corporate laws, so I am not going to assume specifics. There are likely complications to all outcomes.
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.
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?
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 and knowledge of/if a decision is being made. 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 in your nurse and 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, if at all. 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Feel free to drink at the Nazi owned bar.
The owner is definitely a Nazi. The bar staff? A little more suspect. He picked them out after all.
Well there’s one thing I do know: I sure as hell wouldn’t trust that VPN operator
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.
So you did research, found nothing, and are still siding with Nazis?
Funny how you could draw that conclusion from what I wrote.
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.
Edit: crazy that this got downvoted - pretty easy to spot Nazi sympathizers lol
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.
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.
You completely ignored the argument above. Or didn’t read. Are you ok? Did you reply to the correct comment?
But no replacement?
Here:
I asked you a few legitimate questions and just as it always is, you lost the intellectual race.
Go fuck yourself, Nazi sympathizer.
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.
“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.
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??
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.
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.
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.
Clickbait title. It’s one of the coowners who has donated his personal funds to this party. The other owner and other members of the company disapprove of the decision.
Where does he get the money he donates?
From his job? Working for an employer who cannot tell him how to spend his own money.
Who does he work “for”? He’s a co-owner/founder according to most of the comments in her
I sympathize, but. The paradox of tolerance is at play here. We cannot tolerate the intolerant actions from this CEO.
If the rest of the company wants to project an open/free and honest stance. They must root out and remove all intolerance.
Until then, I will not use this company.
That is why I chose the refund route, hopefully enough people do that and it applies pressure that = change (him leaving the company).
So is the nazi coowner getting ousted soon?
Right now we’re at “Mullvad is part nazi, nazi adjacent, nazi lite, moderately fascist, feudalism-curious” stage.
Hopefully, but it may have to be his own choice, Mullvad might have no way of removing him.
He owns half the company so I’m not sure if he can be ousted.
The company can be spun out into two.
Let the spun out Nazivad get their own customers separately, if they can.
Otherwise the whole company is now tainted.
A dinner table with one Nazi amongst five friends just makes a table of five Nazi.
True but with enough backlash, he might be convinced to leave.
I think the saying goes the other way around. Sit at a table with 5 Nazis, now there’s 6 Nazis. A table with 1 Nazi is just an outlier and an embarrassment. A laughing stock.
Hopefully he leaves, not sure if that is possible/likely though
Right now we are at some people are genuine, some people are in denial, some people are apathetic, some people are clearly very right wing, and some people are deliberately posting clickbait and manipulative rubbish.
Guess where part of your money is going to…
If you buy most products, chances are some portion of it is going to a Nazi sympathizer.
Once you get confirmation of this you have a choice. Free market and all that
That still does not equal to “mullvad finances a political party.”
72% of the party’s funding…also more than 27x their entire previous years funding…what would constitute financing the party?
It’s a founder who owns 50% of the company…he holds majority sway. He directs the company. Elon only owns 15% of Tesla for reference.
According to data collected by DonationWatch, 2025 was the most lucrative year in the party’s history, netting a total of 5.58 million SEK. For comparison, the party received just 202,000 SEK in total donations throughout 2024.
The key differences are (1) whose money it is, (2) whose name/role is being used, (3) how the donation is legally treated, and (4) how it’s perceived and disclosed.
1) Whose money is used (entity vs individual)
- Company donation: Money comes from the business’s funds. The donor is typically the company/organization (a legal entity).
- Personal donation by the owner/executive: Money comes from the individual’s personal funds. The donor is the person (you/owner) as an individual.
2) Who is the legal “donor” and how it’s reported
- Company donation: Usually reported under the company’s name and governed by rules for political giving by organizations (often with tighter restrictions for corporate entities depending on jurisdiction and whether the company is considered a “corporation,” “business entity,” or “nonprofit/charity,” etc.).
- Personal donation: Reported under the individual’s name and governed by rules for individuals’ giving (often different limits and procedural requirements).
3) Limits and eligibility can differ
In many places, rules differ because:
- Some jurisdictions prohibit or restrict political contributions from corporations (or only allow certain types like PACs/treasuries with specific structures).
- Individuals may be subject to different caps and allowances. So even if the “same person” is effectively involved, the legal analysis often depends on whether the donor is the entity or the individual.
4) Indirect control and “straw donor” risk
If an owner routes company money through a person, it can trigger enforcement concerns:
- Proper personal donation: clearly uses personal funds with no reimbursement, no accounting backflow, and no use of company resources to fund it.
- Improper arrangement: if the company pays, later reimburses, “gifts” funds, provides unusual benefits, or otherwise makes it economically equivalent to a company contribution, regulators may treat it as effectively a corporate contribution. (That’s why compliance usually focuses heavily on source of funds and documentation.)
5) Corporate governance and ethics/perception
Even where allowed, the optics can differ:
- Company donation: may be viewed as the company’s stance, affecting employees, customers, and shareholders.
- Owner personal donation: is more clearly the individual’s political view, though people may still infer alignment with the company—especially if the owner is highly visible.
6) Practical compliance and internal controls
- Company donation: typically requires board/authorized-officer approval, corporate bookkeeping, and ensuring the donation is permitted for that type of entity.
- Personal donation: still needs clean records showing it’s personal money, and (in some systems) proper disclosure so it can’t be misconstrued as corporate-funded.
Did you really asked a LLM to write an argument for you?
I saw it fitting the argument. It’s telling that the LLM understands the difference and that person doesn’t.
Yeah because is that how LLM works they “understands” things…
Great way to compromise your side of the argument.
You were arguing with someone who was deliberately full of shit, and you countered with ai… daft
Owner personal donation: is more clearly the individual’s political view, though people may still infer alignment with the company—especially if the owner is highly visible.
Dumbass, you conceded the argument because you didn’t use your own brain to make it.
Haha. You saw a tiny straw that can somewhat be interpreted to you liking and ignored everything else.
God, what are you, a shill? You really do have no brain.
Just because you attempt to call something a strawman and downplay its importance doesn’t make it true. We live in objective reality you rightwing numbnut.
The crux of this entire argument is that the owner’s political ideology and decisions can be interpreted as synonymous with the company, given his control and that a significant portion of Mullvad’s profit will go into his pocket.
Here, let me translate that for you:
That’s not a strawman, it’s the main throughline of the entire argument.
