Swedish VPN vendor Mullvad is facing a backlash from some customers after co-founder Daniel Berntsson personally donated SEK 5 million (£385,000, $519,000) to the controversial populist Örebropartiet, which is running in Sweden’s national elections for the first time.
Berntsson has this week published a blog post explaining the donation, alongside posts titled “Immigration,” “Political individualism,” and “Moral individualism.” Before that, he had not posted since 2019.
The flurry of posts follows weeks of customer criticism over the donation – for example, Finnish blog Moonwriting’s post “I’m done with Mullvad.” Another blog, Unutterable, is more direct: “Mullvad funding the far-right and the problem with tech company ownership.” The Hacker News discussion thread about the donations has reached a remarkable 1,784 comments so far.
Mullvad was co-founded and is still jointly owned and run by two CEOs, Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg. Its name, as reflected in the company’s logo, is Swedish for “mole.” It also offers the Mullvad Browser, a privacy-enhanced fork of Firefox ESR co-developed with the Tor Project. Swedish socialist newspaper Flamman (“The Flame”) revealed the donation in its story “High-profile techie gives millions to the Örebro Party.”
In a post on X, the company said it was devoted to freedom of speech and tolerance, saying: “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.”
“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.”
The part being unsaid here is “that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH Mullvad’s values or mission” (pardon the double negative)
That’s what I have issue with. They’re saying Daniel’s own personal purpose/mission (the donation being an expression of that) is compatible with their mission, or at minimum does not conflict.
What does “freedom of speech” have to do with expression of Mullvad employees? Mullvad isn’t a government. Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences. If Daniel’s own personal mission/purpose is incompatible with Mullvad’s, severing their relationship with him would be appropriate and not a violation of his freedom of speech. Of course, this goes back to, it’s not incompatible.
The “tolerance” bit, Daniel’s own personal mission/purpose as expressed by his donation is inherently inhumanely intolerant. Again, Mullvad is indirectly stating that intolerance is not incompatible with their mission/purpose, which makes the “tolerance” bit a contradiction. They might as well have people working for them that believe you have zero right to privacy.
fwiw - Windscribe (based in Canada) has been working well for me, and they are fully open source - https://windscribe.com/
Any recommendations that work well with Linux? I’m a beginner, and it was challenging enough to get Mullvad going on my immutable system. So any easy good transitions would be helpful.
Airvpn is great
I have prepaid Mullvad so will use that until it expires. Then they never get my money again.
I’m seriously worried about what’s going on around this.
There is quite the push here for people to move to VPNs under the legals jurisdiction of surveillance heavy states, not just the US and UK but also places like Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands which are British Overseas Territories with the same laws as Britain except were they passed specific local legislation that overrides British Law.
We’re talking about places with Information Courts which issue secret mass surveillance orders to companies based in or operating there and it doesn’t mater if that VPN is no logs because for all you know they’ve been forced to install realtime surveillance equipment/software and they can’t even tell you because BY THE LAW OF WERE THEY OPERATE if they did so they would end up in jail.
I would expect that the kind of people who would leave Mullvad because one of it’s owners is a far-right nutter are also the kind of people who don’t want everything they do and say tracked by the likes of the US or UK.
Further, the push is pervasive. For example https://vpn.techlore.tech/ is supposed to help you choose a good VPN, only if you look at those VPNs based in British Overseas Territories (Gibraltar, BVI) they’re listed as “Not 14-eyes” which that’s bullshit - I was actually curious and went and look at how Legislation works in Gibraltar and, as I wrote above, they have the same as in Britain except were they wrote their own legislation that overrides British legislation, which means that (unless somebody can point me out the legislation in Gibraltar that overrides it), the very same legislation that support the mass surveillance activities in Britain as a member of not only the “14-eyes” international surveillance agreements but the actual “5-eyes” one, applies to Gibraltar and hence to the likes of IVPN.
Frankly, looking for a replacement for Mullvad whilst having some awareness of the mass surveillance shit in supposedly democratic nations is scary as fuck, since most VPNs, for all their (possibly theatrical) “No logs” and whatnot, are actually in places with Information Courts which can issue secret court orders forcing them to install mass surveillance equipment.
Absolutely, if all you care about is avoiding lawyer letters because of pirating stuff, any “No Logs” VPN will probably do, but if you’re worried about the rise of the Far-Right then it makes sense that you’re not into there being a real risk that all you’re doing over your supposedly “No logs” VPN is in fact being logged directly into NSA or GCHQ systems (in the kind of country whose governments think being a leftwinger is “extremism” or even “terrorism”),
Örebro party advocates for “remigration” which is an alt right term for mass deportation or ethnic cleansing. The article is a bit obtuse on this. Basically this means crimes against humanity because it would mean detention centers or concentration camps and insane cruelty. Unfortunately this needs to become the end of Mullvad.
None of this is really surprising though, backlash is to be expected. Most people in most countries are against mass immigration, which does not make one a fascist. Sweden is now 8.1% Muslim which is a lot to ask of people. Since 1990 it rose from <1% and still seems to be rising. Most are not actually practicing Islam though, only like 25% or so according to the numbers on wikipedia. Which also has been my anecdotal experience in my country.
The issue is that the large parties do not budge on the neoliberal idea of immigration, to fuel economic growth and depressing wages. So only extremists or fringe parties remain to be voted on. Some people simply feel very strongly about “this is our land”. And in most countries this is completely different than the mostly empty / very low population density USA which is traditionally an immigration country. It is not just a question of ideology. People have a right to feel less than holy thoughts about preserving their homeland. My point is that ignoring these feelings is irresponsible politics. Especially in times of looming economic decline and coming mass refugees from climate change.
Of course, Örebro is not acceptable because it advocates fascist policies and should be outlawed and all supporters shunned.
I agree that the feeling should be addressed but I don’t think immigration should be treated at all like the watering down of the political identity. Immigrants come to other countries, in part, to seek a better life. They become just as nationalist as anyone if given a country who cares for them and is worthy of being prideful about.
In Germany, the CDU and Merz work to strip Germans of their culture when they attack public healthcare or enforce working on Sundays. They would and will reduce vacation time, make trains worse, and deregulate the things that make Germany Germany the longer they’re in power. Culture is something that is generated when the common person is wealthy and influential to their community, not just the millionaires. Especially not the millionaires like Merz who are selling our home and our quality of life nickle by nickel.
It seems like mullvad always did the right thing, and stood for privacy. Very strange move by them
The move wasn’t done by Mullvad, but by the guy personally.
The Proton CEO or found is I think also a libertarian or something. Libertarians are stupid, but they do actually believe in something.
I agree on the point of not ignoring these feelings. It’s a tough question, how to change the culture to be more welcoming to immigration in the time of looming climate refugee crises. Just wanted to point out that Sweden has a lower population density (26 ppl/km2) than the US (38 ppl/km2). Density is probably not the issue, although how all that land is put to use might be one of them.
how to change the culture to be more welcoming to immigration in the time of looming climate refugee crises
There are some estimates for 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050 globally. No idea how accurate that is. But I do not believe there is any possibility of people somehow being convinced of accepting anything close to that. Even if wealth inequality and looming economic hardship wouldn’t undermine that goal.
PS: And yeah good point about population density in Sweden. I’m not sure how much habitable land there actually is though. I don’t think it really matters though.
I think you articulated greatly something that’s been around my mind for a while.
I’ve been a while thinking how migration policies should be revised in the EU, attending to human rights and seeking the best for everyone. Personally I think the route to take is improve the countries of origin, do whatever we can so people doesn’t even feel the need to leave all their friends and family behind for economic reasons.
But as the EU is not addressing this because corporations profit from mass inmigration, the alt-right way of thinking about inmigration (which is basically genocide) is rising.
We could work on improving technology for building high density housing, producing food and clean water with little space and energy and then exporting that into desperate areas. We could massively uplift the quality of life all around the globe while spending much elss energy and resources. With automation and AI this could be even easier. But practically this won’t happen. We can’t even stop the US imperialist wars and conflicts that are producing so many refugees.
What VPN do lemmy users recommend? Mullvad founder is funding right wing politics. Proton ceo is praising Trump. PIA has deep ties to Israeli intelligence.
NYM seems promising, they are trying to build a decentralized VPN with multiple nodes, same as TOR but faster, so no one has full data who talks to who and what type of traffic.
However it’s only been around for a year, so we still don’t have enough data if their approach works or not compared to traditional VPNs.
iVPN is a good one, it has been around for 15 years now, and is also privacy and FOSS focused like Mullvad.
However they lack some security features that Mullvad has: DEITA, diskless servers etc.
Ultimately I would say go with:
-
NYM if you want to gamble (high risk high reward),
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Mullvad for good security, but yeah your money goes to a far-right party in Sweden,
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iVPN: worse security than Mullvad, but more trustworthy than NYM, and your money doesn’t fund right-wing populism
-
I like Proton, but that seems to be controversial these days.
Proton as a product is mostly fine in my opinion, I believe Andy’s opinions and the response from the organization is what people don’t like.
Im still happy with my proton vpn. I mainly use the CLI on Linux and it works well and is fast. Might be an inpopular advice on Lemmy / Fediverse, but im still happy with Proton
Try tunnel bear perhaps?
Maybe AirVPN is an option? By their own words it was started by activists to imrpove anonymity and net neutrality. It is quite a bit less ‘sleek’ than proton or mullvad, but I have found it to work fine (you might have to try several servers before you find one that works for you if you want to get around geoblocking, as some of their IPs appear to have been blocked here and there).
Leaving this recommendation to see if someone replies with news on how they suck as well, because I have not really checked if there were any controversies surrounding them
I’m sure they suck too, but at least they allow heavy port forwarding?
How do they suck? Sounds flimsy to be sure about something without providing evidence or really any arguments.
I’m assuming they suck because they are a VPN company, see this thread for more info. I said that tongue in cheek though, I use air and I’m happy
Is Windscribe in bed with any lizard men?
IVPN
IVPN is based in Gibraltar, which is a British Overseas Territory and whose laws are the same as Britain except were Gribraltar passed their own laws to override it.
Unless proven otherwise (by finding actual laws passed in Gibraltar to block it) treat any VPN based in Gibraltar as being subjected to the same kind of secret mass surveillance orders from Information Courts as those based in Britain.
Just great, there are barely any good alternatives to mullvad
That’s exactly what concerns me.
I would love to find a No Logs VPN with anonymous payments outside the legal jurisdiction of at least the US, UK and EU.
I mean, even the fucking Nederland which used to be pretty pro-personal rights is now a member of the 14-eyes.
Jurisdiction doesn’t matter, it’s an myth spread by Protonmail marketers so everyone thinks their privacy is ensured by some strict Swiss privacy laws.
Although privacy laws are pretty mild everywhere. Even GDPR is quite outdated and is barely enforced.
Proton, Tuta and others do it because “Swiss privacy” or “EU-based” brand is much more recognizable and easier to sell people on, compared to “we do metadata obfuscation” or “here is our 50 page long security audit”.
However, what actually matters more is security architecture. Signal is US based, but they thought through how to retain as little data on users as possible, so when FBI asked them for info, Signal could only give them date of account registration, user ID, and last login.
TLDR ignore country of registration and HQ location, evaluate on the merits
You clearly have never owned a business if you think the very legal system which makes that company a legal entity with all the rights it entails (i.e. they’re registered there) can’t force them to do whatever the local laws say they have to do.
They can literally strike that company down of the Company Register and seize its assets because a company did not obey a lawful court order there (such as one from an Information Court).
The rest of your post is even more ignorant bollocks. This is not Privacy Legislation, this is Surveillance Legislation: the stuff that enables and backs the giant civil society surveillance systems revealed by Snowden, not the stuff that makes it a bit harder for Google to know what kinds of Porn you watch.
I don’t know about Proton. I don’t judge people by what they say, but by what they do. Mullvad is putting its money where it’s mouth is. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of people who use Mullvad also use Brave.
The whole “Proton CEO loves Trump” is just another Reddit overreaction as far as I know.
He applauded Trump for an appointment he made to crack down on Big Tech. Yes, it’s very doubtful any actual crackdown would ever happen, but I also don’t see how it makes Yen a MAGA supporter.
It just seems like Yen doesn’t speak English that well, I could be wrong though
He also kept digging when the backlash hit. It wasn’t a great look, and the initial take was, at best, deeply naive.
That said, I’m actually considering switching to Proton over this. I think his statements are nowhere as bad as this Mullvad donation and I’m in the slow process of de-Googling and Proton’s other offerings would be a huge step towards that. It probably isn’t great to have email and calender and passwords and cloud storage and VPN all through one company, but it’s better than two with one being Google.
Considering the far-right push to obliterate privacy, current and historically, it’s a really poor look for a company with a privacy product.
It’s rumoured that Australia will look to banning VPNs next for “protecting the children” after recently mandating proof of age laws to a bunch of services like social media and pornography.
Lets not deflect the blame away from the political forces which have been subverting Democracy for decades.
Go look at the Chat Control vote in the EU Parliament: it wasn’t the Far-Right that voted for that shit (well, at least not in my country), it was the big “moderate” “center” parties that voted for it whilst the rest voted against it.
The push for authoritarianism is coming from the well-entrenched, big, mainstream, neoliberal parties, the very people who believed the Power of Money should not have to obey the Power of the Democratically Elected State (using slogans like “Do not interfere in the Free Market” to justify having Money as as the top Power).
(Notice how in the US the Democrats are and have been for decades just as much into widespread civil society surveillance and zero privacy as the Republicans)
Mainstream, Neoliberal parties are the people who have shifted Democracy in most of the West towards Oligarchy, with billionaires and even trillionaires holding immense real power.
In most of the West the return of Fascists to politics is still pretty recent and as they’re not the ones entrenched in power, it’s not actually in their interests for widespread civil society surveillance to be in place since such mechanisms are meant to detect and stop challenges to those in power, not to put fringe movements in power.
Since there are always people who, purposely or not, misrepresent what’s going on here and I’ve hashed it out in other threads I’ll paste it here as well as some links to share alternatives. Like, how do I see upvotes on a comment saying it’s a marxist far left party? The National Socialists also promised homes and dental and everything good for the Aryan race once they ethnically cleansed the rest. They certainly weren’t any kind of left wing.
Sorry for the wall of text, copying and pasting from some of my other comments, I’ll bold the main points to create the throughline:
What, by definition, constitutes fascism?
often Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
At the core of fascism is loyalty to tribe, ethnic identity, religion, tradition, or, in a word, nation. —Jason Stanley
Just to make sure we’re not looking at a singular definition, let’s look at Wikipedia too
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement that rose to prominence in early-20th-century Europe.[1][2][3] Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.[3][4] Opposed to communism, democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and socialism,[5][6] fascism is at the far-right of the traditional left–right spectrum.[1][6][7]
And now, let’s look at what the Örebro party’s own stated platform, which received 72% of its funding from the Mullvad founder, which also amounted to 27 times their total funding in 2024, and has directly led to them stating that with this funding they can field candidates whereby they couldn’t previously:
Some of its key issues include strong secularism, a 30-hour workweek with retained pay, lowered wages for politicians, ending taxes on energy and fuel, ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art, large-scale remigration, expanded social housing, a stricter assimilation policy, and free dental care.[3][4]
https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut
Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden. “I’m prepared to cross corpses,” he said.
One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to “Sweden is the country of Swedes”.
In a section of Yoshi’s Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to “go over corpses” to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. “It’s not going to be pretty to send these people home,” he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.
He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There’s a difference. It’s a qualitative difference," Allard said
And what’s remigration?
Remigration is a far-right concept referring to the ethnic cleansing[1] via mass deportation of non-white minority populations, especially immigrants and sometimes including native-born citizens, to their place of racial ancestry.[2][3]
So fascism is about racial and national purity and hierarchy, as we defined, and the Orebro party supports remigration, which is a concept of forcing immigrants out of countries to preserve the purity of “culture” and the race of the nation.
“Sweden is for the Swedes”
“Israel is for Israelis”
“America is for Americans”
“Germany is for the Germans”
For those looking for other vpn options:
https://vpn.techlore.tech/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ijfqfLrJWLUVBfJZ_YalVpstWsjw-JGzkvMd6u2jqEk/htmlview#gid=231869418
IDK how they try to reach to electors, but “second generation immigrants” is absolutely far-right bs.
Fascism requires support for an authoritarian dictatorship, among other stances. It is not purely “about racial and national purity and hierarchy”. That’s ethno-nationalism. Yes, fascists are ethno-nationalists, but not every ethno-nationalist is a fascist.
And how do you enforce ethnic cleansing? Cause I hate to tell you, but it’s not democratically. Authoritarians simply use democratic methods to shroud legitimacy while ballot spoiling, gerrymandering, or any number of countless methods to undermine said democracy.
If you can’t understand that tearing up citizenship, thereby removing the ability for constituents to vote, is inherently authoritarian, I can’t help you.
In a democracy you just require a (super)majority for everything necessary to be changed and done to achieve anything.
It is of course easier in a dictatorship to achieve ethnic cleansing, but doesn’t require one. Look at Turkey and how they treat the Kurds. Not saying they are the best example of a democracy, but it isn’t a dictatorship by definition.
Turkey is actually a great example for my point, not yours. Erdogan has used nominally democratic supermajority mechanisms to strip Kurdish politicians of immunity, remove elected Kurdish mayors, imprison journalists covering Kurdish issues, and consolidate executive power to the point where the democratic form is a shell. If that’s your model of ethnic cleansing without dictatorship, it’s nothing but democracy in name.
The supermajority argument also has a structural flaw. It assumes the minority being cleansed retains voting power throughout the process. But the entire mechanism of the policy is to remove them before they can vote against it. Strip citizenship, remove from voter rolls, criminalize political organizing. A supermajority that votes to disenfranchise a minority and then prevents them voting on the disenfranchisement isn’t a functioning democracy but is already on the fall to authoritarianism.
And you don’t even need a majority to capture the apparatus. The Nazis never won a majority. Neither did Trump in 2016 or 2024 measured against eligible voters. Around 30% of actual eligible voters in both cases was sufficient to claim power through a combination of voter suppression, institutional manipulation, minority rule mechanisms like the electoral college, and strategic exploitation of democratic procedural norms that weren’t designed to survive bad faith actors. The democratic form provided legitimacy cover while it was dismantled from within.
Ethnic cleansing doesn’t require a dictatorship as a precondition. Nor do the destruction of institutions, nor does the use of religious idolatry to provide a pretense of legitimacy for war, death, and destruction. They produce one as an outcome. Fascism is an ideological process, not a label applied once a checklist is met.
I can see where you’re coming from, as I mentioned, Turkey isn’t the best example of a democracy, but even now Erdogan can still get removed by a majority of the population, which is not the case in a dictatorship. A dictator can only be removed by the military.
I disagree with the last sentence, the definition of fascism is pretty clear, it is an ideology with certain beliefs and opinions. Not a process, not a form of government, but a set of ideas. If the set of ideas is not complete, it is not that ideology. I already gave you the name of the ideology you were describing.
It is like describing something socialist as stalinist. Like yeah, stalinists are socialists but not every socialist is a stalinist.
You don’t need a simple majority when you can have a few judges rewrite the interpretation of the existing laws
So if I use Mullvad, some of that is funding far-right politics?
Unfortunately yes
Yes
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Cool, which ones?
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US
big left wing politiciansAnd who might that be?
They are a troll or a fascist, so any response is going to involve mental illness.
Damn, I was hoping to find a VPN donating to left wing politicians cause that would be dope.
- a troll
- a fascist
- involve mental illness
Porque no los tres?
what an incredibly low effort troll. Mamdani might be the only center-left politician in the US. There are no far-left politicians in the US empire.
Bernie?
Well it doesn’t start with FTX because they didn’t offer a VPN service. Can you name just one then please?
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Yeah it’s weird how these generalizations fall apart when you try to find a single example of a far-left VPN provider but all you can come up with is a years-defunct criminal crypto hedge fund whose “far-left funding” was donating to a middle-right democrat’s election fund.
You named a cryptocurrency company, not a VPN company.
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I’ve heard that one as well from graphene devs on mastodon and I agree that this is not you typical right wing populist. Don’t know if calling him left wing is any more appropriate though
At this point it’s safer to just assume every purchase you make is funding far right politics.
Damnit, this little girl selling me lemonade got me good.
Little
girlcapitalist fascist Nazi with a merit badge in hating human rightsFTFY
I was expecting no less from Lemmy.
Just cosplaying as the average ml user
I mean, unless they have their own sugar cane and lemon tree, then the lemons and sugar were purchased from big agriculture, which yeah, funds the far right.
Yes, although frankly it’s really fucking hard to name anything that isn’t these days. Like, you probably can’t even go grocery shopping without some of that money finding us way to alt right politics.
People can look up how various grocery store brands fund the republicans here: https://shophowyouvote.com/
Nice! there’s also https://www.goodsuniteus.com/
Thanks lol. Just learned Cheerios are fascist ;-;
That damn bee; I always knew.
It’s like the whole idea of accumulating as much wealth/power as you can leads to control and suffering of those with less wealth/power.
This is a frustrating pposition to be in, particularly when few people are willing to offer viable alternatives in such threads.
I don’t want to let a purity test be the reason I impulse switch to a less effective VPN, but don’t want to indirectly fund things I don’t support. Yes, money I spend on Mullvad might go towards shit I don’t want, but what else is on par with Mullvad that doesn’t have some other downside?
Maybe tunnel bear perhaps
Pretty happy for 8 years with Windscribe, a Canadian VPN. The fulfill their promises and no neo-nazis so far… 🤞
Allegedly, windscribes CEO is a Musk’s fan boy. Also, they are an AI first company (both support and dev)
Indeed, and I haven’t heard any controversies.
…I am open to anyone who may have one to share.
but don’t want to indirectly fund things I don’t support.
The only safe way to do that is to not spend at all. Unless you find a co-op, your money is going to some owner(s) who will use the money as they please. Commercial VPNs are mostly privacy snake oil and ways to get access to media, so abstaining for a while isn’t unreasonable.
Something something no ethical consumption under capitalism
The sentiment of this saying is true, but you should seek out the best options, anyway.
Or you should seek to reduce your consumption as much as possible.
Or both! Don’t consume where possible, seek out the most ethical option when you must
Indeed.
At a co-op you’re funding the workers and some of them are routing your money straight to fascists, too.
I don’t think the world has ever been black and white. Whatever you purchase is based on someone’s suffering or funds it in some way or another. The best we can do is be less evil. If you think you can still do good by using mullvad’s service, you should stay. If you think switching will be more beneficial for you—even at the cost of productivity and perhaps a difference in price—then you should ditch Mullvad.
I’ve spent the last 2 years ditching services or products from companies that directly fund suffering. And I thought it was going to be overwhelming… But it wasn’t! Ditching Amazon ended up saving my family more than 100 dollars a month if we get things directly from the manufacturer. Plus the quality of items we get is better than cheap Amazon crap. The grocery store takes an extra 5 minutes to look on the back of a package for good or bad parent companies. I know it’s not perfect by far. But I’m not giving up being a better instead.
Oh for sure, I’ve been doing the same! My comment want meant to discourage people from trying. Sorry if came off that way.
I’ve gotten rid of most of Google of my PC and phone. Microslop, Amazon, Meta, all gone. And unfortunately, Steam too :(
I live in Japan so I have a lot of alternatives. Not only can I avoid US brands, I can avoid foods with US ingredients. I don’t buy Japanese chip brands of the potatoes are sources from the US.
Oh! It wasn’t meant as a criticism, just wanted to add my experience, how it was possible and positive.
In this world where we feel small and powerless, it’s been a way to feel we made some kind of punch back at evil.
Afaik IVPN is really the only alternative. I’ll be switching to them soon when my account expires.
Before I switched from proton VPN to mullvad VPN, I thought I remembered when doing research there was only a few providers that said they did no logs, and had proof either through 3rd party audits or shown they couldn’t provide anything when court ordered.
Does IVPN have proof they do not log? Because im in the same boat, I dont want my money supporting fascists, but i also dont know of any alternative to switch to?
Besides switching back to proton VPN (which id rather not get into any controversy around them)
They don’t keep logs but have also never been raided by police, only using a third-party auditor.
Thanks, thats helpful! I saw someone post a link in another comment to a comparison chart (i should have read the rest of the thread before replying), and it looks like they’re at the top of my list now.
Can you post that chat here as well, please
Its one of the top level comments, not sure if im linking this right (first time trying like this): Link to comment - https://piefed.social/comment/12205039
Direct link to comparison website - https://vpn.techlore.tech/
Btw I had a lot of time left on my mullvad account and had paid for it a while back, when requesting a refund due to this shitshow they honoured it and paid back the rest.
Appears to be the case.
No, no, its just the ceo’s personal politics that he donates lots of money get fwrs from his job to.
Not as much as the food you eat or the utilities you use, but yes.
It seems so, and also who knows what else, maybe even the far left
Rage bait title. Really feel like this is over reaching. If you stop using goods and services entirely funding things you disagree with the world would stop turning. I’m in full agreement of not funding bad things and companies who do bad stuff. Mull seems to be one of the only main fighting bastions left for good service and privacy. Not losing a customer here. Perhaps there is closed door reasons we don’t understand. Who knows. I paid for the service to function as intended, and it does.
Edit: They took the word Millions and put it first to induce a reaction. Like many titles on the internet this is poor practice. But it drives clicks and traffic.
Just to be clear, you’re saying you’re OK with potentially helping to establish a far right government in Sweden?
Sorry if I’m being blunt but this is essentially the case, no?
No. I am saying I’m paying for a service that hits above all other services in value and properties which I think are important for privacy, free speech, internet access, cost, and quality of service rendered. Mullvad offers and proves that their service functions as intended. They stay or try to stay ahead of the curve of laws, privacy eroding tactics, AI, etc. I do not support the private funding of negativity in any kind or oppression. But the service itself is better than many others I’ve tried. Court and agency tested no logs. Long standing track record of being truthful and reliable to their customers in regards to their needs. I still believe their service is quality outside of what a single person does involved in the business, like there aren’t many people surely working hard to make a good product at Mull. Their CEO or whoever donated. Is not the sole owner and operator. I paid for the service, and don’t plan on stopping. If things get worse or they start becoming full blown Nazis then things will change. For now I see benefit of the doubt.
He isn’t just the CEO. He’s the owner of the company. Your money is directly funding far right populism.
If you stop using goods and services entirely funding things you disagree with the world would stop turning.
That’s a bit of a nihilistic philosophy don’t you think? “Everything is bad and terrible but I can’t be bothered to do anything about it so I’m just going to ignore it”. You know about the poem right? Your worldview is the entire point of the poem. It’s not good to have that worldview.
I think it was mis understood and possibly the language wasn’t well spoke. Vote with your wallet and your ballots. Vote everyone should vote as often as possible. There are so many companies conglomerates you say that are evil or atleast further evil like agendas. That voting with simply the wallet won’t work in practice everytime. I survive off of nestle feeding tube formula to live. I hate nestle as their a horrible company overall. But out of 12 formulas or more atleast I have tried this one is the only one that keeps me alive. The world is not black and white as a simple thought can be. Sometimes you must use something not so good to further good elsewhere as an offset.
It should be obvious that [founder’s] private donation to a political party is not part of [his company’s] values or mission
Riiiiiiiiiight, because it always shakes out like that
“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.”
I’m not sure what they mean by this. Plenty of corporations do make animal rights, taxes, public healthcare, etc. an important part of their values and mission. Why would it be obvious that they’re not?
Besides, we do want Nazis and fascists to be pariahs. Putting pressure on Mullvad not to associate is a good thing.
Specially in Nordics. Social corporate responsibility is a very long tradition in Nordics, specially with due to stuff like co-operative customer, producer or worker owned companies, state enterprises and so on.
Including leadership teams behavior. Companies do get flack for what kind of persons they hire as leadership, since it is (pretty reasonably) assumed their mindset and worldview affects their conduct while leading the company.
Plus not only is he leader, he is owner so again money to company’s pocket is in the end money to his pocket.
One can’t claim “we are responsible company, while having opposite kind of CEO/leader”. It is his private matter he has these opinions, what isn’t private is him being company leader. Company doesn’t want his private opinions affecting the company, get rid of him as leader.
It would be one thing, if he was “lineworker” employee. Then person can have private opinions don’t affect company. However he isn’t mere salary employee in the depths of server hall lifting and plugging in servers to racks and cleaning cooling equipment clean. He is company leadership.
I agree (though I still think it is a good thing to fire fascists, even when they are lowly employees lol)
Literally applying skin stuff from a brand that makes a big deal about being vegan as I read this.
The guy made a donation with his own money. His donation is no more Mullvads than a donation you make privately is representative of the company you work for.
The guy made a donation with his own money
Uhh where do you think that money comes from?
If you’ve bought Mullvad’s services you have unwittingly contributed to that donation.
Every nazis salary comes from somewhere, or do you boycott just about everything?
do you boycott just about everything?
It’s just not buying stuff. You make it sound impossible.
No I mean, every nazis or racist gets their money from somewhere, be it Mullvad or Nestlé or Walmart, how do you avoid supporting that? Do you just don’t buy stuff from anywhere or do you have an ever shrinking base of viable options?
Yes, absolutely! I have an ever shrinking list of suppliers for my business and the household.
It’s not an on/off situation.
The point of any such action dealing with complex consequences is simply a statistical approach. Deny custom with the oligarchs whenever you can, and it adds up in aggregate.
Buy local, barter, buy from vetted independent companies, use boycott apps, keep a shitlist and consult a company family tree if you are wondering about a product.
Smaller scale family farms are less likely to poison themselves, they live close to the fields; buy direct from them when you can. Farmer’s markets. It’s less convenient. It’s culturally richer.
There are hidden costs in cheaper products. It’s not as big a sacrifice as it seems to avoid oligarchs whenever you see them.
Well take this guy for example - I dont know how he invests but I know a significant portion of his income will be coming from Mullvad. So yeah, I can’t personally choke all of his income, but I can boycott a wee bit of it. I will do that, because I think its the right thing to do.
The guy made a donation with his own money
Uhh where do you think that money comes from? If you’ve bought Mullvad’s services you have unwittingly contributed to that donation.
This is what I was thinking of. Aren’t we at risk to do this all the time? I am curious how you manage it, not arguing against you boycotting anything, that I support.
Yes I fully understand how he gets money from being part owner of the company, I never said that wasn’t the casr. But how he chooses to spend his private cash is not the fault of Mullvad the company.
I completely get wanting to boycott the company to avoid giving him money. But it makes no sense to blame the company for his private spending.
It’s absolutely people’s business whether they support the public face of a public company giving money to a public political party
Like, what part of Mullvad not being responsible for the donation in any way is it that people are not understanding? The company had no control or say over this dudes donation, so they can’t be responsible for it. Sure, don’t buy mullvad so you avoid indirectly giving the nutjob more money to support his fascist political views, that’s a totally valid response. But It doesn’t change that Mullvad is not, and never can be, responsible for his donation.
What is “the company”?
I’m not blaming the employees. I’m blaming the self-selected face, the guy who subscribes to the idea that his success and the company’s success are intertwined.
The company is the employees, yes, including the CEOs. Their collective actions are the actions of Mullvad.
Whilst the donation does reflect well on the company, there’s a lot more to the company that just one half of the leadership. I think people are right to keep a distinction between the two. “Mullvad” had no control of whether this donation was made or not, just as they have no control over any other employee making a political donation.
Should they consider if the CEOs public action have brought the company disrepute and fire him? Possibly, but I think it would be likely that such a decision could be challenged as a persons political views are not grounds for dismissal.
Except Mullvad put out that statement in question as a defense. Their response is enough to turn people off the company.
I don’t care who’s fault it is, I’d still rather use a VPN that didn’t have any controversy.
Not sure how involved he is but I guess as a co-founder he is bound to be getting some of the Mullvad money
Yes of course he is. but once it leaves the company to pay him his share, Mullvad is not able to control of what that money is spent on whatsoever. Since he made a private decision outside the control or influence of the company, how couod Mullvad be accountable for it?
We get that the people who work for a jerk, are not responsible for the bad decisions of that jerk, and it’s a shame that they will suffer for his bad decisions, but that’s part of the risks you take as an employee, and there are a great many risks you take working for anyone, most of which the owner class refuse to acknowledge. We all recognize that it’s a struggle to find new employment, but they always have the option of finding a new company to work for.
The owner is the primary beneficiary of any capital investment. Collateral damage for their decisions is their responsibility, not the consumer.
No maybe Mullvad can’t control the flow of that money into dangerous hands. But the customers can, if they organize.
What I meant is that some people just don’t want to give ther money to Mullvad, since some of it will end in his pocket to finance a political party they don’t agree with.
I agree… although I also understand people who feel the other way. As a top guy in the company the money he gets is going to be usually much more than an employee and for just existing at the top. So it feels more like company money than someone getting paid for actually putting in the grunt work to keep the company running. Not to mention that nobody is talking about mullvad and the ideology of random coder #26, the actions of the cofounder is always going to be in the same sentence as mullvad. So I understand taking a stance to not feed into that.
However I don’t agree with the moral superiority stance that often (not always) comes with that viewpoint. By all means boycott them yourself but I’m not one to push that on others unless it is actually the company itself donating or if their views start poisoning the quality of the service they provide (brave for example)
If they are rich they are almost always a right wing asshole. Why would anyone be surprised by this?
Wealth needs limits
I always say there should be a hard cutoff at a million a year and you should be taxed 100% at anything over that.
Even from a capitalist perspective this makes sense. Money pooling at the top is money not moving through the economy; 100% taxes encourage reinvestment and philanthropy to avoid the tax.
I’m not educated here - how is the money not moving through the economy? Billionaires and trillionaires surely keep their money in a bank / investment accounts right?
I’m not going to find them now, but if you’re interested, there are a lot of studies that look at how money moves through the economy and which dollars are more impactful. While dollars saved do get reinvested in a roundabout way, their economic impact is pennies on the dollar compared to direct spending or investment into business. It’s just far better for any market economy to prevent dollars from pooling into savings beyond simple prudence and is far better to put them directly to work via spending.
I think it would be more effective to have a hard wealth (both liquid and non-liquid assets) cutoff of somewhere between $10-50 million rather than a cap on an annual income.
Both
Wealth need not exist at all.
The point of wealth is heyying around limits. You cannot continue to have fungible personal wealth without corruption. It doesn’t even work on a hypothetical philosophical level.
Yeah, literally 99.999% of products you buy in 2026 fund right wing fascism, and most of it you can’t escape because they own the entire supply chain.
Ain’t capitalism fun?
It really is a matter of degree, though. Even fancy perfume has horse piss in it. It doesn’t mean you might as well wallow in the pigpen.
Per his blog he’s a “libertarian anarchist”.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
->libertarian.
I always read that as ‘far right, but kinda ashamed, or can’t get laid by claiming it so….’
It means “I want to do bad things without consequences” just like free speech absolutist means “I want to say bad things and no one is allowed to call me names”.
In the US I’ve been saying “Libertarian is a Republican who wants to smoke weed.” But seeing as they’re not villianizing it much anymore the Libertarians really don’t have a talking point left in the country.
Totes.
Libertarians are the most laughable spineless morons that I can think of. 99% hypocrisy and 1% innovation.
I made the switch to IPVN and it’s felt exactly the same. Maybe even better. Same price. Servers in multiple locations. Allows routing through 2 VPN servers. No logs. No money going to racist ideology.
Mullvad can claim whatever they like about their values, but they are a for-profit company. The profits of the company are being used to fund racial segregation. If they believe in their values they’ll switch to a non-profit foundation. Until that time they can get fucked!
Is IPVN owned by a non-profit foundation?
Nope they’re owned by a single person. I hope he’ll be more responsible. If you know of any non-profit vpn providers let me know! Happy to switch again
I had hoped you had any examples since you pointed out that it’s a for-profit company :/ Can’t do IPVN either than since who knows what the owner uses their money for.
All I know is the profits of Mullvad go to bad causes. Yes IVPN aren’t perfect but the services are so similar the choice should be obvious. Until a better alternative comes along i’m going to use the one that does less harm.
I’m curious if they offer port forwarding? That feature has been keeping me on PIA despite ethical concerns
AirVPN does port forwarding, and they’re less dodgy than PIA. Proton also does but there’s some questions raised by the CEOs support of Trump (still less dodgy than PIA though)
The CEO didn’t support Trump: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
The CEO made an official statement and then the official Proton account doubled down. Praising Donald Trump and JD Vance and insisting, at the time, that the Republican party would be the better party unless Democrats did something about it.
I’m familiar with this link though. It’s the most suspicious, anonymous, intentionally incomplete, poorly written, AstroTurf-looking thing I’ve ever seen before. (How AstroTurfy? Proton officially uses it as a reference. So it gets extra scrutiny.)
I suppose we read different things, because what they said is that republicans aren’t “friendly with big tech” and that’s a good thing. There are other blog posts where they explain their position in detail, like https://proton.me/blog/trump-control-nsa-privacy
I’m familiar with this link though.
Yours doesn’t load for me.
You may be familiar, but you refuse to argue on its merits and sources, of which there are plenty.
And by the way, if we were to talk astroturfing, there are a handful of accounts in this community that consistently post negative comments about Proton. I’m not saying this is an orchestrated attack against them, but it’s really damn suspicious that in every topic tangential to privacy or VPNs, there’s always someone mentioning how awful Proton is.
Hard to critique me if you can’t open the links to see what the official accounts say, and your anomymous Proton-backed blog post doesn’t mention it either. Here’s a relevant snippet they disappeared.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
- Proton_Team on Reddit, January 2025
Your link is to a 2016 blog post that says, in large font,
It is not Trump’s fault
So forgive me if I don’t think this is exonerating evidence, but rather something that resembles Proton moving from a more modest both-sides stance to attempting a very partisan one.
The “it doesn’t matter” part of the blog post is also dangerously inaccurate, implying any privacy violation in Switzerland is illegal while, in reality, Swiss authorities have gotten Proton to disclose user data several times in high-profile incidents. Here’s the biggest one in my mind. And another and another.
At the time it was true, corporate dems were way more likely to be in bed with big tech. That’s just a fact.
The “it doesn’t matter” part of the blog post is also dangerously inaccurate, implying any privacy violation in Switzerland is illegal while, in reality, Swiss authorities have gotten Proton to disclose user data several times in high-profile incidents. Here’s the biggest one in my mind. And another and another.
Ah, I remember you now. You’re the guy who thinks that privacy equals absolute immunity from court orders! That’s never the case and will never be.
Damn that’s the only thing they don’t offer compared to the others 💔
