Mullvad co-CEO Fredrik Strömberg confirmed that neither Mullvad VPN AB, its parent company Amagicom AB, nor its sister company Tillitis AB played any role in supporting the political party.
It doesn't matter if the company itself was directly involved or not, the money came from the company, and from its' customers.
yeah it's like saying Elon is only a piece of shit on his free time so it's okay
edit: ~~piss~~ of shit
I'm not taking side here, but to be fair, Elon Musk is a shitty person doing shitty things both professionally and private. Mullvad VPN is at least only doing good things!
With that said. I have stopped using Mullvad VPN for now. We'll see how this all plays out.
gonna get downvoted to hell here but making EVs and charging infrastructure is a good thing. also rooftop solar and batteries.
still, fuck nazi elon.
edit: this isn’t even about “credit” for developing the tech or whatever. even if we all agree this stuff was going to happen with or without elon, the Tesla business is still putting these products on the market. That is good, just like Mullvad and VPN. They didn’t invent VPN or anything, they are just one (good) provider.
The only issue with Tesla is that the quality of their cars is mediocre at best, while you're paying premium, and that Tesla is the most childish and obstinate company to work with.
We have something called Råd & Rön's Blacklist, which is respected Swedish consumer magazine's list of products to avoid. Tesla is one of the brands that's listed there. Partly because of the poor quality of the cars and partly because they don't follow the rulings from the National Board for Consumer Complaints here in Sweden.
And they don't give a **** about insurance companies either. If something happens to your Tesla, you're on your own buying a new one yourself. You can forget about getting any sort of help from Tesla.
Rooftop solar is definitely not something Musk can take any credit for.
EVs maybe, but charging infrastructure that he made proprietary rather than using the open standard is not especially worthy of praise.
A commonly known US analog is the Chik-Fil-A restaurant chain. They are proudly Christian and got tons of flak for donating to “traditional family” organizations that spread gay hate and so on.
They stopped, but the owner still personally donates. So every dollar you spend there still fuels those hate groups. It just takes a slightly different path.
So the question isn’t “is the company bad,” it’s “what is your money funding?”
I’m tired boss…..
Just when you think you find good companies to support they end up being run by shitbags.
Ok, where to next for my VPN needs?
I highly doubt you'll find any company composed solely of people that support ideologies you agree with. I know that sounds flippant and dismissive but ultimately we should support the best options we have. Or I guess you can roll your own solution and trust that you have the skills to stay ahead of the opposition.
I guess there is a difference between the founder being a shit head and one of the rank and file being a shit head. Would be nice if just a few of the CEO class weren't psychopaths.
There's a big difference between a CEO that openly hates unions and has affairs or a software developer making 100k a year that makes racist AF on Facebook vs a CEO that's literally keeping a bunch of Nazis afloat and giving them an outsized voice.
Also, there's no best option when it comes to Nazis because if you give them an inch, they'll subvert democracy and human decency.
All private financing of political parties and politicians everywhere must stop.
Just as religion and state must be separated so must politics and money. If you hold more than $10 million in assets you don't get to influence politics. It's one or the other, not both.
I'm not at the point where this outweighs the reasons I picked mullvad yet. And the other cofounder's statement does at least give me hope that it might work itself out in a way I can accept before my current term is finished.
That being said, I'm not sure I can give money to the company when someone is profiting from that money and spending part of it on a political organization that expressly espouses a stance I believe to be harmful and dangerous. And it isn't like you can pirate a VPN, so it differs significantly from when actors or musicians do stupid shit.
That being said, I also don't think that using mullvad would be something other people would be obligated to avoid just because the CEO donated to a small and shitty political party. By itself, it isn't something so bad that it's possible to point to a customer and do more than inform them of the donation and maybe give them links to see for themselves that it's a shitty party. Or, at least that it's a party with some really shitty platforms.
But the guy needs to show a major shift in how he donates before I'll renew.
Just a rich person trying to get proto fascist powers. Yeah you wait a bit, but I won't and I hope it's the end of his company and career.
"I don't like co-owning a nazi bar." Well, boohoo, grow a spine and do something about it.
"I like this burger made by fascists. I'm going to keep eating this burger, I don't care where it came from or where my money buying the burger goes to."
So many comments here sound like this, geez. Same people saying "we can be friends, can't we, even if our politics differ?" Morality and respecting humans isn't politics. And no. We can't.
Also, yes, enforcing racial and national purity (remigration) is, in fact, fascist ideology. Get over it. It's not extreme, it's calling a spade a spade. https://lemmy.zip/comment/27359847
Also it’s a damn VPN. Pick another one. It’s not even like they can use the excuse that it’s the best in the field (still not an excuse but loads better than, I just “like” it)
There is no middle ground to be had with Nazis. It's us or them. If the Nazi won't leave Mullvad, then I will leave as a customer. Simple as
Neither right or left but mostly not left. Bunch of fuckers.
How can you try to defend VPN usage and privacy if you need to collect data to identify migrants or descendants of migrants to strip their citizenship and deport them? It's not like we don't have examples of fascists using technology to profile and identify their targets: nazi Germany and IBM, Israël and Azure, or the DOGE that siphonated as much data as they could...
that's the infuriating thing about all this. with Mullvad all you are to them is an account number. that's it. no email, no name, no address, nothing. you go to the site and they give you an account number and that's that. hell you can pay for the damn thing in cash.
So then the co-founder donates to a political party, with users money, that likely wants to do what you just said. How can I support that? my Mullvad subscription ends in like 2 hours today, i'm no renewing. And NOW I gotta spend the day finding a decent non-US based vpn. fantastic.
Private wealth is a mistake
Hey, so long as you don't use X, any Meta product, Google, or Amazon, (or any Musk-infected garbage, obvs), or Protonmail then sure, cancel Mullvad and trash talk the guy silly.
However. I very much doubt that's the case.
If it's not the case, that means this is performative. a.k.a. Bullshit.
I hope Mullvad buys him out, distances themselves as far as possible. But they are far from the only tech company with some right wing cunt mixed up with them. If you're gonna be pure you gotta go full-stack FOSS and a lot of us aren't there yet. So let's not pretend like all of us are.
This is not an all or nothing situation, people can criticise this for what it is, even if they're using any of the products/companies mentioned by you. Navigating a tech-fascist ecosystem is difficult and every criticism here is valid and important.
(Not using any of the aforementioned products/companies btw)
This is a bad attitude. It's like saying being vegetarian is performative if you aren't full vegan. And for the record, I use Mullvad (for now), I don't use any of the other services you mentioned, and I am vegan ;)
Racist co-founder. Let's just start calling a spade a spade. He's a racist.
ffs - first Proton, now this.
I've never liked the idea that I have to trust my VPN, and this news raises a pretty significant trust issue. Makes me think I've been approaching this from the wrong angle.
Anyone have experience with the TOR daemon?
And all you mfers were on about Andy Yen making a single tweet glazing Gail Slater.
Turns out lots of people can be shitty at once.
It also wasent a single tweet. It was tweets/comments plural, with him also talking about how the GOP was immune from the influence of big tech (ultra mega LOL) and would take them to task (a stunningly, knee slappingly stupid statement), that the GOP was the new "party of the little guy (holy fucking shit was that tone deaf)," then him using right wing phrasing and talking points to defend himself before finally defaulting to the same defense as Mullvad just did. "We are a political company that should not say political things, I.e. we have shitty political opinions that will cost us money once people find out about them so we will shut up now."
The proton CEO has not once apologized or said he was wrong about the Trump admin, even after they fired Gail Slater in the first year, the person he praised in his first effusive tweet about how great the incoming Trump admin was.
Wikipedia - is as always - doing a great job at gathering info and they wrote down what the party's policies are.
IMHO what they propose makes no sense:
How is that economy supposed to work? Where do you get the money from to finance this? Who should offset the missing work?
A $500k donation can bankroll your party for some time but certainly not an entire country...
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
