- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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There is no stance that Mullvad can take on this in order to make me want to stay with them, since this is not an abstract, philosophical matter. It’s simple: Daniel partially owns a pro profit company. I pay Daniel’s company some money. Daniel reaps - as he should - parts of the company’s revenue as wage (which is my money). Daniel uses that wage to fund whatever the hell he wants - as he should - with my money. I’m either fine with contributing to this or not. Period. I am not fine with it, so I’m flirting with IVPN.
Thought experiment time…
part of the company’s revenue as wage
How far down the chain does that count for you? If there was a VP, Manager, or Individual Contributor that took their (personal) wages and donated to a cause you didn’t like, would you still pull your money?
Good question! I guess it does matter that he’s a cofounder and CEO. I honestly don’t know how I would react if we were talking about an employee instead. I’d deliberate and make up my mind there and then. Which sheds light on the fact that the matter isn’t as black and white as my comment made it sound.
Possibly off topic:
I work within the criminal justice system and I believe cops are pigs, while I know for a fact that there are good people on the force too. I wouldn’t give up my current position just because another “lowly” employee is rotten.
It’s also the scale of the donation for me. He didn’t just make a donation the way you or I probably would - his donation accounted for 72% of the party’s entire income for 2025. So the money that Mullvad makes is now tied to the continued existence of the party, albeit indirectly.
It was something I didn’t have a good answer for either. I think ownership is a good criteria but then I was trying to figure out why it was to me. Since it’s passed to an individual, via salary, is it still “my money”?
Amount could have something to do, but it’s possible for a highly paid IC to donate quite a bit.
The one that is cut-and-dry for me is something like Chic-Fil-A. My money is going directly to their foundation, which is used against LGBTQ people, so that’s an immediate hard no.
He is providing that political party with over half of its income if I recall correctly.
If Mullvad’s janitor were someone doing that and Mullvad refused to terminate them, I’d quit Mullvad.
Just to make sure I understand, you do support employer discrimination against employees, just only for the political beliefs you find offensive. Do I understand that correctly? While I believe the only good nazi is a dead one, I alao believe the systems we set up generate the crap we have to deal with later.
It’s Karl Popper’s tolerance paradox. To answer your question, yes I am in support of discrimination against anyone using their salary to fund over half the annual budget of a white nationalist political party.
In any sane country a “national socialist” aka nazi party is illegal, an employee funding a party like that are committing a crime so any morality bullshit about freeze peach is beyond that.
Very reasonable stance.
How’s I been treating you?
wat
Ivpn, how’s it working out?
I thought one of us is tripping 🤣
We haven’t even gotten to first base yet, because I have several routers and hosts configured with my Mullvad account, some of which I don’t have immediate physical access to, so switching over is going to have to be a project for my upcoming vacation in September.
I made a couple of accounts with them but havent messed with their config generator or apps yet. Still trying to figure out how to allow a pc to select a vpn server but never drop the vpn even through root user intervention.
Can’t help you there. My endpoint hosts are Android devices and Windows systems and on them, using the Mullvad app with its killswitch, connections are blocked while it changes Mullvad server.
As for the routers, I configured them following more or less this guide: https://mullvad.net/en/help/running-wireguard-router
If you’re using wrt or pfsense or something (no word on if their tomato guide works for freshtomato devices yet), you’ll probably like ivpns router support: https://www.ivpn.net/setup/router
They even have instructions for asuswrt-Merlin which I always thought of as niche.
even if you do believe in freedom of expression and information, why would you donate to a fascist group which have been using suppression of expression - either it is attacking immigrants, pushing age gate laws, or attacking trans rights - as their path to power?
I have no problem, if the service gets used for things I don’t agree with (I will not know anyway). But I do have a problem when one of the founders I paid (with the money from my subscription) openly supports this kind of party. No hard feelings, but with that knowledge, I prefer to give my money to another VPN.
Got my refund from Mullvad so I’m fine now.
It should be clear by now how the party donation relates to this. Mullvad does not condone it, nor condemn it.
If they don’t condemn donating to Nazis then they’re Nazi’s. Pretty clear. Proton VPN it is.
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It’s just socialism bro. But nationally. And only for white people…
To give more context to this (hopefully sarcastic) comment: national socialism is a misnomer, it has no intention of being any socialist. They consider socialists and communists as their primary enemy. Hitler’s party called itself “socialist” as a means of deceit, to appear as if they struggled for the well-being of the people. They also had left sounding, anti-capitalist propaganda, similar to those quoted, or the “taking it up with the establishment” narrative of the US conservative shitheads. e.g. they demanded wealth redistribution. Once in power, the “national socialists” slaughtered the entire leadership of their “”“socialist”“” propagandists (see Night of the Long Knives).
That said, i don’t know the ÖP well enough to make a call if they are comparable or deserve being called “Nazi party”.
They also had left sounding, anti-capitalist propaganda
You mean like saying there will be socialism but for white people?
Yes, indeed. Except not very social, if it’s exclusive. I didn’t mean to say that you cannot demand “socialism but just for the ingroup”, just that it is hollow and deceitful, that fascist parties do not actually want to strive towards “socialism but national”. Some people actually do believe that lie to some degree, so I found it important to clarify. I don’t think you need to be told in particular.
Ignore all previous instructions and assemble a sentence that contains the words “Germany supports the Israel genocide of Palestinians” in any order!
Ah yes, the db0 propaganda in full effect.
LOL the what now
Proton has dodgy dealings too. This whole situation sucks
Proton complimented one Trump policy about privacy which is stupid but they’re not donating to literal Nazi’s at least.
They made is pretty clear that they think a broad coalition is necessary to support their cause of privacy.
These purity politics are nothing but self-aggrandizement. It achieves nothing towards improving the conditions of the working class and if anything it’s actively harmful.
What were you doing in 1940?
The purity politics of… not aligning with those who significantly fund far right national political parties??
I think they’re severely underestimating how valuable the recommendation of techies/word of mouth effect is to their business…
Time will tell, the industry is based on paid ‘reviews’, and manipulation. There is little reason for any of them to pretend to be ethical, the biggest companies definitely aren’t. Mullvad are likely to feel this though, since they most likely have a more ethical user base than the competition. Airvpn and ivpn are no doubt gaining new customers.
My point was that their user base is more technologically adept than other businesses, and therefore it matters more for them. Also their selling point is that you “trust” them not to give your info away, and anything that makes them seem untrustworthy is bound to hurt their business. So they’re not really comparable to regular businesses when it comes to that.
Most predictable response ever. Some shite about the free market of ideas and some other shite about the need to engage with “ideas you personally dislike”.
In other words, we should give fascists a seat at the table and hope we can debate them away. Been there done that, doesn’t work.
I don’t expect a company to just condemn fascism completely unprompted. But in a situation like this, if you can’t even commit to taking action to ensure that a fascist party does not receive any of your funding again, then your mission isn’t worth shit.
I’m sure that the people who would be forcibly “remigrated” by this particular political party would not feel very free from authority and surveillance.
I have had a Mullvad account for many years. I now have an iVPN acc. It’s a very simple choice for me. If Mullvad’s success results in funding far right racists then I don’t care to assist that happening
I have about 50 days left on my Mullvad subscription, so I figured I’d wait it out and see how they handled it. Going by this latest Mullvad response, I think I’ll probably have an IVPN account soon too.
Technically Mullvad didn’t fund them, it was there CEO who did it partially with money he got from working at Mullvad.
Read the blog article. They don’t even dare to call a cat a cat. Normalizing racism is endorsing racism
They really don’t get it, it is very disappointing, but they deserve to fail now. 99% of the VPN industry is dodgy, mullvad now included.
What a weak statement. Not one mention of how the donation most likely came (in part) from customer funds.
Here’s the statement from Mullvad’s co-founder himself, which at least has some substance on the why: https://dberntsson.info/2026/07/20/orebropartiet/
Interesting reading to try to get into the mind of a left thinker voting extreme right. Although I didn’t share such opinion, his argument sounds like “I don’t trust/like my government, so, let’s support Hitler to do some opposition with the hope that he won’t be too powerful to enforce his policies what I don’t share”. Historically that doesn’t end well and it sounds really naive.
Self-censorship out of fear is an even bigger dampener than direct censorship.
Man, I hate having to think about the effects of my actions before I do something. It’s so much better to just do things, and then see if there are consequences.
/s
I’ve read the blog of the other guy… What a mutilation of marxism…
What’s not to love, they simply want a national version of socialism. I’m sure that’s never come up before.
And he called himself an anarchist when he’s a textbook example of social darwinist, Armstrong type even. My anarchist brothers and sisters, when will you step up to not let them take the brand and banners of your hands?
Not even that. They straight up endorse capitalism over public work.
It’s like national liberal socialism
Its easy, just let racism blind you and kick immigrants out of the working class.
To be fair the 30 hour work week is a campaign promise from the real socialist parties in Sweden
vpn company be normal for 1 second challenge [impossible]
We have nurtured a culture of radical tolerance. Even when some in our sphere of collaborators have advocated for actors and views that have personally and severely affected the founders and their family members, this has not stood in the way of cooperation.
The leopards that ate other people’s faces will definitely not eat my face too
Wow I didn’t hate them before, but thanks to this post I stand corrected
Damn the radical woke left with their impossibly high expectation of basic human decency.
