Frustrated. I signed up for protonvpn because I was using their services. Then dropped their services and moved most things to self hosting and moved the vpn to mullvad. Now mullvad is in the shitter so I guess I have to switch again. Where to go? Suggestions?
It seems that IVPN is getting a lot of new customers. I have never heard about them before though. Don’t take this as any sort of recommendation or anything.
Racist co-founder. Let’s just start calling a spade a spade. He’s a racist.
“donation”? this is called lobbying. And it should be illegal.
If it was illegal to donate money, these money would still reach the recipients - but without anyone’s knowledge.
good, then make the punishment heavy enough so that even if a few are caught, they are made examples of. I am thinking if the illegal lobbying money is higher than a certain amount he is forced to step down and the company is run by a board of truestees for a year. Will they be able to find ways around it? Sure they are resourceful and have an army of lawyers shamelessly trained at finding loopholes, but it will be much harder than now which is basically a walk in the park for them.
he is forced to step down and the company is run by a board of truestees for a year
What company? Daniel Berntsson used his personal funds.
Political parties need donations and membership fees to survive because the alternative - where political parties receive funds from the state - makes them dependable and controllable by the state. There are many laws that regulate such donations. Did he break any law? If not, should the law be stricter? It’s up to the debate.
The idea that we should make everything illegal and punishable and that will solve every problem is just naive.
where political parties receive funds from the state - makes them dependable and controllable by the state.
Lol, what so you think its easier to implement a fair support scheme for political parties through private means than govermental means? You prefer political parties be dependent on whims of private companies who only make these donations with strings attached? You think donations don’t make parties controllable by their donors if they are private? There is simply no logic to this statement.
I am sure you are gonna make an argument along the lines of “but look what if all these donations depended on the current US goverment, surely it couldn’t be worse than a private company”. That means you are missing the big picture and how Trump got into goverment in the first place. Pointing at a government that is so shit because it has million strings attached to other entities including zionist lobbies and tech giants and then saying being dependent on goverment for election funds is dangerous is just bad logic. It is also quite delusional to think that one could have a fair donation scheme where interest of private companies are involved. Lobbying has been the menace of democracy for well over a century.
Also the very fact that politicial parties need on the order of hundereds of millions of dollars for campaigning is already outrageous enough. Things like super PACs is just another loophole to get the party with more connections in power. All of these can be much better regulated with laws and not letting private companies run rampant on politics.
What company? Daniel Berntsson used his personal funds.
All you are doing with this statement is you are pointing at a loophole. Does not matter, personal funds can still be used to do lobbying for a company. So whatever stricter implementations one should come up with it should try to cover and punish loopholes like this to reduce frequency of it happening.
There is simply no logic to this statement.
Yes, but only because you invented this statement in order to heroically ‘beat’ it.
I am sure you are gonna make an argument
It seems you’re having a lot of fun arguing with yourself. I’m not gonna interfere 🤝
Sounds like a seriously bad argument against laws…
“You’re saying I can only murder people in secret? I thought this was America.”
Would be fun to know who’s sponsoring this smear campaign. After all, Mullvad has been stepping on many toes with their pro-privacy advocacy and enablement. I’d put my money on some combination of Thorn, Palantir, and whatever other surveillance capitalism corpos there are who’d benefit from less protected populace, both in policy and technology…
Why do you think it’s a smear campaign? Did he not donate?
Because (at least of lemmy) they spam articles about this, and treat it like some “gotcha” moment that would make the company no longer able to fulfill their purpose.
One of the owners investing in a political party should not be this big of a deal, and the articles provided are clearly made to put suspicion on not only Mullvad but also on ÖP.
Because (at least on lemmy) they spam articles about this, and treat it like some “gotcha” moment that would make the company no longer able to fulfill their purpose.
Because more militant left leaning views are pretty common here. Seems to be the Occam’s Razor answer.
Yes of course, it is to me just clear that it is not about Mullvad. The post are about ÖP.
To what end? Surely locals would have a better idea of exactly where their politics stand… what’s the point in giving a false impression to people from random countries on the Internet?
So people are mostly driven of “what is popular”, so if you spam the article and astroturf them. You give the illusion that it is a big problem that a lot of people care about. And that leads to people taking it more seriously.
So the end here is to make people who would leave the left-party (Vänsterpartiet) to vote for ÖP, feel alienated. “Oh my god, I can’t vote for a far right party! I better vote for the ‘only’ left party that is left.” is the thought they want them to have.
I guess I’m just skeptical this false impression will work on locals… I’d presume they aren’t hearing from this group from lemmy mainly and likely already have feelings established, no? It just seems to me this wouldn’t be a good forum on which to spread misinformation… strikes me as a lot more likely that a forum known for being pretty left leaning is just latching onto a story that is related to their interest.
I want to know if money I’m paying a company is directly contributing to fascists. According to Wikipedia,
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.
Nationalism is a Key Smell of fascism.
Nationalism is a big part of leftist parties also, fascists does not have claim on that within itself.
Also as I have written in previous posts what ÖP is calling for is already part of the government today, and in a Swedish context means that migrants are given help if they VOLUNTARILY wants to leave.
https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2025/10/ett-kraftigt-hojt-atervandringsbidrag/
Yes I checked the English wikipedia page, however the Swedish one makes no claims that ÖP would like to close the borders to migration. So I would urge to either check the parties own website about what they want or do a quick search. Clearly some bad actors have edited the page to put some views they have not voiced there.
The only source I find that says that “closed borders” are something they want, is flamman.se (what a suprise /s).
I don’t think you need a targeted campaign for that… give some of the
lunaticsextremistsleft leaning lemmy folks only the slightest hint that some service may not pass the purity testing and they will jump on it like a fly on a big pile of shit.Yes of course, it is to me just clear that it is not about Mullvad. The post are about ÖP.
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.
Its the last remnant of the various property owning/landed gentry/aristocracy control of government. They had to give up their exclusive right to sit in court and then “democratic” government, and then their exclusive right to vote.
They are holding on to money-as-influence, trying to convince us its fair because everyone can make donations (you get a great tax receipt!!). However, even donation limits are mainly just a way to cover up their thumbs on the scale, because all they require the rich to do is spread out their money.
The state financing parties is pretty valid and is practiced in many countries.
For example in Germany parties get paid around 1 € per vote received in elections.
millions in assets
Rich people and corporations will always be able to use their money to influence politics towards their interests.
Influencing politics works in other ways besides direct donations. The rich can put money into:
- media
- interest groups
- education
- studies
- events
- scholarships
- NGOs
Influencing voters to support your desired policies works well.
Then there’s of course the promise of investments, if policies are changed to your interests. In the simplest case this is a local government changing zoning, building infrastructure, softening environmental or noise regulations in order to for an investor to build a factory. This in turn brings money, employment, and tax revenue to the local government.
Instead of direct donations, a politician can be hired to give a speech somewhere.
Or less directly, hire the politician’s child into a well paying position.
Promising a politician a well paid job for their time outside government is of course also a popular way.
Of course you can regulate all of that in various ways to make it more difficult or at least more transparent.
Giving tax money so politicans can market themselves needs to stop. We all here understand how crowdfunding works, it would work just as well with political parties.
The funding they receive from their own members should be enough.
i mean, that’s not quite how it worked for me. politics (at least the kind i did) is basically getting the people with $10 million or more in assets to donate to and get involved with their communities. we had to trade some favors (there are a few musicians on the board who lend their services for such instances. most of the time it was that, once or twice it was “teach my fuckup kid how to work”), but we got funding for homelessness services.
if we couldn’t trade those favors, we wouldn’t have any homeless shelters in my county. they ran off grants mostly (during democrat administrations. during republican administrations, we ran off hope and loan forgiveness), but they can’t expand without extraordinary help. which unfortunately takes politicking (which i hate, but they wanted me doing it)
Then your state is not capable of taxing those with money to extract the value it needs to run said country…
Why do we need private money to fix public things because the politic-people can’t be bothered to look anywhere but the next donation goal.
This isnt a donation but a “Pretty please, pay me a standard contractor rate in the disguise of a ‘donation’”.Man I hate this illusionary and superficial bullshit
the taxes weren’t changing, but the grants dried up. yet you blame the taxes.
it’s like you’re a one trick pony. figure out some other thing to harp on
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?
I’ve been looking at TOR, I2P, Reticulim, Freenet, Snowflake, IPFS
Tor get’s blocked a lot. It’s the fastest of the options. The level of anonymization is ok. If you piss off a nation-state, it may not protect you sufficiently. It’s had a history of leaks, If an intelligence ag owns enough of the exits, timing attacks might out you.
I2P is more secure, harder to block, but it’s really slow and has very limited access to the clearnet. It’s also super easy to DDOS. There are some torrents, forums and chatrooms out there on i2p, latency is rough.
Reticulum is pretty cool. It’s a protocol and you access things like nomad net on it. It’s crypto is good, there’s no clearnet access. It may have issues when/if it scales
Snowflake is slow AF, mainly used to get anonymous access out from restricted nations-states.
IPFS web3 crypto storage. you can host files/sites on it. It’s kinda hard to make stuff on there go away, it’s also kinda hard to get stuff to stay. If you’re not paying a pinning service, even daily scripting the pins to keep data up there is a losing battle. It’s slow, fragile, not very anonymous.
This is way worse than what Yen did. This guy donated a lot of money to a party that explicitly pushes demigration policies, and if there was any doubt that this was a motivating factor for the donation, he later said he felt those policies were necessary. That’s understandable to not want to give your money to someone who you know is going to go bankroll demigration politics with some of your money.
Yen praised the Republicans at large over an anti trust pick.
I think the other criticisms of Proton’s policy changes are valid, and everyone has different standards for what is enough to divest from a company I guess, but I’ve heard people calling Yen a fascist sympathizer for that statement, and that’s just divorced from reality imo.
The party is “pushing” for something that is already law. Re-migration, at least in a Swedish context, aims to let people VOLUNTARILY return to their home country but with the intensive to get some cash to start up their new lifes there.
Sources…
https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2025/10/ett-kraftigt-hojt-atervandringsbidrag
Totally already legal to cross corpses to remove the “fake Swedes.” Sweden is for Swedes after all.
https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut
Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden.
“I’m prepared to cross corpses,” he said.One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to “Sweden is the country of Swedes”.
In a section of Yoshi’s Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to “go over corpses” to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. “It’s not going to be pretty to send these people home,” he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.
He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There’s a difference. It’s a qualitative difference," Allard said.
Yes soo the article you sent now has more info, and more to grab at. I don’t know why fria tider made him sound way more harsh that he actually is in the interview. But if you check the clip they have linked he is clearly talking about people who does not want to be part of Swedish society and/or criminals. I do not feel that it is a fascist view to want to throw out non-citizens that commit crimes.
In many if not all countries in Europe this has been standard since like, forever. There is no logical reason why you should keep criminals within your borders.
I still wouldn’t support it and would probably pull my money from someone who is actively promoting it. Often this kind of sentiment is a soft pedaled version of more ugly policies, and I just don’t agree with it in the first place. I think nationalism is generally an ignorant position and the lesson of the 20th century should be that trying to maintain homogeneous states nearly always leads to genocide in the worst cases and apartheid states in the best of times. So this doesn’t assuage me much.
That said, extra context is always welcome.
You are of course free to do what you want with your money! :)
Nationalism is about believing and wanting the concepts of nations/borders. And with that the analysis of the ethnicities within or outside those borders (by ethnicity I mean cultural not race), and that a nation should be a collection of people that work together to make that nation better. So blaming apartheid and genocide, is like blaming a hammer because it can be used to kill someone.
Perhaps, but one could argue it happens so often that the hammer lends itself to hammering this particular nail, and so often devolves into that. The Balkans are this experiment played out, attempting to carve out ethno states, and we’ve seen how that’s gone. Once you start saying things like “this country should only be (or primarily be) for X people”, you almost necessarily have to engage in some degree of genocide (in the wider sense of removing a people and culture that doesn’t fit the paradigm), or apartheid, otherwise the statement ends up a bit vacuous, no?
Israel is, in my view, a very clear example of this; once you’ve decided “this is a Jewish state”, anyone not Jewish by definition become second class citizens.
If we’re just talking general assimilation, that’s more nuanced… I don’t oppose calls for more assimilation, but I think governments have done a very poor job in using more stick than carrot. They tend to not put any effort in helping people integrate, which is, from experience, very difficult. One could argue it isn’t their responsibility, but I think such framings for state action is silly… either the state has an interest in a thing being done or it doesn’t, and in this case I think they very much do. Most immigrants that form insular communities do so not out of any inherent pull to, but because they’re already being somewhat ostracized. In the US, Chinatowns arose as a direct result of ostracization and discrimination.
I do think there is a danger of assimilation programs overzealously wiping out culture… the Sami have faced multiple attempts in the past at trying to stamp out their culture, the US and Australia religiously forced the elimination of many native cultures in the name of assimilation. It is also a fine line to walk. But there is undoubtedly a state interest (and immigrant interest!) in assimilating into society.
I’d argue the binding culture that should be assimilated shouldn’t be things as fuzzy as ethnicity… the culture that binds should be the values of that nation. Which doesn’t really have anything to do with ethnicity.
I’m out of the loop. What happened with proton?
Public statements of support from its CEO for a regime actively weaponizing technology to build a mass-surveillance state.
Removing its no logging policy after being compelled by court order to log and disclose a user’s IP and browser fingerprint.
Personally, I gave up on Proton after they amended their TOS to include a mandatory arbitration clause, including a ban on class action lawsuits. IMO only the dirtiest of corporations rely on mandatory arbitration clauses. Without the spectre of a class action lawsuit, if a VPN were to get caught breaking its promises to its users, the only real damage the company would likely suffer would be reputational. These are for-profit corporations. The only way we can hold them accountable is to put their profits at risk.
edit: looks like @oce beat me to it
I do wonder what could they have done in the email case? I don’t think that there’s any country where they could just let you not comply with a court order. And due to how email works they can’t just encrypt the subject lines or the sender/receiver.
In that one case I lean more into pointing more fingers to the Swiss government, rather than to proton. They’re still not blameless tho, maybe they could have used some sort of canary to let people know they were being surveilled, and be more clear on how to avoid these situations.Don’t log it, you can’t be compelled to hand over data you don’t have. They said outright that they didn’t log it.
Run SMTP purely on IO sockets. Don’t make files. You draft your email into your own cryptographically secure blob, When it’s time to send it, you fire it through an SMTP daemon built to use memory only, once it’s gone it’s gone. If the govt wants that data, they can go to the ISP for it. Maybe it communicates securely with SMTP servers set up in countries that are actually good at observing privacy.
Good Guy security provider could also terminate your account or lose your password.
The thing is, they oversold their security. They’re STILL overselling their security. The release rabid PR dogs / Trolls out there to discount/discredit people bitching about the situation.
Alternatives to proton
https://www.xda-developers.com/replaced-entire-proton-subscription-with-free-private-apps/
Thank you.
That is very disappointing. Time to find a good alternative
It only benefits Mullvad if I walk away right now. I’ve got ~200 days left on my prepaid account. Hopefully in the next 200 days i’ll find a better or equivalent VPN service with CEOs that have yet to come out as complete shit-bags.
I believe they said they would offer refunds if that’s what you’re referring to by the 200 days
https://piunikaweb.com/2026/06/30/mullvad-browser-vpn-options-after-controversy/
Örebro Party looks more Marxist then right wing to me. Also it’s founder, Markus Allard, was expelled from the Left Party. Due to him liked a Far-Left antifascist organization called Revolutionary Front. The only right wing thing about them is they being for remigration policies. Otherwise it’s Marxist and left as hell.
“Remigration” is their made up word for ethnic cleansing.
So you are saying they are combining nationalist and socialist ideas? Do they classify themselves as a workers party?
Might have heard something like that before somewhere, just can’t put my finger on 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
Hey just FYI you wouldn’t be saying any of this unless you knew about the donation. What grocery store do you shop at?
Farmers markets and some local shops we have around us.
The irony of these holier-than-thou lemmy folks using a term like “calling a spade a spade”
“be 100% pure, organic, free-range, antifascist like me, otherwise we cant be friends or have discussions at all!!!”
Then do something by promoting alternatives, stop being lazy
https://www.xda-developers.com/replaced-entire-proton-subscription-with-free-private-apps/
You’re absoluetly right, and thank you, I’ll be using that link in my personal life.
As for VPN alternatives, as we know, not many have faced a raid by authorities like Mullvad, which does speak to the fact that they weren’t collecting user data. However, that may be only a matter of time in our increasingly surveiled world -
ProtonVPN - has its own controversies (CEO may be right-wing in supporting Republicans in the US) but has stood up to legal action previously
And, while potentially biased, there is a google doc users from reddit made to compare many of the options listed here and more.
i mean, while there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, why does it seem like so many people are trying their hardest to rack up the most unethical consumption? Like there’s a counter somewhere or something idk.
that was rhetorical, i know why. fucking cern weasels.
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)
Which one? The Pro-Israel vpn at PIA? The one thats Pro-Trump at ProtonVPN? NordVPN?
AirVPN and IVPN are both great options.
The other respectable option besides mullvad is ivpn
AirVPN seems to be the go-to for torrenting, and RiseUp exists but I don’t know how good it is
Air VPN was good for torrenting for years but most of the servers in torrent friendly countries are pretty full and slow these days.
I had them from 2020 until last fall. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of good options if you want port forwarding.
For torrents specifically, I would suggest getting some friends together to rent a seedbox or VPS on a torrent friendly provider. You may have total monthly bandwidth limits, but you have much better speed because p2p works so much better with a publically routable IP and open ports anyway.
A very small percentage of vpns can be classed as decent, especially if you are in the southern hemisphere. I requested my refund from mullvad today, my replacement option is?
AirVPN and IVPN are both fine. I don’t know why your hemisphere should matter aside from straight up being blocked so kind of hard for me to recommend without knowing that.
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:
- (Massively) cut taxes
- Reimmigration
- Reduce the normal work week by 25%
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…
Energy & Fuel policy
In 2025 the leader of the Örebro Party, Markus Allard, in a post on X wrote that he wished to see a complete elimination of taxes on energy & fuel.[48] Allard once again said that this was a priority for the Örebro Party in an X-post in 2026.[49] As taxes on energy and fuel make up 40 to 50% of the price in Sweden, abolishing them would lead to the prices being significantly decreased.
Again, never a path of substance to make this happen. This is how this spreads. It always sounds great in quips but no actual policy substance to get it across the line.
They are chasing votes from self absorbed people, it has always been a thing, but more people are getting into the scam globally now.
who should offset the missing work
I don’t know about the rest of your questions, but generally there wont be much missing work. Unemployment is rising thanks to automation and AI, and a lot of work is bullshit busy-work anyway.
With a lot of upheaval and confusion in the interim, I truly believe we could cut working hours by 50% and still be basically fine.
You can’t cut working hours if you get rid of all the immigrants doing the “busy-work”.
You can not like it and you can run away from mullvad that’s a fine thing to be motivated to do hut what the other cofounder said is true. We don’t win by being tribal and team based. We when by tolerating and coexisting. I don’t know how this “Nazi” had harmed people but giving money to a political party is only a part of the story. If no one cares to hear the other side you are just perpetuating the same hate.
apathy is evils best friend
I believe in allowing people to live comfortably and safely no matter their cultural or ethnic heritage. I believe in gay marriage and women’s rights.
What middle ground am I supposed to find with people who want to remove anyone who they deem not white enough from their country? What compromise do I make for the people who want to imprison homosexuals and violently convert their gay children? What is there to agree on with the man who believes that women are inferior, should stay at home and have 10 children, and owe him regular sex just because he is a man?
If you tolerate these ideas because you think it will make for a more peaceful world, those fascists are going to take your naivety and run away with it. There is no tolerance for intolerance.
Never heard of the tolerance paradox have you?
The way to resolve the tolerance paradox is to not tolerate intolerance.
“Donating money to” and “bankrolling the entire party, 10x-ing their entire funding in 2024 alone” are different things.
There are SO many people here who would happily dine with actual fascists just because they “make a good product.” Completely ignoring what their funds that support them go to and lead to direct harm.
And if you think I’m hyperbolic, please, tell me how this is an incorrect line of thinking: https://lemmy.zip/comment/27359847
I agree with you about the tolerance paradox. I am sure you’d also agree that we must decide when to apply it because not every disagreement is a tolerance paradox.
But now that we’ve named the tolerance paradox, now that it’s a meme we can just invoke on a dime, I find it gets used constantly. The word fascist is also everywhere now. Anything remotely draconian and you are a fascist and then a Nazi. The word Nazi gets thrown around very lightly around here. And the conversation slips very quickly from “don’t tolerate Nazis” to “it’s okay to punch them in the face” to “it’s a moral imperative to kill them.”
I think we should be extremely judicious about deciding it’s a moral imperative to kill anyone. And I don’t see that extreme judiciousness around Lemmy generally. This political party’s beliefs are repugnant. And I am not ready to call for the death of someone who gives them money.
I’m not saying I know exactly where to draw the line. But when I even try to engage people on where the line should be, I quickly find myself on the other side of it in their eyes. I’m an apologist, a collaborator, a fascist myself, and so on.
This climate overall is deeply uncomfortable for me and even worse is the lack of self reflection about it.
Maybe my problem is thinking that discussion actually matters and trying to fully engage the topic, when others are just here to talk big and pronounce death upon their perceived foes.
I get what you’re saying. However, we are dealing with rising actual, full fledged fascism on a world stage. And a common rebuttal from a fascist is that “everything I believe can’t be fascist” or “I’m not suddenly a fascist, what I believed yesterday wasn’t fascist.”
The truth of the matter is that fascism never truly left. The ultra-nationalism became more discreet and diffused with pride for one’s country. It eventually became unquestioning loyalty. See: American exceptionalism. Racial purity and bigotry was shamed on a larger scale, so fascists retreated to quieter spaces, but it never left. Through operation paperclip, America did the opposite and welcomed former Nazis and SS and allowed them to start families and provided them land (more than they did for African Americans, that’s for sure.) So is it any wonder that the Confederacy, which the Nazis admired and learned from, and the Nazis themselves, would lay low and eventually make a resurgence, as they are now?
All that to say, the tenant that I go by is what I said. If we have a disagreement, as another person said, about baking a cake, does that make someone a fascist? No, not unless that cake somehow is promoting some form of intolerance/harm/dehumanization of human life and identity (i.e. a Swastika cake probably won’t go over too well with the public, and you’d lose my business for sure.)
I think the ProtonVPN vs Mullvad recent issues are good to look at. Did the Proton CEO say some dumb stuff about Republican antitrusts? Yes. Did ProtonVPN provide an affiliate link to a French far right influencer? Yes. Do these actions make them fascist or fascist supporting? Probably not, that’s a bit of a stretch. The company also revoked the affiliate link and put out a statement that they do not share those individuals views. But we should still, and rightfully so, call them out and hold it to them that these are issues. They’re certainly warnings at minimum. And a CEO can be removed.
Mullvad’s founder has a lot more sway on the company’s path than a french youtuber. Mullvad’s founder isn’t just donating a small donation to the republican party either. He’s, essentially, funding an entire fringe alt right party on his own, one that is in support of ethnic cleansing. That means there is a very high likelihood that the founder shares these beliefs, and even if he doesn’t, by funding a party so aggressively, it provides them with an outsized voice amongst legislation and can lead to direct harm all by using money that you or I gave to them for a product where there are several other choices available to us. Does that make someone fascist, or at least aligned with fascism? Well, supporting a party that believes in ultra-nationalism with social and racial hierarchy/purity…I mean…I can’t honestly say it doesn’t.
So, is ProtonVPN fascist? No Is ProtonVPNs CEO a fascist? I doubt it Is MullvadVPN fascist? No, not yet at least Is Mullvad’s founder a fascist? I’m leaning towards yes Is the Örebro party fascist? Yes. By definition.
Except everyone thinks this applies to them. Baking gay wedding cakes is a good example because is forcing religious people to do it not tolerating their intolerance or is it being intolerant of their religion.
That’s a terrible example. No one, individual or government, is forcing anyone to do anything of the sort.
It is entirely within the right of the business owner to decline a request to bake a cake they don’t want to bake.
Can there be social repercussions for said action? Of course. Do people have the autonomy to decide not to give a business their money for whatever reason? Absolutely.
I wouldn’t give them my money because, I’m sorry, if your “religion” is based on oppression and denial of other humans their basic rights, then no, I won’t support you. Fuck off.
(Ironic as I know this incident and it’s based on Christian religiosity, which following the actual teachings of Jesus would welcome the stranger, the wanderer, the sick, and the hungry. Regardless of whether they believe or not, they are all God’s children. Given that Lucifer has no power of creation, only trickery, and God created all of his children, would that not imply Chrisitians should be accepting of Gods children in all their myriad forms, and to hate another is to fall for the trickery of Satan? That’s not religion, that’s just rationalizing bigotry. So double fuck off.)
It’s actually illegal in the US to discriminate against certain customers at a place of public accommodation. The famous gay cake case that went to the Supreme Court ultimately went in favor of the baker, but on very narrow procedural grounds that his religion had been targeted in the case. In the opinion, the court affirmed states rights to make anti-discrimination laws generally.
I still don’t think anti-discrimination laws are the government forcing anyone to bake a cake. They’re saying if you want to bake cakes, you need to be prepared to serve everybody. No one is forcing them to open a bakery.
Huh, was wondering why I was taking my sweet time moving away from Windscribe to see if the grass was as green as they say
Maybe you agree with windscribe, maybe you just ignore the reality.
Agree with windscribe regarding what?
Their politics
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
Where are the nazis? Are you talking about the leninist party ÖP as nazis?
I think that is the modern use of the word “Nazi”, best translated with “i don’t like them”
Yes, but this is super dangerous. I have seen young boys in my politcal party (liberal conservative) basically stand guard for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_clubs because “well the left calls everything nazi, including us. So these guys probably wants the same as us. And we on the right needs to stand together.”
Ironically rhetoric like this is in fact normalizing the word nazi, and has more become a word to describe a group that the left doesn’t like. Rather than a fascist leaning party.
Highly recommend everyone read the direct response this article is quoting. Direct from the other owner of the company on Hacker News. Makes the whole “scandal” seem very understandable in my opinion.
Additionally,
All I see is a bunch of both-sidesing, conflating “speech” with economic power, and making claims that clearly don’t align with their actions.
If I had any doubts about leaving, the apathy shown in your screenshots from the co-founder has removed them
That reply just shows me that he fundamentally misunderstands the issue. By giving money to Mullvad I would directly support the pos party that this guy donates to. Do they not understand where the money in their bank account is coming from?
I read it as he implicitly does understand that and is the reason he suggests getting a refund if that is your priority. He is just urging people to see nuance that there is collateral damage for the rest of the people that make mullvad too. A loose analogy would be, I disagree with Trump and I wish my country would divest from the USA, which is all well and good, but the workers don’t have great protections and would likely be the first to hurt. Sure a majority of them voted for him I could rationalize, but that’s not the same rationalisation companies use to layoff before they actually start to hurt.
Decent people are boycotting the USA though, because that is the only chance we have to get the people of the USA to snap out of it and care enough to change their society. The same applies here, where Stromberg says it is not that big a deal, it’s just fascism.
and we appreciate y’all doing it, at least here in California.
the line for the secret delicious berries was shorter this year than usual (they are in watsonville and delicious. go get some at gizdich ranch and give Nita my love) but that’s probably because the growing season is all el nino wonky.
Sure, that’s fine, I tend to agree, I was drawing out the picture of the collateral, so it’s considered as much or as little as it is worth, but at least considered.
I would hope that the mullvad staff are completely opposed to fascism, it would be naive to believe that is true of all of them though. I have no interest in them losing their jobs (except for the fascists of course), or in the company failing. But it would be dishonest to continue supporting mullvad now, while long term not supporting companies such as unilever, monsanto, nestle, amazon etc etc. Mullvad are no doubt in a bit of a crisis right now, but I do not believe they have responded well to this… they posted on nazi twitter, but not on mastodon, or bluesky for instance. I’m currently looking into alternative vpn options, and don’t have a single one that ticks the boxes. This sucks, my government (australia) has serious overreach/privacy issues, and is very clearly in the pocket of the usa, and israel.
Many options, so much dodgy. https://embed.kumu.io/9ced55e897e74fd807be51990b26b415#vpn-company-relationships
In the last couple of months I just bought 12 months through a voucher that is no more so doubt I’d get a refund, so I’ve got some time to decide. I swear everything I look into deep enough has something going wrong with it, but I guess all we can do it take the battles we can handle.
Sounds reasonable for me to cancel Mullvad and tell everyone else to cancel. I don’t care if that piece of shit white supremacist Nazi did it as a personal choice or as part of the company. He is my enemy, I am at war with him and I will not do anything to support him. Hopefully enough people stand up so they put him out on his ass and he loses everything which is less than Nazi’s deserve.
Not good enough. If I give them money, the fascist co-owner will use it to donate to other fascists. Either remove him from the company or lose some customers. That is their choice. There is no middle ground with fucking Nazis. It’s us or them!
Understandable how?
Understandable in that there’s no way a company or employer can tell you how to spend your money. That there’s 2 owners with divided beliefs who are working for a similar cause. They are indeed private individuals using their individually earned money for private purposes.
If, let’s say, Mullvad as a company was donating to this political party, that would be alarming and worth freaking out about, but it’s one guy, basically donating with his funds he makes from his job. In a corporate environment there are many different people with different beliefs, of different economic statuses. Somebody might be donating thousands to one candidate, another donating hundreds to another.
Just because the co-owner of a company you like supports somebody you don’t like, doesn’t mean you should jump ship. Who knows if everybody else in the company is donating to other political causes?
“I don’t like co-owning a nazi bar.” Well, boohoo, grow a spine and do something about it.
lol. Yes.
I will sign up for Mullvad tomorrow if he actually does something meaningful about it.
I haven’t even looked up the price, but I’ll keep my word.
Only I won’t have to, because the odds are this guy is another spineless piece of shit.
