from Rindogang@lemmy.ml to privacy@lemmy.ml on 02 Jul 07:04
https://lemmy.ml/post/49507000
cross-posted from: 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
threaded - newest
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800
scummy af with this deflection. as if anyone would want the money they paid for a service funneled to bad actors regardless of who is doing it…
Well, it’s not like the other founder approved his political donations. I think it’s a fair enough point to make, it is a private donation.
In a privately owned company, the wishes of the owners are the wishes of the company. Especially with political actions, treating them as completely separate is just putting blinders on.
Sure, but there are two owners. It’s possible to start a company with someone that has different views, or ones that diverge over time. You can’t really blame the other guy for his partner’s opinions.
So what should they do? Liquidate the company? Should the reasonable person leave the company he built? The guy the internet doesn’t like might still be ok to work with, and equally not want to leave. Should you get in trouble for your coworker’s opinions?
Yes
a private donation with our money.
The reply is fence sitting/pr, it is a fair assumption that the choices of one of the co-founders has put the company into a very difficult position. I’m not a fan of the wording, not sure I would have done a better job though. After reading it, I applied for my refund yesterday, and it was approved yesterday.
I hope Daniel Berntsson is somehow removed (or does the right thing and removes himself) from the company.
It is definitely shitty to hold Mullvad accountable for this, but money paid to Mullvad has been used to fund the political party via Daniel Berntsson.
Anyone with any vpn experience should already be well aware that it is a dodgy industry, with the majority of available ‘information’ being transparent marketing. I wouldn’t trust 95% of companies in the industry, I would like to see Mullvad come out of this the right way up.
“shitty to hold Mullvad accountable for this “ No. It’s not. Hold them accountable. Co-founder must have known that Berntsson has fascist tendencies. That’s kinda hard to hide
By all accounts, he seems to have been a fairly standard TESCREAL-adjacent high-decoupling libertarian until now, like a lot of tech founders. While some of these end up steelmanning fascism and coming to the conclusion that it’s pretty neat, it by no means follows.
What country do you live in? I hold you personally, and completely responsible for its actions, you know its issues and crimes.
Fuck off idiot.
enjoy your ai trash.
if the company put out a fencesitting statement instead of bringing him consequences, at best they don’t care
That assumes there is anything they can do about his actions in his personal life.
A clause in his contract that applies significant penalties if he brings the company into disrepute sounds cool, but also problematic, and may not even be a possibility, let alone a reality.
I want him gone, it may not be that simple though.
regardless, paying for a service that pays for fascism is something that might put them in trouble if they don’t deal with it.
that is if people care. that has to be a consideration these days.
It has already attracted negative press, some of it valid, some of it due to deliberate manipulation and idiots (op as an example of both), the effect on their reputation will not be short lived, and this issue will continuously resurface online. They still need to deal with it though, and soon.
It has already cost them business/money due to refunds ($$$ ???), and a short/medium/long term reduction in new customers.
“That is if people care” Always the issue with humanity.
People tend to be polar online, rarely fair, or decent.
if this amounts to something remains to be seen
Don’t tolerate the intolerant. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Berntsson hides his fascist tendencies behind a thin veneer of free speech.
Strömberg obviously knows his bedmate and tolerates his tendencies.
Fuck them both. Delete Mullvad (which I used until very recently)
Don’t rely on a totschlagargument to to save yourself from thinking about the complex consequences of your choices.
Even if you think Popper was right that doesn’t mean you can just draw a line down the middle of humanity dividing the intolerant-because-evil and intolerant-but-only-to-other-group.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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:|
who solely exist to funnel preferential votes to right wing/racist political parties.
Humans are often trash, by choice.
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.
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
The owner is definitely a Nazi. The bar staff? A little more suspect. He picked them out after all.
Feel free to drink at the Nazi owned bar I guess. Be prepared for when they go full Nazi on you and all that information you probably wanted private.
Oh my god, shuuuut uppppp
Well there’s one thing I do know: I sure as hell wouldn’t trust that VPN operator
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.
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.
I asked you a few legitimate questions and just as it always is, you lost the intellectual race.
Go fuck yourself, Nazi sympathizer.
There is nothing at all legitimate, or intellectual about you.
I requested and received a refund, how many times do I have to write that?
Try not being trash.
Again, you have dodged every question I asked, you absolute anthropomorphic dunce cap of a person. Try not to forget how to breathe anytime soon.
“Arrogance and ignorance go hand in hand”
Congratulations on the syllables though, keep up the good work there.
You completely ignored the argument above. Or didn’t read. Are you ok? Did you reply to the correct comment?
But no replacement?
Here:
vpn.techlore.tech
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/…/htmlview#gid…
Appreciate the techlore link, I will assess the companies listed. That is the only reason I am still following this deliberately trash thread, to find alternatives.
The google link though… nord at the top, affiliate links… 🤡
I have replied multiple times to the same questions, always honestly, always as someone who uses mullvad, but has been refunded due to this. I’m not shilling for, or against them, not denying where the money goes, not pretending one ceo is the company.
“are you ok?” get over yourself.
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.
What is wrong with iVPN? They are also no logs and take cash as far as I can tell. Them and AirVPN seem like solid alternatives.
I have used ivpn in the past. I currently use air for port forwarding stuff.
There is nothing “wrong” with ivpn. You can, if you’re careful, avoid setting up an account, associating an email, choose a limited set of services and pay with cash and get, theoretically, what you get with mullvad.
The difference is that with mullvad it’s much harder to do something you didn’t know was a problem. That’s not a thing that’s “wrong” with i. Lots of people expect to be able to log in to their account and recover their password with an email and use a bunch of additional nice apps and services like what i offers. That’s not wrong.
I said theoretically above and above that because i has not been under the same degree of scrutiny as mullvad. So it’s kind of like the veteran choosing a dented shield over a newly built one because “i know this one has stopped a blow”.
Air is… a piracy vpn. An eagle eyed user is expected to read between the lines to understand that and understand what it means.
southern hemisphere = lack of servers. airvpn does have some servers in new zealand so they are okay in this regard
ivpn has servers in australia, which to me are pointless due to australian internet laws, they currently have no servers in new zealand.
linux = airvpn gui is a long way past needing updating, and does not even have split tunnelling. can do manual or cli instead though… just would rather not.
ivpn gui will not even install on my system, with an error I have never seen, tied into some dependency which a quick search of appears to have a long history of security vulnerabilities.
Still following these threads hoping for another alternative to these 2
ivpn lacks servers in the southern hemisphere. I have spoken with them (their customer service appears to be good), and they plan a server in new zealand, but no idea when.
I could/might trial them, but server lack/distance is likely to be an issue.
Were I in the northern hemisphere, they would probably be top of the list.
If you can tolerate using crypto instead of cash, ovpn has Singapore servers and that’s close.
If you could be careful with your account information and send cash you could probably make proton work, they got lots of servers where you need them. You’d have to resist the temptation to add some newfangled service though.
Ngl between your reply to me and others you sound like the kind of person who should stick with mullvad.
I only recently started using the mullvad application as opposed to configs and maybe it’s because I was on configs for so long or maybe it’s mullvads app quality being better than average but I’ve been impressed with it across all platforms.
I have used servers in many countries in the past with poor results. New Zealand is the ideal for me (it’s not an ideal world of course).
My base internet is approx 100Mbps, speed drops are noticeable these days, even though 30Mbps was easily decent enough in the past.
Singapore is always an option (one of few), but would need to be tested.
ovpn is not linux friendly,I believe they have an app for ubuntu, but nothing else. Can of course do manual settings, but ytf should I?
I really would have liked to have been able to use mullvad for a few years at least, only switched over form proton last year, and only switched to proton because my previous vpn compnay vanished with my money.
Oh, I keep windscribe for general purpose unimportant stuff. They have servers all over the place. No clue how well they hold up, only ever used em for geofencing bypass with scripts.
They’re running a sale on whatever their pro service is and that gets you nz servers.
I can fire up their app in a little bit and see how it works, what distribution are you running?
I’m on manjaro kde
Windscribe has their app on the AUR, I would rather it was on official (like mullvad) but that is really asking too much, not a huge dealbreaker.
From memory the app was okay. I tried their free, but then they didn’t verify my email or something so the paid didn’t work, resulting customer service and other online interactions have been weird though, both the owner and the ai customer service. Windscribe is also reported to have had a security issue where they were searched or whatever, and failed (they apparently had user data), the owner is also reported to be a transphobe - grain of salt with both of those, I haven’t verified them.
i just did new testing (speedtest) with mullvad: singapore and malaysia were both decent enough, although a high ping with malaysia. indonesia, philippines, and thailand were also decent enough speedwise.
Singapore appears a feasible alternative (at least the mullvad servers), have not found mention of their privacy etc laws yet though. Malaysia occasionally pops up on ‘best locations’ lists.
Yeah windscribe is probably the only business I’ve ever described as a Mickey Mouse operation.
Personally, if I was worried enough about various tracking, I’d want to use the configs with known vetted third party FLOSS apps vs their own built app. For instance, one of the concerns with SurfShark in those sites is the app isn’t vetted and has some custom analytics. Using openVPN plus configs kills app level analytics.
IDK how much I ought to or should not trust any VPN provider, but for what I need, SurfShark has been great and pretty cheap, though for other reasons I’m a bit disappointed no port forwarding. I would use other tech than commercial VPNs for “deep” privacy.
surfshark (apparently) having tracking was enough to make me not bother looking much further into them. With so many choices, the easiest way is to omit those who seem problematic (kape, 87% off!!!, logs, tracking etc)
Yea, it’s just that every one has something problematic IMO. So for say torrents cheap and available is worth more than an app I don’t have to use. I of course don’t know a about if say PIA is better or whatever.
Prior to one of mullvads ceo’s being outed as a nazi, they didn’t appear to have anything wrong with them at all. Good history, policies, and software. ivpn and airvpn appear to be the only other legitimate choices to me, especially is you are northern hemisphere and a windows user, as most people are. Southern hemisphere and linux it is a bit trickier.
Not sure why you say that, but yes, mullvad (until now) was the only company ticking the boxes
ivpn and airvpn seem the only others who are close to it, but both also have significant issues for me. I have looked into a lot of alternatives, and ‘resources’ the last couple of years.’
Northern hemisphere this would be much easier.
Oh I meant that you seem to be concerned with the actual functionality of the tools and service from a safety perspective and need servers in place other than where the ppl who want to go stealth mode and load hacking tools are.
True
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.
consider logic, ask a friend, or teacher to help you.
Idk, Mullvad seems to have two founders with 50% shares. 0.5 is rounded up, so logic dictates it is one full nazi company, when one of the founders is a nazi. The co-founder is at least complicit.
I started three companies with co-founders. I know them, they’re not nazis. It is not hard to figure the political views of your peers when you start a business together ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You did not start any companies.
Using numbers does not = actual math
Using the word “logic” incorrectly is illogical.
How much crack do you smoke?
But I am smoking crack 😅.
I doubt you could even start a car.
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.
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
Hopefully that information would be much more honest than the post we are all replying to.
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?
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!
How does this effect Mullvad’s tech or privacy policies?
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.
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.
Your headline is misleading.
One of the founders (and co-ceo) of Mullvad made a substantial donation to an unhinged political party. Mullvad did not, and Mullvad claim to be against it.
This has been all over mastodon for days.
Mullvad has not claimed to be against it. Mullvad has pretty much said “if you don’t like free speach, we’re sorry you feel that way”.
Their statement reads
They’re pretty clearly saying that they as a company have no part in this political support.
True. But they did not say that they are _against_ the donation.
The original comment should simply be reworded to “and Mullvad says it has nothing to do with the donation and wasn’t aware of it” or something like that. Remove “
claim to be against”.They don’t plainly say against it no, but they’re still clearly distancing themselves from it. It’s not as good as outright denouncing it, but much better than staying silent.
Absolutely. IDK why me or you are getting downvotes tho. Did they claim to be agai st as the original commenter said? No. Did they distance themselves and clearly separate themselves? Yes.
“It should be obvious that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad’s values or mission.”
You’re moving the goalposts. Claiming to be against it and saying they had nothing to do with it aren’t the same thing.
Their response quoted here was too subtle, but you know it is pr for a very serious issue for the company.
“not part of Mullvad’s values” ,perhaps we interpret this differently because we are different people. If something is not part of my values, I am against it, because I am value based, how I interact with society is completely defined by my values.
For all I know you are corn chip based, maybe even a corn chip cooked in palm oil, using child labour, purchased from amazon, and delivered by ubereats.
If they wanted you to think his actions were against their values, they would have said “against”. The fact that it’s a company owner and CEO, means that the company values and the owner’s values are the same, whether they publicly state it or not. That’s why they’ve made such a fence-sitting PR statement. Even when they’re trying to downplay the link between the company values and the owner’s values, they don’t commit because the owner’s values are the company’s values.
Using the word “fact” doesn’t make something a fact, do you find people usually fall for that obvious bs?
People are deliberately trying to mislead other people with click bait headlines. Discredit the company by making it look like he is the company. Many people do not read past headlines, many people just follow the crowd, and are eagerly manipulated by it.
If he was the only owner, then yes his company would very more than likely be very much in line with his own morals, or lack of.
But he isn’t the only owner, he isn’t the company.
Decent customers should be getting refunds to apply pressure to the dodgy co-CEO in the hope that he does the right thing and leaves mullvad, or is somehow removed, or so that the (as far as we aware ) decent CEO makes his own vpn company with the morals that we believe(d) mullvad to have.
The irony of clearly dodgy people deliberately trying to make this a ‘mullvad is evil’ thing, is pathetic, but not surprising.
It isn’t obvious though because it’s the fucking cofounder that’s doing it and they keep misrepresenting it as a speech issue. It isn’t some random employee, it’s the people who invented and make the decisions for the service, and it’s a massive amount of money as well
Nothing is obvious for multiple reasons, one of them is that people are deliberately trying to manipulate this to be ‘Mullvad is the nazi party’
The headline of the thread we are commenting on is pure trash.
I requested and received my refund, I hope many others are doing the same with the aim of pressuring his removal from the company
The headline isn’t trash, it’s accurate. If Mullvad didn’t exist, the majority of the party’s funding wouldn’t exist.
“Mullvad is apparently the main financier of a Swedish far-right party”
you are dodgy
It has been here on Lemmy too, several threads on the front page without the misleading title. OP either did that on purpose (them not replying here at all gives that more weight IMO) or they didn’t even try to see if it had been posted and didn’t read anything in the article and posted without caring if the title is ture or not. The post should be removed.
I meant lemmy, I have only just started using both with the aim of dropping reddit and bluesky, and apparently I am confused.
I agree the post should be removed.
But I need to be angry against something and isolate myself in a corner on society where everything is evil but me!
I mean doesn’t sound that far off from “he who does not work, neither shall he eat”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work%2C_neither_shall_he_eat
That’s a fascist position even if it came wrapped in a pseudo-marxist wrapping.
There’s a world of difference between “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” and withholding basic needs.
I’m just saying that it’s not like it is a position unfamiliar to self-described Marxists since it was brought in by Lenin and was even part of Soviet Union’s constitution.
It seems to me that one of the key reasons that modern Marxists are angry with views extolled by people like this Mullvad guy, is that this notion that undeserving people are lapping up public funds and holding the rest of us back is normally a play straight from the far right playbook.
This not only distracts from the fundamental issue that we’re facing, with a group of undeserving people lapping up all funds, public or otherwise, it also gives fuel to an unjustified claim that was only created to sow seeds of division in the working class.
He’s a fascist. Part of fascism is co-opting Marxist talking points but pinning the blame on other working class people. The reason fascism comes about is due to a worsening life for regular people, leading them to believe the current system is rigged against them. Marxism tells them there is a different way and blames capitalism. Fascism tells them there’s a different way and it’s blame other working class people. Existing capitalists, like Daniel, see the Marxists as a threat to their power and throw their support behind the fascist to maintain power.
Listen to a lot of Trump’s campaign speeches leading up to the 2016 election and it sounds like stuff from the occupy wall st movement, right up until he starts railing against Mexicans. That’s what fascism is.
So, what are good alternatives? Anything that accepts anonymous crypto payments and doesn’t have accounts?
somewhere between sfa, and bugger all
ivpn, or airvpn would be good ones to consider. The majority of others seem very dodgy, and some are right wing already.
i switched to ivpn, personally
That is a really difficult situation to be in, and I don’t envy them. I’m struggling with coming up with a solution to this, when one of your co-founders, that you basically can’t force out if I understand it correctly, is using his own money, he made from the company, but it’s still his own, to go against your mission.
If they can’t convince him to not do that, there’s not much they can do.
I really like Mullvad, it’s the only VPN that I feel kind of safe abiut and trust them, but if a part of my money goes directly to fund extremistic parties, then I simply won’t do that and will be asking for a refund. I really hope they figure something out.
But Mullvad could also react a little better, by emphasizing that they would remove him if they could, and that they are working on a solution. Because it kind of isn’t their fault, and it sucks to be in a position like this. Currently it’s like Tesla or SpaceX saying that they don’t agree with Musk’s values, and that he’s spending his own money they have no control over, as if that was an argument why it’s fiine to buy Tesla or invest into SpaceX.
But unsubscribing from Mullvad is the best thing we can do now, hopefully the co-founder loosing his income will make him reconsider the PR of his personal spendings, and the dropping number will force him to reconsider.
He owns 50% of the company. He would be legally within his rights to sack anyone moving against him. Short of him being visited by three ghosts and persuaded to change his ways/sell his share to someone more sympathetic to the company’s stated values/convert it to an employee-owned cooperative, there’s not much that can be done.
There’s still the second owner who can maybe convince him, or strike a deal.
A lot of people boycoting Mullvad over it might be the motivation he needs, but it’s not an easy position to be in, and I’m not getting my hopes up.
He can also maybe just take/sell his half and fork out? But even to me, who knows nothing about running this scale of business, that sounds like something unreasonable.
Don’t anthropomorphize companies mate. That’s not how it works.
Think about it, from inside the company point of view: who, exactly, would write and post something like that?
Mullvad isn’t a company with a board that can vote out a shareholder. Berntsson and Stromberg are the sole shareholders and co-CEOs, 50/50. There’s no mechanism to “remove” a co-owner short of him voluntarily selling his stake or a negotiated buyout, and neither will happen because of some angry posts on the internet.
Mullvad isn’t a separate entity with its own thoughts and ideologies. It’s two guys who hire people to offer a service
You are right, that’s what I was trying to say that there’s not much they can do about it. I haven’t mentioned it directly, but by “Mullvad”, I mostly meant the second owner. It’s now mostly up to him to either somehow deal with his co-owner, or just loose hopefully a lot of customers.
Lot of people boycotting Mullvad because of this is the only thing that may help in this regard, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
If it actually matters that you have privacy and anonymity it’s probably best to not switch.
You know what’s best for you, but the guilt of knowing one drop of your money goes to someone whom you find repugnant is preferable to losing life or safety.
I was judt thinking about this, especially considering that it’s very probable that most of the money I spend are eventually financing lobyiing and who-knows what else, if you were to track them down simillarly.
But, if it’s true that 75% of the donations the party has received is from the Mullvad co-owner, there is a chance that it would allow them to keep on surviving even when they shouldn’t, and if they manage to get elected (which unfortunately seems to be more and more of a trend), it can cause a lot more harm than a little bit of lost privacy.
I don’t know. I don’t want to stop supporting Mullvad, but if that means also giving a far right party a better chance at surviving, then it sucks.
Whatever you decide, don’t fall into the trap of bearing responsibility for the actions of others.
God dammit, I already switched away from Express VPN because they’re owned by Israel, now I gotta switch away from Mullvad too??
There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, just a weighing of compromises and complicities.
That’s the most important bit: Allard had private property (his capital) and he did with it however he pleased. This is a structural issue, which wont be solved by cancelling Mullvad.
I think this is too quick to absolve the individual. Yes these are structural issues, but apparently his 5 mill kronor was 72% of the party’s total donations from 2025. There is tangible effects that boycotts can have, and to me it seems worth choosing another VPN if the gold standard is funding a party that will strip away privacy rights the moment it has power.
I don’t think this’ll seriously impact MullvadVPN. But don’t let me stop you from trying.
I’m simply a bit weary. It seems a bit to me like a -irtue-signaling liberal cancel-culture move about a party that most people don’t understand, because they don’t speak swedish.
I’ve read a bit about them in swedish until I found the damming policy propositions.
I speak Swedish and Allard calls immigrants “fucking parasites” in language that’s about as direct of a translation as you can get: etc.se/…/martin-melin-om-parasit-kommentaren-bord…
I’m not saying that he allegations are incorrect. I said that I wanted to check for myself and I had to read a bit until I found all the shit.
i would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)
Although this was a private donation and not Mullvad as a company, it’s still bad. I’ve been a Mullvad user for a few years now and I dislike the idea that some of the money I’ve paid to them, no matter how little overall, might have been used to support a political party that pushes for “remigration”.
I may have very indirectly helped finance a fascist party, and I’m not okay with that. I’d like Mullvad to take steps to ensure that this can’t happen again. Until then, I can’t be sure where my money will end up.
Yeah, I am not doing that.
Mullvad issued a response. Which IMO is shitty.
Source
Statement from Mullvad
Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. These are firmly held values of the founders of Mullvad. Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don’t agree with. We protect the right of everyone to access views we don’t agree with. We also live these values by being tolerant in our daily work. Everyone is welcome to collaborate with Mullvad if they share these narrow core values. As employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, lobbyists, campaign partners or whatever it might be. No matter what their other opinions are and no matter whether the founders or anyone else in Mullvad dislike them. The founders themselves fundamentally disagree on several important issues. This is what allows us to advance our common causes. Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking. The more people do this, the better a place the world will be. 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. That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it’s important to honor that, and will gladly refund you.
Nobody using Mullvad is going to have their credit card tied directly to it. Much less are they going to start calling financial institutions and government agencies and tell them they’re a Mullvad user.
You need to get way more subtle with your propaganda, corpos.
Sure lets entrust our privacy with infrastructure owned by a fascist…
clearly you don’t know how Mullvad works
Enlighten me how under a fascist takeover it couldn’t be undermined to track undesirables… even if, the owner is a fascist?! Clearly your life wouldn’t be in danger when tracked by a fascist…
Technically they could be lying about their privacy policy, and technically it’s not impossible that they’ve colluded with the government to lie about police finding nothing in raids, and saying “well they will lie about it because they’re fascists” is myopic and stupid. Moreso than being fascist, they’re fanatical about privacy. Everything runs on RAM. They couldn’t track you if they wanted to
Why?
and they will be forever and ever? There’s one move fascists have, coast on good will until it’s time for the rug-pull. A lot of fascists started out genuinely believing in some cause but sooner or later they all turn. What with contradictions sharpening and all
Because you don’t know anything about the infrastructure of their operation. It’s as yet impossible for them to track traffic through their servers.
As long as it’s one guy making personal donations and not the company as a whole, yes
Enlighten me then? Simply calling others stupid and playing coy with your argument isn’t that convincing an argument.
that “one guy”? Oh he owns half the company, and we are very happy to run this operation with him don’t worry about him.
Did you click any of the blue text in that comment? I feel like their privacy policy is all the enlightenment you need. And what do you expect Strömberg to do, sell his half of the company and let it be entirely controlled by Berntsson? He can’t exactly kick Berntsson out
Oh the privacy policy?? The thing that they could just update, revoke entirely or even just ignore??
not to do business with nazi’s is not a big ask for most people… he owns half the company for crying out loud there is so much damage he could cause, or threaten to cause instead of sending out a mail thats just “we at mullvad don’t like to be seen as nazis but what people heil on their own time is their business”
Explain to me how you activate an account on Mullvad. Right here.
Don’t Google it. Just explain it.
You create that id number thing and send them money. Do you think that means that your identity is completely secure?
Send them money in what form?
I was planning on sending them cash via mail
Do you write your name and address on the cash you send them?
No
And they get your personal information then by… séance? Perhaps voodoo?
yes both 🙄
Spacestar ordering, certainly.
youtu.be/38hiqW2E88A
Even bigger yikes.
Privacy is not something that neatly aligns with the left-right spectrum.
I’m very confused by what you mean with this. It’s like saying human basic needs doesn’t aligns with left-right spectrum, like no shit!
Far right needs to track their targets. The nazi had IBM census machines to better identify jews, and right now, Palantir fucking exists, and its founder is well aligned on left-right.
Yeah… About that…
You mailed in cash didn’t you
Kinda their best feature
In the past they let you keep CC on file for monthly payments but now they’re prepay only and they delete CC info after 40 days. I think I prepaid for like a year and half before I knew any of this. Mullvad’s obsession with user privacy is completely unparalleled in 2026.
Monero
Idc
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.
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.
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)
2) Who is the legal “donor” and how it’s reported
3) Limits and eligibility can differ
In many places, rules differ because:
4) Indirect control and “straw donor” risk
If an owner routes company money through a person, it can trigger enforcement concerns:
5) Corporate governance and ethics/perception
Even where allowed, the optics can differ:
6) Practical compliance and internal controls
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
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.
I guess I don’t. After all, I can only dream of reaching you level of intellect where you call people dumb and brainless for not sharing your opinion.
Shares AI
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.
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.
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.
Hopefully, but it may have to be his own choice, Mullvad might have no way of removing him.
I sympathize, but. The paradox of tolerance is at play here. We cannot tolerate the intolarent 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).
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
.
Use librewolf browser
Do they have a VPN?
Protonvpn
I use sometimes only an Proxy to skip country restrictions, I don’t use a VPN. If I need an VPN, I would probably use the SPN from the Portmaster which I use anyway.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/fb5a82b4-2cc0-4c08-93aa-6ee4d93936be.png">
Consumers are nothing but fish in a barrel these days
Title is incorrect, it’s not Mullvad donating the money but one of the owners.
They even released a statement regarding this.
This post is blatant disinformation.
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.
forbes.com/…/tesla-approves-musks-potential-trill…
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.
Where does he get the money he donates?
He gets his money from multiple sources apparently, mullvad obviously being one of those sources.
chill. I’m definitely taking your word for it /s. If everything I don’t agree with is fascism, well that makes it easy huh?
Yeah, we get it, you love Nazis.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/199e930d-dadb-4454-a3fd-6f7cb3fc24ff.webp">
This is why I don’t like any people and none of their parties.
Years of uncompromised world class service. Then a person there has the audacity of having a political view (shocking!)
Now they suck and should be boycotted. This is how ingrate you look, we were lucky we even had mullvad in the first place.
You make me sick you Hitlerite apologist.
Not even wikipedia says what fucking side is on and I’m somehow… whatever I’m going to leave you and your shitty opinions.
You’re going to die alone and lonely
far away from you
why, just because you say so?
Geez, Nazis don’t even have to defend themselves anymore. Libs run to defend them without even asking
Keep giving corporations your money, what could possibly go wrong.
.
You don’t have free speech when you’re made illegal, which is what far right parties like this one are doing to immigrants
Why not just cut out the middle man and join an ethno nationalist party?
.
That moment when you literally sent Mullvad a bunch of cash like two weeks before all of this came down and you know there’s literally no way to get your money back and it takes 2-4 weeks for money to get from your country to Sweden so you haven’t even started using the service.
They’ve claimed they’ll honor refunds,fwiw:
mastodon.online/@mullvadnet/116822246786533774
That doesn’t help the cash in an envelope with no return address crowd. Mullvad also doesn’t have any way to associate an account with a person.
So then their offer may not be genuine…bummer.
It’s less of an ingenuine offer issue and more of a “there’s a way to pay thats anonymous and untraceable” problem.
There’s no way to privately and anonymously confirm that the person who paid cash and is asking for a refund is who they say they are. If you have them do that then now you have a record of who they are and that can be used by the cops when they cleverly hit you with a subpoena the month after your big scandal broke.
So if you’re committed to protecting customers privacy you can’t do refunds on cash.
Understood. I was replying more to the general inability for them to associate people with accounts,if I read you right.
Oh they can do cc and PayPal refunds. Probably monero and bitcoin too. Wire transfers you can’t usually reverse, cash you can’t either. Cooperative merchants can refund a wire transfer, but it’s not as cut and dry as the cc, PayPal or crypto process.
And it’s possible for a rep to decide a person is who they say they are and refunding the balance of an account somehow but that requires the person give up the shield of anonymity and who would do that.
That’s the whole point of paying cash. If your vpn account gets associated, just abandon it and move on. There’s no record of ongoing payment for an investigator to trace back.
They refunded me the same day I requested the refund without issue, their refund offer is genuine.
The people who pay with cash in an envelope should know that doing so is a risk with its own potential issues. A risk that they accept by paying with cash in an envelope like a seedy mofo. It’s a choice.
lets harass them!!
I renewed my account after I learned about it. Because the real Nazis are actively trying to cancel him for having an opinion. Wanting someone to be kick out of his job, to be cancelled, to be never allowed to work again because his opinion goes against yours, that’s real fascism.
I’m going to be downvoted to hell because the far left is too indoctrinated into believing that they have the only correct opinion and anyone with a different one is directly their enemy. They won’t understand that they are the fascists here but at least I tried.
And we’re allowed to have our opinions too? The founder can do and say what he wants, but so can we? Right wingers seem to be all about free speech in one direction. No one is entitled to our money. And many of us would rather not have our money, a significant portion of which going to the founder, redirected to a party advocating for ethnic cleansing. Which would make people need a vpn more via persecution. Not to mention a founder with 50%+ ownership would have significant sway on the company itself.
For those looking for other options:
vpn.techlore.tech
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/…/htmlview#gid…
And before you try to downplay what the party stands for:
friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens…
Damn, that is extreme
You’re a real dickhead
Don’t breed
Your money is given to a man. That man gives it to nazis.
You: but he’s the middle man! That means he can do whatever he wants with the money I give him, and even though I know he’ll give it to nazis, I’m fine with that! In fact, I’ll give him MORE money! The left is so indoctrinated for thinking my actions are wrong! It’s CANCELLING someone if you refuse to given them money! Being mean to a nazi supporter by refusing to give him my money is the REAL fascism!
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.
mastodon.online/@mullvadnet/116822246786533774
Yeah, I will take a look into that. Thanks!
my refund was accepted the same day I requested it, without issue, or argument.
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.
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.
www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat 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.
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.
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.
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.
Assata Shakur
Quite a poignant quote.
.
I stepped in shit with my left foot! Therefore it’s ok to step into vomit with my right foot!
you do you buddy
Most Americans do not pay an income tax. That’s how broke bitches be. Paying social security etc is not a tax.
So there’s nothing for them to stop paying.
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.
This all sounds great.
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.
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?
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.
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)_/¯
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.
I’m not even sure I’d call the mass deportation in the US Ethnic Clensing. Part of the problem is it targets minorities, but not one specific minority, and the extent it targets minorities under cover of law is targeting non-citizens. Now, I think the whole thing is horrible, and bad policy. But it seems different to me from openly taking a specific group that are citizens and deporting them en masse.
Now - it’s made worse by the wink and nod the US sort of used for decades and never actually made good / modern immigration policy.
I think it’s possible to be someone who’s for mass deportation of people not legally in a country and not be someone who supports genocide OR ethnic clensing. It can actually be a simple “rule of law” sort of position. I don’t think MAGA is that sort of person, or at least many seem to be perfectly happy with ethnic clensing as an idea, but I also don’t think they’re actually happy to stop at non-citizens. It’s just they haven’t gotten through the “illegals” yet.
Maybe a good thread the needle would be if you’re in the country for 10 years (or some amount of time) without getting deported, a “statute of limitations” has then expired and you’re now a citizen. I’m sure that wouldn’t pass many people’s politics, but it would to my mind hold that if the government didn’t care for that long, you can’t be that much of an actual problem, and shouldn’t be kicked out anymore because you’ve also likely integrated into communities etc.
From what I understand that’s basically how it is in European liberal counties. There is a huge difference between immigration / green cards and asylum / refugees, the latter being an obligation and temporary. But it ends up the same, you won’t really be kicked out.
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.
You guys are gonna lose your shit when you find out where your tax dollars are winding up… Or your phone purchase dollars… Or your electricity bill dollars…
Are you alive and spending? If the answer is yes, congratulations you cause pain and suffering.
Yet you participate in society. Curious.
Yeah this is the type of response I expected. An unserious meme potshot because that truth is too uncomfortable.
Yet you’re still participating in this thread. Curious.
Some of us try to make conscientious choices though, we do not assume that every dollar that flows through our hands doesn’t have blood on it, but we make choices based on the information we find.
Your ‘argument’ while accurate, is also encouraging apathy.
What’s the difference in apathy and inaction?
Nothing.
In reality nothing
I was refunded, I was not apathetic, I make conscientious choices based on the information I am able to obtain.
‘If in doubt, find out, or go without’
I’m never going to assume I know everything, or that everything is static, but I approach corporations, governments, social media, humanity, cynically… for good reason.
My phone company is evil, sure. And individual consumer choice has limited utility in a world where all the phone companies are evil, which is why consumers should get organized.
But if I find out that my evil phone company is the primary financier of my or another country's most prominent Nazi party that's advocating for Nazi policies, I'm switching to the other evil phone company. Not a difficult decision?
They’re all evil, bud. That’s my point. You’re causing harm to someone somewhere with the things you spend your money on. Folks can downvote all they want, but what I’m saying is true. Doing the least damage isn’t doing no damage.
Try reading my comment again.
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’m using AirVPN since two years and I’m very happy with them.
i would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)
This seems pretty sensationalized. Wikipedia does not classify them as a far right party. “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.”
Yeah those Nazis are always for sure advocating for social housing and a 30 hour work week. /s
Yeah and it’s not Mullvad itself but the cofounder with his personal money (which of course he has for being the Mullvad cofounder and handsomely paid co-CEO, I expect).
Still, nuance?
The post should have been deleted, it appears to be deliberately manipulating the discussion/reality.
It’s not classify in the sacred text guys everyone calm down!!!
Very convenient how you skipped the next sentence:
Oh, wow. Remigration is a link to another wiki page. Let’s learn something about it:
Uh. That sounds pretty Nazi to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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?
Windscribe have a good rep. Maybe
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.
i would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)
SOCKS
I can’t keep track of all the assholes. Going to need an asshole tracker soon.
That would be a fun website. Asshole tracker for Companies & Politicians and others?
Could do an Assholes Wiki and make it community contributions lol
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.
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.
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.
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.
korben.info/…/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right…
techradar.com/…/i-dont-like-that-he-made-this-don…
So long as Daniel is paid from Mullvad, Mullvad financially supports the far right by proxy.
That is true, but since the other employeers at Mullvad don’t like Daniel’s donation, they don’t take his side. Of course it’s very shameful that he did that donation, and I truly hope he gets fired.
But one thing must be clear: facts should be just that: facts! Daniel took his own money and personally donated it to that shitty party - not Mullvad!