cross-posted from: https://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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Well there's one thing I do know: I sure as hell wouldn't trust that VPN operator
Is it really "may have"? Seems pretty clear that they have.
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".
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