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.
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?
Well I’m not going to stop using it until i’ve seen another VPN get raided and verified to not hand out my data.
Shit sucks but I’m not aware of any other VPN that doesn’t have accounts, and let’s you pay without a credit card.
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
Okay.
Let me know when it affects the service.
A company that you trust with your privacy (one aspect) has been caught in league with mass surveillance loving fascists? Yeah I am sure that those are a perfect mix and it won’t lead to mass surveillance of its users like the dozens of VPNs now under Israeli mass - surveillance - fascist control.
It is just a complete coincidence that the people pushing more and more mass surveillance are buying up (and in this case winning over the controlling part of) the ways for normal people to avoid mass surveillance.
Neat.
Who made the device you’re posting on?
Must be kewl to not care like you
From a privacy perspective, who manufactured a device that (potentially) runs free software is different from who runs a service which you have to trust because you’re using someone else’s computer.
if you don’t care about your privacy, would you mind installing a RAT for me?
Communism is when no iPhone.
Antifascism is when no iPhone.
Tell me more about fighting capitalism, [email protected].
Tell me more about your passwords, address, and banking details.
Since you don’t mind privacy.
“Voting with your wallet” in this circumstance, to the extent it has any effect at all, will only hurt you and other privacy conscious people.
No ethical consumption under capitalism, etc.
you don’t need a VPN company to use a VPN. and using the “no ethical consumption” line is pretty fucking gross when you’re talking about buying shit from nazis.
you don’t need a VPN company to use a VPN
known datacenter IPs are increasingly blocked by website operators thanks to scraping
A vpn doesn’t need to be an internet proxy either, but users of vpn companies are paying them to privately and securely anonymize people’s traffic and shield their requests from the isp.
It is of course possible to do this using a vps over connections as well documented and simple as ssh but there are many ways to screw that up and paying a company to work out the details is extremely tempting.
If a person ends up using multiple endpoints, the cost of several vps subscriptions would also eclipse the cost of a vpn service.
I don’t need to pay someone to dig a hole for my pilings either but the quality and speed of their entrenching is beyond what I can create.
I don’t need to pay someone to dig a hole for my pilings either but the quality and speed of their entrenching is beyond what I can create.
ok, but if there is two companies, one that donates to fascists and one that does not, are you gonna tell me you’ll just shrug your shoulders and go with the nazis because there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism anyway? like, my dude, what the fuck?
Well out the gate: there isn’t a vpn provider like mullvad elsewhere. I have active subscriptions to several at the moment for different uses and have used at least two dozen different ones over the years as well as maintaining my own tunnels and overlay networks. There are probably lots of people that know more than me but I think they’d agree that mullvad occupies a specific niche that pretty much no one else is in right now.
What politics would a master need to have for you to submit to their will?
What level of need does a person have to be in for it to be acceptable that they buy bread from a Nazi owned store?
mullvad occupies a specific niche that pretty much no one else is in right now.
oh I see. you’re not a serious person. there are quite a few vpn providers that are better than mullvad. starting with any that allow port forwarding. mullvad does absolutely nothing that a dozen other vpn providers don’t also do. and if you actually had all this experience you appealed to, then you would know that.
What level of need does a person have to be in for it to be acceptable that they buy bread from a Nazi owned store?
you’re justifying renting a vpn from a nazi by comparing it to buying bread so you don’t starve to death. likely, in your head, this seemed like a good argument. idk, maybe you are some kind of digital being, made of energy, who must consume data to survive. I apologize if this is the case, I must seem speciest for thinking your argument was fucking idiotic.
just fucking admit you don’t see anything wrong with doing business with nazis, you weirdo.
Mullvad allowed port forwarding for many years until it was put into a position because of collusion between Interpol and the big cdns where it had to choose between cooperating with an investigation or retaining that feature.
The choice to drop an incredibly popular offering in order to avoid having to cooperate with the police is a testament to the trust component of the service.
When I said that no one is in that niche at the moment, part of that assessment rests on those events.
But also there are vanishingly few independent privacy focused VPN services that accept cash payment, don’t have accounts (and therefore don’t have the need for records that can be subpoenaed), don’t keep logs, are well respected and trusted, have open source clients, support shadowsocks and WireGuard, run an ad blocking dns and have had to resist the police in multiple high profile events.
I’m open to learn of them.
I assume because you made an equivalence between using an internet service and food you would be willing to buy bread from a Nazi? Again, what masters ideology in the necessarily hierarchical market would you accept?
I assume because you made an equivalence between using an internet service and food you would be willing to buy bread from a Nazi? Again, what masters ideology in the necessarily hierarchical market would you accept?
What level of need does a person have to be in for it to be acceptable that they buy bread from a Nazi owned store?
what are you talking about? you made that equivalence. I said it was a stupid fucking equivalence.
You have tried over 24 different VPNs?
That is exactly what he has been saying all along. Most of us know that a commercial VPN is not a silver bullet for privacy, much less for security. Lemmy is full of geeks that know how to deploy their own VPN infrastructure. Good. However, in the commercial VPN space, Mullvad has no competition in terms of keeping the user as private as a commercial VPN will allow. You mention going with a service not run by Nazi CEOs and whatnot, and I’m sure most, if not all, of us agree. Now, if you have information on such a service, that may be even comparable to Mullvad’s offering, I’m sure many of us would like to know about it.
Edit:
I don’t use Mullvad VPN, nor have I ever, yet, but my argument is the same. I just find it a bit more expensive than what I’m willing to pay for that service, which doesn’t mean I think it is too expensive for everyone.
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.
So nobody can agree if they’re far-left or far-right, but everyone agrees they’re far-authoritarian?
Seems like it yeah
Well, the political right calls anyone to the left of Mussolini a communist, so we can safely assume they’re wrong here.
Accused of being Nationalist from the left and being Socialist from the right. What a novel idea. A nEw PoLiTiCaL tHiRd WaY!
So, they’re socialists, only national?
so like, national socialists. who do we know who also called themselves that?
Calling nonwhite migrants “parasites” is a pretty clear signal which end of the spectrum they’re actually on.
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
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?
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.
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.
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 Phil Scott of Vermomt.
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.
Well, fuck your cancel culture, commies!
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?
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
Wondering if it’s time that we as an anti-authoritarian left community, establish our own VPN…
Nym existe i thing their founders are anarchist. But don’t know if they are trust worthy. The people involve seam decent https://nym.com/about
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.
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.
What do you suggest otherwise? I don’t want my money to go to fascists or surveillance states.
Soo, TOR but without the multiple nodes and CIA?
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.
What do you consider to be “anti-authoritarian left?”
Anarchists
Is authority just having a government?
“Authoritarian” is type of government, which Anarchists oppose.
If you define “government” just as a way of organising society, then Anarchists want a decentralised, non-hierarchical “government”.
If you define “government” as a hierarchical institution with centralised power, anarchists don’t want that.
So, in essence, opposition to authority is opposition to hierarchy, right? What about instances where hierarchy is less a matter of class interest and more of logistical necessity? Why the opposition to collectivization, and instead a push towards communalization?
I’m a Marxist-Leninist, and a former anarchist, so I’m aware of how I used to personally think, more wondering what you’re specifically thinking of here.
Ah okay, the original question made me think you’re new to this and need basic introduction. You’re obviously well familiar with the terms!
Sure, I was mostly hoping to spark a conversation, I assume both of us are well informed enough to have one.
Never had these issues with Njalla (run by Pirate Party affiliated people)
This is a recurring issue with Proton and Mullvad
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The main thing to know and understand about them is that they want to ethnically cleanse sweden of people they consider non-swedes.
