- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
Daniel Berntsson, founder of Mullvad, gave a personal donation of 5 million SEK (roughly 450,000€) in 2025 to Örebropartiet. This enormous donation accounted for 72% of the party’s revenue in 2025.
How does this affect Mullvad’s legitimacy as a company advocating for a free and open internet, while also funding a political party whose agenda seem to contradict these values? The official party website (in Swedish) can be found via the link below.
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I’ve been too lazy to renew my Mullvad subscription, and now I have another reason not to
Never had these issues with Njalla (run by Pirate Party affiliated people)
This is a recurring issue with Proton and Mullvad
Apparently they’ve now posted a response:
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.
In context, this seems…tone-deaf. “It’s okay! Immigrants are welcome to work for Mullvad even if the founders ‘dislike’ them.” Yikes.
It should be obvious that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad’s values or mission, in the same way that someone’s opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn’t.
I would argue that those three things aren’t even all on the same level, and that’s without even addressing the fucking fascism of ‘re-migration’ policies.
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.
Unless you were smart enough to pay anonymously, in which case you’re welcome to doxx yourself, I guess.
the comments are a nazi cesspool. guess I wont be renewing
Yeah, I was pretty disgusted as well. If I was on the fence before, that definitely clinched it for me. I only wish I hadn’t renewed recently.
disgusting? yes
surprising? no
libertarians and borderline-criminals have always shared the privacy space with anti-capitalist lefties, since before the Bolsheviks bulk-ordered their red shirts.
Wondering if it’s time that we as an anti-authoritarian left community, establish our own VPN…
What do you consider to be “anti-authoritarian left?”
Anything shared here would inevitably be (or become) a honeypot. If you want a community-driven VPN, it would need to be something like Tor. Individual nodes being hosted by the community, and a zero-trust system to ensure no single node sees enough traffic to ID users.
But the issue with this is that a malicious actor (like the government) could simply spin up enough nodes to be able to capture the system. A zero-trust system like Tor is only secure because it is large. It’s not economical for a single actor to run enough nodes to reliably capture all three connections in the chain. But if it’s a small group (like Lemmy) starting up their own system, then it would be trivial for a larger organization to simply outnumber the two or three dozen safe nodes.
There’s the I2P network too. Not a VPN as such, but there are exit nodes and you can run one yourself if you want.
RiseUp VPN already exists. I trust that they aren’t feds but I also assume the feds have snuck some sort of spyware on them asap.
So… A honeypot?
If it’s a honeypot for fascists but not one for antifascists, maybe. But I’d prefer no honeypot at all, rather one where governance is from the labourers, to the labourers.
A VPN operated exclusively for a single political group would flag everyone using it as that group.
True, I suppose a VPN operated by those supporting that group, then.
Not a honeypot, but a target. I see.
Soo, TOR but without the multiple nodes and CIA?
Im sorry, but people here in the comments seem to be complaining to complain. If both Mullvad and Proton are known to fund/support fascist parties, then what do you suggest we leftists use? And dont just blindly recommend eastern spyware VPNs either. Maybe we just go back to distributing newspapers and using radio, just like our comrades back then did
I use AirVPN, personally. They put money where the mouth is and haven’t donated to any Nazis either.
They look good from an ethics standpoint, but it looks like the only anonymous payment method they take is monero. I’m considering them, but I’m not super familiar with crypto and how to obtain monero. Looks like I’ll need to do some research.
isn’t monero the only decent way to pay anonymously over the internet?
Emphasis on “over the internet”. Mullvad and others also accept cash via mail, though obviously that can take weeks depending on where you’re mailing it from.
Anyone have experience with iVPN? I’ve generally heard it’s good, but I’m not sure how it compares. Looks like it’s the same price as Mullvad at least, and also accepts cash and monero as payment options. I’m just wondering about how many servers they have comparable and how often they got blocked by major websites. I’m thinking that’ll probably be what I switch to, unless it has some major problems I’m not aware of.
I is… okay if you’re doing piracy or trying to watch foreign media. It will keep the eyes of your isp off you but hasn’t been under the extensive scrutiny that mullvad has (which is why it can be used for such a broad set of goals imo).
When I used it I ended up having to switch servers frequently, that was about three years ago though.
Seems like they have far fewer servers than Mullvad does, but at least they state who they’re hosted with and it looks like they do have a multi-hop setup like Mullvad does. They undergo annual audits so I’m not seeing any major security red flags. I frankly would have stuck with Mullvad had they not pulled this shit, but I won’t be made a hypocrite over this.
If you get spooked, don’t worry about being made a hypocrite. Your security is worth more than your moral purity.
And dont just blindly recommend eastern spyware VPNs either
Do these even exist? Who gives a shit if the PRC spies on me? I’d happily use a North Korean VPN if they had IPs that weren’t geoblocked.
Proton since it is cheaper than Mullvad I guess
Bruh Proton never gave money to fascist parties. In fact, if you look at their donations, they’re all left wing.
They may be talking about the CEO being on Trump’s dick, though that’s just a guess.
Yeah Andy Yen was specifically talking about Gail Slater’s antitrust support while the democrats had ties to corporate lobbies and voted on the wrong side of things. He apologized for appearing to be republican.
If you look at proton’s finances they all donate towards left organizations, promoting freedom and privacy, even donating to a liberal news organization.
I’m sick and tired of all these people bashing on proton because of one tweet that was taken out of context.
Bash on Proton for not being open source enough but don’t bash on them for this same tweet over and over again.
Proton voiced support for Trump
So I’m definitely not familiar with swedish politics, but does this site actually represent the entire party? The party site is just a very vague description of some group of people that sound like they’re anti left and anti right at the same time. The Wikipedia article on the party doesn’t really help make sense to what they expect to accomplish, but again that could just be my ignorance to it.
Would love to know more about all this, with more reliable sources if possible (vs a website that just says something without really providing sources). Mullvad is about trying to protect privacy with fighting big brother, and I’m really not seeing anything about the party that indicates it wants the opposite.
The main thing to know and understand about them is that they want to ethnically cleanse sweden of people they consider non-swedes.
Be careful with being explained politics from other countries, even sourced. If you asked a big part of the french population what are LFI’s politics they’d tell you all sort of horrors that the media baselessly accuses them of simply because they are dangerous to the capitalistic system we live in. The formerly mainstream french “left” hates them too and always has.
Unfortunately more and more media all around the world is owned by more or less hidden oligarch wannabes.
I don’t know swedish politics either, but I wouldn’t trust random strangers on the internet to tell me what they are.
They’re practicing the rhetoric strategy known as Bonapartism, which is when you claim to be neither left nor right, but a third way, which is nonsensical as realistically you gotta stand for something. As for this party’s actual views, they’re social fascists (socialdemocracy for me, fascism for thee). They’re wildly racist.
note that this is a local party, and as such their policies are focused on their local area only. apparently they plan to be on the national ballot this year but i’ve not seen any policy changes to reflect that. reading from an interview the founder did in 2022, he had to start his own branch of the left party youth wing because there wasn’t one where he lived, and as soon as they became official he found out that they didn’t like his opinions so he was forced out. as for what those opinions are…
– Vi började fråga oss vad som var relevant i människors vardag. Är radikalfeminismen relevant? Nej. Är frågan om hur många kön som finns relevant? Nej. Är gamla mossiga resonemang om huruvida Sovjet var en arbetarstat relevant? Nej.
Han upprördes av skatteslöseri och kommunala skrytprojekt som genomfördes samtidigt som utanförskapet växte.
– Jag tog frågan till nutid. Vilken klass tjänar egentligen på den förda migrationspolitik som lett till utanförskap och kriminalitet?
“we started asking ourselves what was relevant in the daily lives of people. Is radical feminism relevant? No. Is the question of how many genders there are relevant? No. Are tired old arguments on whether the Soviet Union was a worker-led state relevant? No.”
He was upset by wasted tax money and bragadocious projects the local government spearheaded while social exclusion kept growing.
“I brought the question to present day. What class makes money from the immigration policies that have led to exclusion and criminality?”
He’s coined a term for the class of people he says are the main tax money wasters; “transferiat”, as in the macroeconomic concept of transfer payments. these people, he says, just profit from the system without adding value. as examples, he lists “genusvetare, mångfaldsstrateger, HBTQI-certifikatörer [,] i viss mån även journalister (inom public service). Det finns även ett lägre skikt av transferiatet – de bidragsberoende, framför allt den stora massan av arbetslösa invandrare som kommit att hamna i utanförskapsområden”: gender studies graduates, diversity strategists, LGBTQ-certifiers, journalists in publicly funded media, and unemployed immigrants.
…honestly i was with him for a while there. i thought he was gonna go on a tirade against “bullshit jobs”, but instead he went off the deep end. later on he cites “public art” and “community centers in areas where more limmigrants live” as a waste of taxpayer money.
Sounds like at “best” NazBol, at worst just Nazi.
Dang, Mullvad instantly loses its credibility of the go to lemmy shill VPN overnight.
If people were shilling for Mullvad, then they wouldn’t give a shit about this would they?
Av vänstern anklagas vi för att vara fascister och av högern anklagas vi för kommunism
Accused of being fascists from the political left and communist from the political right…not exactly a reassuring description IMO.
Accused of being Nationalist from the left and being Socialist from the right. What a novel idea. A nEw PoLiTiCaL tHiRd WaY!
Calling nonwhite migrants “parasites” is a pretty clear signal which end of the spectrum they’re actually on.
So nobody can agree if they’re far-left or far-right, but everyone agrees they’re far-authoritarian?
Seems like it yeah
So, they’re socialists, only national?
so like, national socialists. who do we know who also called themselves that?
Well, the political right calls anyone to the left of Mussolini a communist, so we can safely assume they’re wrong here.
I use Kaspersky VPN, from Russia, part of BRICS. The Global South lives on its own work, unlike the Global North, who kills and robs the Global South.
I remember all the FUD about their anti-virus back in the day, even though it consistently tested the best. I didn’t know they had a VPN. I’ll have to look into it.
Edit: website says “purchase is unavailable for US customers”. I’m sure that’s the US government’s doing and not their own choice, if I had to guess.
So instead of American or European spyware, you instead use Russian spyware :)
Living in America, I’d rather give my data to Russia or China, if I lived in one of those countries, it would be the other way around. The US and Europe have more leverage over my life, so I’d rather give them less about myself.
One downside is that if a western country ends up capturing someone or something important (like France arresting the Telegram CEO), then they might use them as leverage to attain the data on the service. So best case is nobody collects the data.
100% agree. I’m trying to keep everything self-hosted, and j think I’ve made very good progress, but reaching total sovereignty is very hard. I’m guessing it’ll be way easier once I retire and dont6really need to rely on some of the imposed shit anymore.
I’ll give you that, what you’re saying makes sense, but in an ideal world, we don’t have to give our data to any government… only in our dreams though…
Yeah, it’s unhinged across the board, for sure. I’m doing what I can to own my data and control as much of it as possible, but it is a full time chore if I also want to have a life in this time and age.
On the brighter side, that has led to me spending more time with family and friends in person, outside (hoping not to be recorded 🤣).
A VPN does not protect the user from the type of sophisticated mass-surveillance that exists now and will only become increasingly more sophisticated without political critique. Users who are confused about the criticism of a capitalist-company when its benefactors are known to further entrench a beneficial political-ideology are simpletons who do not grasp the relationship between the Western-democracies and its political mass-surveillance organs that go on to spawn the private-surveillance companies that do get public critique (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Palantir, et al.).
No, a VPN is not better than nothing. Do more. Do better. Adopt real solutions like GNUnet. Liberate your computers with free software.
inb4 simpletons just want to use a VPN to watch mah netflix. Ok boomer.
you misspelled yggdrasil
So, anyone that doesn’t have the technical expertise to start moving to a more private online experience is a simpleton. Thanks for clearing that up for all of us simpletons. GNUnet is nowhere near ready to even begin to be a part of anyone’s digital life, ansd the developers say so themselves:
Please be aware that this project is still in an early alpha stage when it comes to running software – its not an easy task to rewrite the whole Internet!
While it’s great to put the word out hoping that more people gets involved, vexing others has the opposite outcome.
All this to say, fuck you, get off of your high horse.
Points for mentioning a solution, but being condisending and talking down to people isn’t a great way to get them excited about becoming involved. It’s better to let people in on the joke rather than make them the joke.
You’re right, but I doubt any of them are interested in contributing in any capacity. They just want to continue using Windows, Google and Netflix. Only now, in the year 2026, the absolute monstrosity that is the digital surveillance-apparatus, pokes its tentacles–every now and then–prominently into public-life and some get the willies. Never mind it’s been going on since the beginning of the computer-age. They don’t care. They never did. They enable it and they exacerbate it. They still don’t care.
gnunet
Mentions GNU
Condescending asshole about it
You wouldn’t believe it
Yes. I am just tired, comrade. Once can argue about the tone, but the reality is there needs to be a rectification on computer-education on a scale that only a government can enact. I can not do it. I can just rebuke.
Juvenile views do need to be rebuked. If you believe you can regain a portion of control back via payment to an entity, whilst still living in ignorance of the substrate you wish to increase control over you are a moron. You are merely paying for a belief.
I can not understand the user’s insistence on ignorance. All the users here are aware, to differing degrees, of the abuses that are inflicted on them due to this ignorance, yet there is a crowd who adamantly refuse to use their eyes; they wish merely to do the same things they were doing before, with no change in their own behaviors. They will continue to be abused.
I think the reality is they have no interest in the topic.
A VPN has its place in the security stack that should be everyone’s goal. I would genuinely be impressed if you could tell me how a VPN or any other layer in that stack works.
Wao, you apparently know what ‘substrate’ means. You must be a genius. Such a condescending prick.
You use a vpn to watch netflix, i use vpn to watch porn, we are not the same /s
I think entertainment is a very low priority. Pushed to comment on the topic I would say it’s actually a great waste of time, regardless of political orientation.
It’s isolating and manipulative. It subverts the local culture and brainwashes the viewer into believing that what is seen often on the screen is a reflection of real life norms. It is not, but when the majority of a citizenry consume so much foreign media it does shift real cultural norms. This is the soft-power of cultural products created for export.
Turn America’s netflix off. Turn off whatever pornography you preference. Move your body. Get some sunshrine and play with your comrades.
I genuinely believe television was a mistake. I can not see anything of its legacy to feel warm towards; there is no good here.
I totally agree with you. I cant sit and watch tv and never have been able to. I think we need to go to more person to person interactions. We never needed phones, it just became “essential” because everyone wanted one after someone else got one, it was the “new shiny thing”, but it only served as the catalyst for our own prisons.
Thanks for the heads up. Switching to Proton because of this. Mullvad has been bad lately anyways with most of their servers getting blocked every where.
The only thing keeping me on them was their reputation of being a bit less cooky than Proton but this pushed me over the edge
Proton’s CEO praised Trump, just saying. There’s IVPN which is Gibraltese.
Proton CEO praised something Trump did which isn’t a great look but debateable.
That’s wayyy less bad than Mullvad donating $500k to a Nazi party which advocates for remigration.
I’m pretty sure Proton also sponsored far-right influencers, although that sounds less shitty than being the primary funding source for an entire party then doubling down on it
It’s not just praise though, Proton claimed Trump was standing up for the little guys which is rich considering that the fascist is a billionnaire, supporting the wealthiest to repress the labourers even more. And besides that, it’s also insane.
Hitler was somewhat an environmentalist, but cheering on Hitler for being that is insane, because that is ignoring all the other heinous shit he did.
Proton did not claim anything; the CEO of Proton claimed that Republicans (not Trump) would do better on big tech anti-trust.
This view is not that crazy given that the person Trump appointed was doing her job quite well. Too well to the point that Trump removed her from the position later on.
Bullshit, Trump is the most big tech and corrupt claimant to Usonian president since a hefty while.
And Trump IS what the RINOs are nowadays, those that the pro-fascist CEO praised. Republicans are those like Bill Weld and Charlie Baker from Massachusetts.
What’s worse, cheering on something Hitler did or donating to Hitler?
I keep hearing about that praise, yet never once have I seen proof of it. Maybe I’m just using the wrong search engine. Might need to Google this.
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
it came as a surprise last month when Proton CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party in a post on X, declaring that “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.” When the tweet went viral, Proton’s official Reddit account posted a now-deleted comment stating that “Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
In response to a request for comment, Proton reiterated the claim that it is a “politically neutral organization,” then went on to state that “regardless of one’s views about the wider Republication platform, if you agree that action is needed on antitrust then the appointment of Gail Slater is a positive thing,” referring to President Donald Trump’s choice to head the Justice Department’s antitrust division. Proton further stated that “Big Tech CEOs are tripping over themselves to kiss the ring precisely because Trump represents an unprecedented challenge to their monopolistic dominance.”
OK, so he said that in January 2025. Just when Trump was taking over, and it did look at the time that the reps were actually at least talking with Proton execs, which is way more than the dems did. Proton reached out to Biden’s team more than once and they never were even given the time of day, Trump’s team got them in to talk. Whatever the environment is today (which I agree is complete shit and everything is ceumbling down because of Trump, Starmer and others), I can’t blame Proton for seeing that when this administration at least talked to them. Having said that, those do not qualify as praises, they qualify as comments on what it looked like at the moment. Praise means: to express a favorable judgment of someone or something. Saying that anyone is ‘more likely’ to do something does not qualify as a praise in my opinion. Much less saying anyone ‘was the evil and now the tables have turned’.
Anyway, thanks for the info, I was not aware of this, and because of what it is, my thoughts on this remain as they are.
We’d already had Trump’s last presidency to know that he wasn’t going to reign in big tech, so the CEO’s positive thoughts and hopefulness for the republican party and Trump’s picks were already insanely out of touch at best, IMO.
have you validated the statements of the article, or do you just outright believe it?
if not, that’s a weakness with which you can be made to hate all the useful privacy tools.
What is validating according to you, personally traveling to the guy and asking him?
this is just one rando saying something on the internet!
okay, then lets hate everyone, you can trust nobody, because I say everyone is nazi or some other undesirable, there’s no one without ulterior motives, trust me bro. look even linus torvalds is nazi! look he still lives in the USA, and I have insider knowledge about a secret donation he made to trump! no you can’t check it anywhere, just trust me, look my account is 3 years old, super legitimate. instead use my super cleaned out distribution of windows 11, leave your CIA bugged linux behind, and you can sign up to my services because no where else but here you will be safe! pinky promises. if you let the community be divided like that, here you go.
So you’re saying the guy didn’t donate $500.000 to a Nazi party and the article just made it up?
yes. until we have
furtherevidence, we shouldn’t take this at face value.or do you have a reason to believe this is not likely a smear campaign?
I mean, moderates are invariably SuperHitler, especially in Scandinavia where their social welfare is synonymous with creating apartheid, but I don’t see why that would bother most Lemmy users :0
How did 9+ people even parse this comment?
Twitter did us in you see
Regardless of what this dumb party is, it’s first and foremost a donation by a private person. Who happens to run Mullvad. So in the medium term this should have no bearing on the company and how it operates from their point of view. The article hints at disagreement on the board about many things. So if this news story turns into subscribers leaving by the thousands, I would sooner think the “generous” donor might be pushed or bought out.
The tech sector is run by people too. Some of them are mad. Our modern outrage economy demands drastic and public knee jerk reactions to be on the good side. If you’re considering leaving Mullvad, voice your concerns to them first. Put pressure on and wait and see for a bit. If they all turn out to be Nazis in trenchcoats, by all means leave. But they could correct this internally (push out/buyout) and then there is no need to destroy an otherwise okay VPN provider just because one of the founders turned into meatball Melon Usk.
I don’t use Mullvad but I have used Proton VPN and am now using AirVPN. It’s my experience that if you’re using VPN to stream Netflix content or the iPlayer from the UK, you’ll be equally sol on other providers because the streamers have gotten better at spotting and defending against VPNs. So switching in a huff may still leave you disappointed as well.
Yeah, the only issue is that any profits from paying for their service will eventually line the person’s pockets. It’s not like the company is directly doing it, or spreading the bullshit.
Makes it a slightly different issue, but it is still an issue
Stop streaming. Put your VPN to work the right way.
I do not find their program on the web. They say they will publish before summer.
Any other official document about their political stances besides that really vague introduction they do on their website?
