Donation Controversy

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/donation-controversy

by Cider9986 • 2 days ago

60 52 2 days ago

gnabgib• 2 days ago

Related: I'm Done with Mullvad (65 points, 14 hours ago, 175 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48975428

The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party (118+695 points, last month, 3+1588 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48687508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717469

bigyabai• 2 days ago

We have nurtured a culture of radical tolerance.

Play radical games, win radical prizes. The last place I want my money going is towards radical authoritarianism, a cause that I thought Mullvad would thoroughly oppose.

Self-censorship out of fear is an even bigger dampener than direct censorship.

Bullshit. Self-censorship is a self-preservation mechanism, a VPN doesn't change the consequences of saying illegal or offensive things. Direct censorship is an abuse of the monopoly on power, and much more inhumane than just feeling insecure about your edgy ideas being attached to your identity.

cryzinger• 2 days ago

The "radical tolerance" thing is also a little ironic, since the biggest controversy with the party that the founder donated to is that the party isn't tolerant of people from different backgrounds or nationalities...

[insert Paradox of Tolerance quote here]

dijit11• 2 days ago

Tolerant is the wrong word to choose because tolerant doesn't mean "accepting" it means... to tolerate.

And the most extreme position they have stated is that "it doesn't matter if you're born here, if you commit crimes and don't respect the culture you should probably leave".

That is an extreme position, but it's not as black as people seem to paint it, which implies heavily that the party is just simply racist against non-swedes.

The actual racist party is the second most voted for party in Sweden, I think because of how intolerant the society has been about talking about the issues caused by migration. That is my own opinion though, as a migrant, living in the city with the most migrants in Sweden.

bsoup2• 2 days ago

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#Immigration_...:

'In 2026 Örebro Party leader Markus Allard sparked controversy on several occasions. In a debate hosted by Studio3 with Liberal member of parliament Martin Melin, Allard asked: "why won't the Liberals push for deporting 100 000 social welfare-Somalis?" and in the same debate said that "Sweden belongs to the Swedes. We have to make sure that we take care of our own damn people and we must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense."

In a podcast segment about immigration and deportations Allard stated his opinion and said that "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish."'

sxp• 2 days ago

For those unfamiliar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party

The party has been variously characterised as left-wing and right-wing, as well as populist, nationalist and conservative.

  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,[3] ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art and introducing free dental care.[4][5] Nationally the party has set out large-scale remigration, closing the Swedish borders to immigration, a stricter assimilation policy and ending taxes on energy and fuel as some of its key issues.

The message from the CEO about the donation: https://dberntsson.info/

And for those who may not be old enough to remember the last time this happened in the techsphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Appointment_to_CE...

EA-3167• 2 days ago

It sounds like the usual far right bottom line dressed up with a bunch of “Free Pizza” promises to cover it with a veneer.

Personally I wish people like his had the balls to stop hiding behind that kind of thing, we all know what someone is about when “immigration is the main problem” in their viewpoint.

Own it. Or if it’s something to be ashamed of… accept the shame.

viccis3• 2 days ago

Not really, this looks more like pre-1990s leftism that you see from people like Caesar Chavez. Broadly redistributive policies towards the working class and a strict curbing of immigration as a source of exploited labor underclass for corporations to fatten their margins. There's a reason Bernie called open borders a "Koch brothers proposal".

ai_critic• 2 days ago

Failure to recognize immigration as a problem for a sizeable chunk of the population--rightly or wrongly--ensures that they will fall pray to demagogues and will never again trust those who repeatedly blew them off.

Progressives fuck this up continually across the policy spectrum, by having no answer other than "no you're wrong/immoral/stupid" to people who express concerns in categories that have strong orthodoxy requirements.

sapphicsnail4• 2 days ago

"Large-scale remigration" is quite the euphemism for "violently remove people in the country from their homes and send them to God knows where."

dijit11• 1 day ago

if they commit crimes.

JLO64• 2 days ago

Personally, I'd rather not have a company I work for police my social media and political activities just so that they fit with what the company desires. That would make me quit as I value a separation between my personal and work activities.

That said, the fact that the person involved is the founder of this company (not a regular employee) does change things though. I don't know anything about the politics involved, but (with the exception of recent American executives) I would imagine you would want the people who run your company to be more neutral as to prevent controversy (or at least do so quietly).

panarky• 2 days ago

I don't want the founders and operators of my free-expression tool to be neutral.

I want them to be strongly biased in favor of free expression.

But they take my money and use it restrict how people dress, how they pray, what customs they are allowed to follow, what they teach their kids.

The agenda they support is anti-free-expression, and that's worse than neutral.

streetfighter642• 1 day ago

or at least do so quietly

No, I think it's pretty good that they don't hide it. Customers should be well informed what their money goes to, and if the profits go to funding politics the customers disagree with they should be able to make an informed decision about that.

t-van• 2 days ago

Who is the most trusted VPN provider now?

Cider99862• 2 days ago

Mullvad, IVPN and Proton VPN are all trusted so choosing depends on your priorities with the small differences between them.

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/

Obscura by definition is the same or better than Mullvad because of the multi-party relay. Similar with iCloud Private Relay but that's only for Safari which is inadequate.

Nym looks promising but mixnets haven't been tested as much as the Tor network.

kivle• 2 days ago

Proton VPN had their own controversial episode earlier this summer:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48446899

calldacopsidgaf• 2 days ago

"Mullvad will continue to keep its values and mission separate from the broader views of its founders." - the sentence immediately following a link to Daniel's soapbox blog post

teravor• 2 days ago

it was a mistake to respond, over 90% of the controversy is performative as it nearly always is. the ideologues will posture and claim that they are dropping mullvad while being unlikely to follow through.

most people wouldn't even know the controversy happened nor care. with the response, you now trigger various human instincts that draw attention, promote further gossiping and wondering where the fire is with all the smoke.

letmevoteplease• 2 days ago

A mistake from a public relations perspective, but I think taking an explicit stance against deplatforming and self-censorship is consistent with Mullvad's stated mission.

streetfighter642• 1 day ago

deplatforming and self-censorship

What? How's publishing information about where a company's profits go, and letting the customers decide if that's something they want to support, in any way related to "deplatforming" or "censorship"?

sapphicsnail4• 2 days ago

I'm really sad about it but I'm not going to renew Mullvad once the 6 months I already payed for are up.

I'm fine supporting companies that have people with poliical views I initially interested in Mullvad for political reasons and one of the founders giving a significant amount of money to a political group that wants to restrict the rights of other people is too much for me.

Not everyone is cynical. Some of us have actual values we act on.

dijit11• 2 days ago

Its worth considering that this is a left wing populist party that doesn’t like immigration, and what was actually said (the major controversy) is that even if you are born in Sweden, if you commit crimes and do not make any effort to be Swedish: you probably shouldn’t be here.

How this is represented by people is different than that, and its hard for people who don’t speak Swedish to listen to the original sources, but be assured that in Sweden there is an actual party founded by Nazi sympathisers and it is the second most voted for party.

I get not wanting to support someone you think has immoral views, but check the facts first before blacklisting a company that is filled with people trying to push for a more open, private yet transparent internet.

ninjin• 2 days ago

I am in a similar situation and I am out from this point as well. Mullvad does a lot of wonderful work, but I think debating whether Örebropartiet's positions are reasonable or not misses the point. Head over to Allard's Twitter feed [1], as he has not yet published a coherent manifesto anywhere from what I can tell. If you do not read Swedish, get some sort of translation tool going. Keep in mind, this is how he wants to appear to the world.

[1] https://xcancel.com/markus_allard

Sure, you find the odd reasonably put politic position. But, mostly, it is memes. Screaming. Ranting. Insults. Calling the head of the Swedish police a "crying bitch". Retweets of posts from who are not even shy in terms of being bigots and racists. The man is a toxic toad and I would rather have seen him paid to shut up than anything else. Yes, we need diverse viewpoints to be heard and we should be respectful and careful to shut them down. But, Allard is not this person and he is just ruining public discourse even further and waging an insane culture war (in my mum's constituency at that). Call me old-fashioned, but I expect representatives to at least try to strive towards holding morals and behaviour above the mean of society.

I have read Mullvad's blog post, but not Berntsson' yet (it is bloody long and I am at work, but skimming it, I saw nothing arguing why "public discourse arson" is warranted and just "something needs to be done, this is something"), so maybe I am missing some context. But if the answer to your question is "Bank-roll Allard", maybe it is time to take a step back and ask yourself what on Earth your question was in the first place? Because it seems to me like you are playing with fire and risk burning all that we hold dear to the ground. Do your views not have a Johan Norberg-like [2] character (something very rare, a Swedish Libertarian that has contributed to public discourse for over twenty years) that you can support instead? Or is the direction you want to see only professed by people that behave very close to what I would describe as the very worst our species have to offer?

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Norberg

0xy• 2 days ago

Only in Europe could a party with socialist-leaning values on every single issue except immigration be branded 'far right'. This is the case in every single European country for some reason.

Marine Le Pen's party in France leans socialist on econ but is painted as 'far right' for the same reason.

viccis3• 2 days ago

I don't see how that particular political expression is a risk to their VPN's stance. This is a lot of nothing; would have been better to ignore the screeching from Bluesky.

m4xp• 1 day ago

In fact I would argue that if he was cancelled like the mob wanted it would reflect badly on mullvad, If you cave to a bunch of Twitter warriors am I supposed to trust you from keeping my privacy when the government comes knocking?

_def• 2 days ago

We want to liken Mullvad to a force of nature. Or to cryptography. It just mechanically does its thing with no human arbiters.

I can't even find the right words to describe how wrong this sounds to me

stego-tech• 1 day ago

It’s Cloudflare and Stormfront all over again, at least from my perspective. As much as folks want to somehow find a way to separate a company from its leadership or founders, the reality is that giving money to Mullvad rewards someone who in turn gives their share of the money to, well, fascist scumbags.

People need to understand taking that position is itself free speech. Nobody is saying he can’t give money to Nazis or fascists or some other problematic group, what we’re saying is that there are consequences for doing so. If Mullvad wanted to distance itself from these problematic positions or people, they could just buy them out and tell them to fuck off. That, too, is a perfectly valid response that doesn’t impugn upon anyone’s speech.

The problem with people claiming to be pro-free speech or anti-censorship while supporting authoritarian regimes or ideologies is that the two are inherently in conflict: the absolute last thing a fascist actually wants is freedom of speech, and so hiding behind such a virtuous shield while directly contributing to groups whose goals would dismantle and destroy that shield wholesale is such a naked act of hypocrisy that anything else they say or do should be suspect.

Mullvad’s position, much like Cloudflare’s before it, is that we must tolerate the intolerant, even though the goals of the intolerant are to exterminate tolerance. This is the sort of Middle School thought experiment that should be a no-brainer, yet here we are again. For a company like Mullvad, that undermines their core currency - trust - at a foundational level that’s impossible to reconcile.

Donation Controversy

Related Stories