from floofloof@lemmy.ca to privacy@lemmy.ml on 21 Jul 18:45
https://lemmy.ca/post/68169501
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/49722402
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.”
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But he profits from mullvad and your purchase contributes to these policies…
“Our CEO’s opinion has no bearing on how we will act”
It’s not about the Nazi himself, it’s about him using our money to further Nazi goals.
Yeah, but our money is going into his pocket and thus funding Nazis, so that’s hardly relevant to the issue.
Idk, we seem to draw arbitrary lines for different companies. I still buy gasoline despite the horrible things the oil industry has done and is continuing to do. A VPN company providing a good anonymous service having a CEO donating to a right-wing candidate is pretty small beans by comparison
But it is still beans and people have the right to choose and the donation was significant.
Exactly if I recall he supplied the bulk of their funding, that’s very significant
a vpn costs $12; a new ev not owned by a shitty fascist costs $50,000
Yenno you probably meant to say built but owned is still true. Teslas are such nightmare cars.
They are so incredibly unsafe that I’m still baffled that they’re allowed on the road at all.
I don’t know much about the safety of them, just the unrepairability and the technology that makes them super dystopian. What makes them so unsafe? Besides the whole “ev batteries make fire” thing
The mechanical door is hidden and it’s hard to find in an emergency, you could be trapped inside. Also some of them have “bulletproof windows” which make it difficult for rescue workers to break through and save people. There was that billionaire that accidentally reversed into her pond and couldn’t get out, lots of stories like that. The cybertruck is basically a steel knife on wheels, threatening to slice up whatever unfortunate pedestrian it hits. These are just off the top of my head, I’m sure there’s more.
Also the Cybertruck frunk will try to cut your fingers off if your fingers aren’t bananas.
New EVs are something like $10k more expensive than comparable ICE vehicles, so there are some Chevrolet and Nissan models for ~$30k. The divide is probably even closer for used.
Mullvad is a premium VPN costing much more than alternatives and it doesn’t have promotions. This would be like paying top dollar to tank at Chevron.
The privacy VPN company which ran entirely on its reputation has now destroyed that very reputation at lightning speed because their CEO decided to publicly donate to a Nazi party
The point of the VPN is trusting the exit node owner. People aren’t going to trust when the one controlling the exit node is making large donations to a nazi party
I’ll bet he’s playing the long game, support party that limits expression of free ideas, more VPN users.
I run a Tailscale network on my devices and I use Mullvad exit nodes, I have found that to be an extremely frictionless setup especially running on my family’s iOS devices. What are my alternatives now, I can’t seem to find anything that is as easy/practical for my setup and for non-technical users.