cross-posted from: https://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.”
Any suggestions for a similarly priced, similar quality alternative for windows and Android? I tried Nord before I switched to Mulvad and it was worse, don’t want to go back to that
In which ways did you find Nord worse? I found Nord faster than Mullvad and better at spoofing my location in different countries for streaming services.
Proton VPN is probably the first other one that springs to mind as offering privacy comparable to Mullvad. Its CEO was criticized last year for making approving comments about some things Trump was doing in the USA, but it was mostly about opportunities to challenge big tech companies, and he claimed not to be a MAGA supporter in general. There was no evidence, as far as I know, of him donating to right-wing organizations.
I’ll bet he’s playing the long game, support party that limits expression of free ideas, more VPN users.
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
mfw i’m an apathetic centrist asshole
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
a vpn costs $12; a new ev not owned by a shitty fascist costs $50,000
Yenno you probably meant to say built but owned is still true. Teslas are such nightmare cars.
But it is still beans and people have the right to choose and the donation was significant.
Yes, it’s not a 1000$ donation in the privacy of his home (which is a questionable thing, but imho indeed not a Mullvad issue), but millions while openly flirting with nazis? No thanks.
“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.
But he profits from mullvad and your purchase contributes to these policies…
