That's unfortunate. The Proton Mail guy is iffy, the Kagi guy has thin skin or whatever it was - maybe you just have to be a bit nutty to care about privacy enough to do the hard thing of building...
That's unfortunate. The Proton Mail guy is iffy, the Kagi guy has thin skin or whatever it was - maybe you just have to be a bit nutty to care about privacy enough to do the hard thing of building a product around a service that protects it?
I think it's accurate to say that Kagi's controversies here are nowhere near the same level of bad that Proton or Mullvad's CEOs have now pulled. But, I do think it's also worth saying that the...
I think it's accurate to say that Kagi's controversies here are nowhere near the same level of bad that Proton or Mullvad's CEOs have now pulled.
But, I do think it's also worth saying that the "bad review" had legitimate criticism – particularly if you don't like AI – of Kagi and it's CEO. Having read it, I do strongly feel that the CEO of Kagi has a number of ignorant opinions, and that those opinions run the risk of causing damage to Kagi down the road. The CEO's response did nothing to quell these feelings, either.
I wouldn't throw the guy to the sharks over it, but if he believes his company can just choose to be unbiased/apolitical, he's fooling himself and it's just a matter of time before a poor decision is made because of it.
Hey thank you for the deep comment. I wish I had been more clear in my top-level comment but we're completely on the same page - I too was pretty unhappy about the Kagi backlash when that was...
Hey thank you for the deep comment. I wish I had been more clear in my top-level comment but we're completely on the same page - I too was pretty unhappy about the Kagi backlash when that was happening, and it bums me out when I see it brought up again. (But, I couldn't make my point without bringing it up.) It wasn't a good look for them but it also wasn't toxic to the point that it should keep anyone from using their product, unlike Proton and Brave (and Automattic, and Twitter/X, and Hyprland, ...). I'm a diehard, I only google with Kagi. For now I'll still use Mullvad but I'm keeping an eye on this.
Ouch! You do what now with who? But, yes, I understand! I'm trying to remember to use "duck", "margin" "ecosianing", or just plain "search" but it's not easy ;)
I only google with Kagi.
Ouch! You do what now with who?
But, yes, I understand! I'm trying to remember to use "duck", "margin" "ecosianing", or just plain "search" but it's not easy ;)
Google the company actually dislikes it when people use "google" as a generic term for searching for something online because it dilutes their trademark. They as a company are the only ones who...
Google the company actually dislikes it when people use "google" as a generic term for searching for something online because it dilutes their trademark. They as a company are the only ones who benefit from you avoiding it.
Not sure I agree with that. Google may benefit from a standpoint of trademark security, but when everyone uses “google” generically they benefit from brand recognition, which is arguably more...
Not sure I agree with that. Google may benefit from a standpoint of trademark security, but when everyone uses “google” generically they benefit from brand recognition, which is arguably more valuable to them. Especially in these hyper-competitive times, when the staying power of search engines as an entire category is on the rocks, they want their name on your lips. When no one is saying “google” anymore they’ve lost the mind share battle to Claude or whatever.
Google themselves instructs employees to always say "search with/using Google" because of the trademark dilution issue, so your assessment of the value to Google certainly isn't the same as...
Google themselves instructs employees to always say "search with/using Google" because of the trademark dilution issue, so your assessment of the value to Google certainly isn't the same as theirs. I personally think it would be preferable (and funny) to live in a world where anyone offering a search engine can call it "google", even if Google themselves fade from relevance. You could have Kagi Google and Claude Google and so on.
It’s like when voat started out with a user base exclusively of people banned from Reddit and immediately turned into a nazi bar - because, of course, if you select from the population of “people...
It’s like when voat started out with a user base exclusively of people banned from Reddit and immediately turned into a nazi bar - because, of course, if you select from the population of “people permabanned from Reddit” there’s going to be a lot of people who were banned for a reason. Even if there’s also a lot of people who weren’t banned for a good reason.
If you, like me, had no idea what the Örebro party is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#Ideology I'm still a bit confused on what they are actually trying to accomplish, but I'm (in...
If you, like me, had no idea what the Örebro party is:
The ideas of Markus Allard has been described as national conservative and "conservative with a Marxist stamp".[27] Expo has described the Örebro Party as part of a growing left-wing nationalistic movement in Sweden.[28] The party has also been described as both right-wing populist[29] and left-wing populist as well as left-conservative.[30] Party leader Markus Allard was referred to by the Waste Ombudsman at the Swedish Taxpayers' Association as a communist, nationalist and a populist. The chief editor at a local newspaper in Örebro made accusations against the Örebro Party and said that it was his personal opinion that they are "racists, fascists and nazis".[31]
I'm still a bit confused on what they are actually trying to accomplish, but I'm (in my head) putting them in the same bucket I put the "authoritarian left" groups into, as it seems they share a lot of concerning behaviors and views.
You've skipped the part right after: Just another one of "those damn people leeching off of welfare". Swedish Democrats did a much better job of that by hyperfocusing on immigrants (actually non...
You've skipped the part right after:
The party claims to stand for a "class-conscious populism" which according to party leader Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology[32] 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 of transfers that are a net negative for society such as those who, despite having an ability to work, live off of social welfare benefits, as well as those who work "made-up services"[33] that the party deems serve no societal function, such as bureaucrats, consultants, public sector communications specialists, strategists and HR-specialists.[34] The party and its leader Markus Allard strongly criticize the "Transferiat" and argues it needs to be abolished as it "sucks money out of the state".[35] 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 "lives off of transfers", as specified, as a large economic net-negative and an obstacle for a functional society.[36][37]
Just another one of "those damn people leeching off of welfare". Swedish Democrats did a much better job of that by hyperfocusing on immigrants (actually non whites and especially Arabs/Muslims, but nobody in this crappy country is honest enough to admit this).
Just FYI that 20% of Swedes vote for that party, its literal Nazi roots and all, while something like 80% support broad actions against the groups I mentioned above to various degrees.
I think it's also worth drawing attention to their policy of "remigration", i.e. ethnically cleansing Sweden by kicking out everybody without Swedish descent.
I think it's also worth drawing attention to their policy of "remigration", i.e. ethnically cleansing Sweden by kicking out everybody without Swedish descent.
I'll have to reconsider Mullvad when my time runs out. What's the best alternative? I've heard good things about IVPN (and it uses quantum resistant algorithms), but I'd like something that...
I'll have to reconsider Mullvad when my time runs out.
What's the best alternative? I've heard good things about IVPN (and it uses quantum resistant algorithms), but I'd like something that supports port forwarding. Does such a service with the trifecta exist (quantum resistance, port forwarding, good reputation)?
In this context: If you are reconsidering using MullvadVPN there is only a minuscule way you can consider using ProtonVPN instead. And I'd be baffled if anyone on Tildes prefers other tiny,...
In this context: If you are reconsidering using MullvadVPN there is only a minuscule way you can consider using ProtonVPN instead.
And I'd be baffled if anyone on Tildes prefers other tiny, nationalist parties/groups over "Örebro partiet" that much.
Looks like AirVPN is waiting to implement quantum-resistant ciphers until they deem quantum computers a threat. This seems short-sighted, since harvest now, decrypt later attacks can happen.
I’ve been mulling over (heh) this news since it was posted here and I’m really torn. Mullvad is a great service. It works well and the client is frequently updated with improvements. From a...
I’ve been mulling over (heh) this news since it was posted here and I’m really torn. Mullvad is a great service. It works well and the client is frequently updated with improvements. From a privacy standpoint they’re doing everything exactly right… they’re the gold standard of what this kind of company should be.
I’m not anywhere near Sweden and don’t know much about its politics but obviously I don’t want to fund fascist anti-immigration movements anywhere. Ugh.
When I first started using VPN services many years ago I was proud of my decision to use Private Internet Access. They were doing everything right, and I loved the endorsement / involvement of Rick Falkvinge. After a few years I realized Falkvinge had at some point quietly parted ways with PIA — sus! — and of course their acquisition by Kape Technologies was bad, bad news. If you can’t trust your VPN provider, what’s even the point? Just from a basic opsec/privacy standpoint, I had to jump ship.
After a pretty lengthy research phase I landed on Mullvad. It was following all the same best practices that initially won me over to PIA, going even further in some respects. Not being operated from a Five Eyes country was a nice bonus. So is the fact that (AFAIK) Mullvad’s never been one of those spammy VPNs with all the aggressive YouTube and podcast marketing campaigns. As far as I’m aware Mullvad remains uncompromised by hacks, leaks, breaches, etc. and their third-party audits always come back clean.
So yeah, I’m torn. I’m a satisfied customer! I don’t think there are any better alternatives on the market right now. Mullvad has earned my trust.
In a sea of shady VPN companies out there, Mullvad really felt like they were one of the only ones that were aboveboard. I started with them directly, and then Mozilla decided to white-label them....
In a sea of shady VPN companies out there, Mullvad really felt like they were one of the only ones that were aboveboard.
I started with them directly, and then Mozilla decided to white-label them. That cemented my choice even further, as I saw it as an incredibly strong vote of confidence. I have to assume that Mozilla did their due diligence and chose to pair with a trustworthy company.
I feel what you're feeling, in that I had a lot of goodwill built up regarding their product, and this news is causing some pretty serious whiplash for me.
I'm like really annoyed too I'm a pretty damn happy Mullvad customer. I know it's impossible to be like a completely ethical customer but there are too few edges between my money and a fascist...
I'm like really annoyed too I'm a pretty damn happy Mullvad customer. I know it's impossible to be like a completely ethical customer but there are too few edges between my money and a fascist party in this graph
I just went through several VPNs before settling on SurfShark (wiki) again for now. The wiki entry gives the impression they spend their money back into the security community. They've got audits...
I just went through several VPNs before settling on SurfShark (wiki) again for now. The wiki entry gives the impression they spend their money back into the security community. They've got audits from multiple companies instead of just the same one over and over. I was able to get it at like $1.58/month after using a discount code from Google.
This site compares different providers, though won't help you discern their rep.
(If you remember me seeking a VPN w/ port forwarding on the proton post, turns out providers conflate that with p2p NAT traversal so mind that while searching. But my real issue was DNS blocklists listing my tracker's IP block as malicious)
Preamble and some kind if defensive manoeuvre It's really fucking hard to write anything nuanced about this without coming off as a fucking Nazi. I'll try... (And maybe it becomes apparent that...
Preamble and some kind if defensive manoeuvre
It's really fucking hard to write anything nuanced about this without coming off as a fucking Nazi.
I'll try... (And maybe it becomes apparent that I'm a fucking Nazi and then I'll have to reeducate myself because I really don't want to be one!).
And I want to try because I want a little more nuance in the world sometimes.
And I want to try because I think Mullvad is actually trying to do good too, and I think it is important that as long as we have countries & companies that there are multiple companies from several countries selling essential services, and in this point in time I consider VPNs essential services. (If they weren't we wouldn't have this discussion in the first place.)
But obviously I'd prefer to live in another world than the one we are in now where techno-fascists with global companies are leading governments into a dystopian nightmare of control and surveillance.
Of all the terrible alternatives it seems to me like Mullvad is a decent one: from a technical point as well as a geopolitical one.
I don't agree with Örebropartiet or other nationalist, rightwing, right leaning or even left leaning parties: Ethnicity doesn't matter and immigration is not in any way the root cause of any societal problem in Sweden or the world. It is now and has always been about wealth and wealth distribution!
(Where wealth is mostly about control and usage of natural resources including human work but also about the numbers in the ledgers that give that control. Obviously social class, ethnicity, sex, gender, ability, age, etc are being used to justify this, but they are not in themselves the cause and reason.)
Disclosure: I'm born in Sweden to European migrants who came here in the 1970s. I'm white, heterosexual cisman, middle age, culturally middle class, currently working class. Physically able with a couple NPDs under investigation.
Lost in translation/copyright-violation-fear
In the article it is stated that the other co-owner does not agree with this, but says that they do agree around issues relating to "freedom of speech, freedom of information and privacy". The company has stated that this donation is not endorsed by it but rather is a personal one.
And now, finally, my thoughts
This seems like a repeat of the TPB story where it is obvious that you can land in an interest for privacy, etc issues from different starting points and you can draw terrible conclusions about the world from a sane starting point too. We know too little about Daniel Berntssons ideological journey to know what's what.
This also seems like a repeat of the TPB story in that it is awfully convenient for the powers that be that they fail now. But I'm certainly not accusing Flamman of being part of the powers that be! Although I disagree we them on a fundamental level the paper is still a fringe leftist paper with no real power and a comparatively decent analysis of the world.
And while I hate Nazis I think we also need to keep another thing in mind: today's alternatives (to VPNs and Mullvad) are quite bad too (but possibly not in the same way)
It is also obvious that we have problems in Sweden as we have in the world at large. The few are fighting over the resources and as always the many are caught in the crossfire.
Climate change, historical economical inequality and inequity (if that is even a word), war, etc are all making our lives harder.
But maybe I mostly want to try to add some nuance here because I too feel some kind if despair around Sweden, and the only thing we can talk about in the public discourse is immigration and criminality (and in that conversation they are essentially inseparable) because trying to say anything else gets drowned out by "but, but, the immigrants and the criminals!!". And there are real, actual problems with how old governments from at least the 1970s have dealt with immigration to Sweden.
(But obviously there are larger problems with how all the same governments have redistributed wealth during the same timeline.)
Sweden has failed its immigrants in spectacular ways and instead of owning up to it we let the wealthy and powerful shift the blame for that failure from themselves onto the immigrants. This is nothing original, new or unexpected.
We, as a society, have not used enough resources to make sure immigrants get enough support to have good lives here and integrate well into our society. Note that I don't used "assimilate", but "integrate", so I don't think about abandoning their/our culture and behave like imaginary swedes from the 1950s or earlier, etc but rather be able to learn Swedish and how the Swedish society works and be part of it and contribute to it like the rest of us.
And know it's too hard for me to keep track of all my thoughts and write them down coherently (if the above can be deemed coherent!), so I'll stop here, but I'm obviously willing to discuss this further
I think it sounds like maybe what you’re trying to get as is the varying levels of “guilty by association”? Like, you don’t agree with the Örebro Party’s views, but you do want to still have a...
I think it sounds like maybe what you’re trying to get as is the varying levels of “guilty by association”?
Like, you don’t agree with the Örebro Party’s views, but you do want to still have a decent VPN.
And Mullvad’s VPN is good, aside from the fact that its founder donated to the Örebro Party, and you’re not sure if that is a line too far for you to drop it?
I think we all struggle with this in our own way, it’s very frustrating when the “good” products in a space are supporting things and are one of a few that are as good at their product as they are.
E.g., if my local coffee shop donated to Nazis, I would go to the other coffee shop instead. A little harder when there is less choice.
I struggle with this too, because I work for a company that does a lot of work with customers that I don’t always agree with, but I got hired when the job market was bad and it hasn’t really improved, and my wife is currently still looking for work. So I still work there, and I enjoy what I work on, and I’m not directly supporting the worst aspects and that’s what I have to live with.
So I sit here and make excuses and the college student me who studied ethics and got a minor in Philosophy and really liked the concept of “Virtue Ethics” dies a little bit every day and wishes the world was a less horrible place, and wonders how much I’m contributing to the current state of things, and what I could be doing differently. But I also haven’t shopped at Target in 3+ years (after their anti-pride debacles) and I used to shop there weekly.
Ethics is hard and we can all only do what we can, and it’s all squishy and horrible and would be so much easier if there weren’t Fascists and Nazis and bigots.
I've read your post and I don't know what your point is. Orebro calls for remigration, and I think this bit from Wikipedia says it well. "Sweden belongs to the Swedes. We have to make sure that we...
I've read your post and I don't know what your point is.
Orebro calls for remigration, and I think this bit from Wikipedia says it well.
That's ethnic cleansing at worst, incredibly racist at best.
I don't care about how good the VPN is; if a political party like that is being fueled by my money, I do not want to support them in any way. I'm currently a paying Mullvad customer. I won't be anymore.
As always, if a post starts with "I'm not a Nazi, but" ... I think you may want to reconsider what follows that but.
I agree, and have already considered that a possibility that I'm willing to do whatever work needs to be done to change that to become the antifascist I consider myself to be. Maybe you'd be...
As always, if a post starts with "I'm not a Nazi, but" ... I think you may want to reconsider what follows that but.
I agree, and have already considered that a possibility that I'm willing to do whatever work needs to be done to change that to become the antifascist I consider myself to be.
Maybe you'd be willing to help me? Or point me into some kind of good direction.
I don't care about how good the VPN is; if a political party like that is being fueled by my money, I do not want to support them in any way. I'm currently a paying Mullvad customer. I won't be anymore.
Fair and good and I'm glad you have that line and that you aren't willing to cross it. It is an important line to have, and I'm not trying to change your mind about that, that's not what this is about (I'm fairly certain about that anyway).
I'm sure I'm not the only one that would be glad to know where you decided to go instead, please share your choice.
I've read your post and I don't know what your point is.
Neither do I.
Intentions
I promise you I'm not trying to derail, what-about, muddy, fud, straw man or whatever. I find this topic interesting because I think it has to contain something more than "Nazi = bad!" without compromising with the fact that "Nazi = bad!", or maybe it doesn't.
Maybe I just want to try to talk about difficult things here on tildes, to be reached by a slightly larger array of perspectives than are in my social circles.
It's quite possible there isn't anything of value to say here, I just sense that there is something here worth talking about.
I think one thing that freaks me out is this kind if drive by online activism, that while I agree with the sentiment I have a hard time reconciling with how I feel its done and how that just drives the wedge in deeper.
And I know who put the wedge there and drove it in at first but still, it doesn't feel right. Because right now we are stuck with persons like these as our neighbours, coworkers, bosses and politicians. I think we agree that we have to get rid of them, I hope by changing their minds or what do you suggest?
There has to be a way to talk about this or maybe there just isn't anything to say...
I can certainly see the allure of xenophobia, racism and victim blaming to someone that sees technical solutions like a VPN to social problems and that is also fine with profiting from it. I can extend that understanding to millions of people everywhere through all times. And maybe I want other tools than a boycott to deal with that, because it's a real fucking problem and denying €5/month from one company led in half by a techno-fascist isn't it.
I mean by all means do boycott Mullvad, but for me, in my life there has to be something more than consumerism.
Maybe I'm spending a lot of time thinking about my background and how those societies have contributed to the state of the world in tremendously egregious ways. And I understand a little about the Swedish context, and I would love to talk about that and how there are specifics that matter.
Maybe I'm just tired and sad and exhausted and somehow I only manage to muster any kind of will and energy to engage with social justice and politics when someone else brings something to the board that is in some way close to me.
I should probably stop being reactive and start being proactive to ellicit your thoughts about matters that are important to me.
It's general advice. "I'm not a Nazi, but" statements should be analyzed before spoken. They suggest that you're about to identify with something a Nazi/the Nazis did in a positive light. You...
Exemplary
I agree, and have already considered that a possibility that I'm willing to do whatever work needs to be done to change that to become the antifascist I consider myself to be.
Maybe you'd be willing to help me? Or point me into some kind of good direction.
It's general advice. "I'm not a Nazi, but" statements should be analyzed before spoken. They suggest that you're about to identify with something a Nazi/the Nazis did in a positive light. You shouldn't. You can rephrase that thought to more clearly state your point, without drawing a positive connection to Naziism.
Fair and good and I'm glad you have that line and that you aren't willing to cross it. It is an important line to have, and I'm not trying to change your mind about that, that's not what this is about (I'm fairly certain about that anyway).
I'm sure I'm not the only one that would be glad to know where you decided to go instead, please share your choice.
I haven't made a choice yet. I'm still reviewing my options. Turns out, there's a lot of VPNs out there whose founders/leaders/whatevers all have shit politics (Proton VPN, Njalla, etc). So it might be a matter of picking which VPN providers' politics I can stomach.
And yes, I understand that my $5/month is a drop in the proverbial bucket. I personally will not be changing the world by not spending $5 a month on a specific VPN. But I can do my best to align my spending with my personal politics and ethics. And my politics and ethics do not align with Mullvad's founders' views. I'd rather not financially support something that I fundamentally disagree with.
everything else
We can talk about difficult things on Tildes, but there are some things that I don't think warrant "discussion". We can discuss the ethics of consumerism and capitalism, we can discuss the nature of war crimes, we can discuss the ongoing genocide in Israel and Gaza and all sorts of things. But there are some topics that don't warrant "discussion", in my opinion - and one of them is the "pros and cons" of Naziism and ethnonationalism. I don't believe there are any "pros" for remigration, as outlined by the Orebro Party and by Mullvad's founder. There is only racism, hate, and suffering.
I also recognize that I, as an American, have zero functional ability to affect change in Sweden from where I'm typing this right now. Hell, my country isn't exactly doing great on the racism and human rights front, and I'm doing what I can to affect positive change in my community here. What little power I have in Sweden is reflected in my ability to not directly fund racist political parties, which is what my subscription to Mullvad does.
The problem is certainly bigger than you, me, Mullvad, or Sweden itself. We, as individuals, don't have the ability to change everything by ourselves. But we can do what we can, and maybe that is enough. And what I can do, is not spend money on Mullvad. I can leave them a piece of my mind while I'm at it. I can encourage people to not spend money on Mullvad. And maybe, when enough is said and done, enough people pull back that Mullvad stops spending money on Orebro. A man can imagine.
If you're looking for ways to affect change that don't involve your pocketbook, then look to your community. There are probably groups already organized that are "doing the work" you want to be doing. Find them, join them, and spend time (and money) on them. That's what I've done. It may not be much, but it's something.
If there are no such groups doing the work you want to be doing, then maybe it's time to make one.
I will drop this attempt, but I want to state a couple of things about how I see what I wrote. Everyone else is ofc free and encouraged to see it as you wish. I specifically chose the phrase "I'm...
I will drop this attempt, but I want to state a couple of things about how I see what I wrote. Everyone else is ofc free and encouraged to see it as you wish.
I specifically chose the phrase "I'm not a Nazi, but..." to get the scrutiny you have put on (? done to?, sry my English is failing me) me. To make sure I couldn't hide. I do know the trope, and I'm scared to realise that I'm not that good at expressing myself as I think.
I feel misrepresented, but it is most likely that I'm just not good enough at bring coherent, etc. It has never been my intention to be apologetic or to discuss the "pros" or cons of nazism, rasism, remigration or any other racist policies that Örebropartiet have.
When I'm ready I will try to write something proactive around what I was trying to do here, maybe I will never be. We will see.
Finally: thanks! I do really mean it. I think the world is better because people care about important things the way you care.
Thank you for engaging and being willing to listen even when it's tough and can make you feel defensive. Especially being vulnerable and doing all this in a secondary language. That matters too.
Thank you for engaging and being willing to listen even when it's tough and can make you feel defensive. Especially being vulnerable and doing all this in a secondary language.
I think in this case, the "I'm not a Nazi" bit did exactly what you intended here; reading that tends to make people put their guard up, and when you combine that with Drewbahr openly stating that...
I think in this case, the "I'm not a Nazi" bit did exactly what you intended here; reading that tends to make people put their guard up, and when you combine that with Drewbahr openly stating that he didn't understand what point you were trying to make, I can see why he was concerned.
scrutiny you have put on (? done to?, sry my English is failing me) me.
If it helps, the best way to say it is that scrutiny is given, e.g. in this case "scrutiny you've given me." That said, while what you wrote is unusual, it's perfectly understandable!
More generally, I'd say that your writing style does have a tendency to be a bit confusing to follow, but I've always gotten the impression that you mean well and are trying to be friendly, and I consider that to be much more important. I don't want to give too much advice without being asked, but if it helps, I'd suggest focusing on where in your comment you state your points; leave asides or minor things for the footnotes,1 and make sure your conclusion is at or very near the end of your comment, since people might forget/miss it otherwise.2
1. Like this! I love doing this. Every time I write a post, I end up with extra thoughts I want to share, and this is the perfect place to put them without distracting anyone. If you're curious how I make these footnotes, you can click More... → View Markdown on my comment to see what I did directly. 2. Disclaimer: I am not an English teacher by any stretch! I trust this advice is good, but don't take it as gospel. I've got my own writing issues after all, haha. This comment was originally supposed to be one paragraph, for example, and I constantly have to stop myself from writing run-on sentences.
I agree. And there is no question about Örebropartiet being Nazis or that Daniel by this donation must be considered one too. I think I'm trying to think about several things at once (which is...
I agree.
And there is no question about Örebropartiet being Nazis or that Daniel by this donation must be considered one too.
I think I'm trying to think about several things at once (which is always hard), one of them being how far that association reaches.
Also: thank you for replying even though I didn't manage to be very clear in my comment. This helps me think and possibly refine and change my thoughts. Something I value a lot especially in these bonkers times. I'm working on a longer reply to Drewbahr in another tab and I would appreciate if you would read that too.
Machine-translated: What I fucking get for glazing them…
Machine-translated:
Five million kronor. That's how much money the populist Örebro Party received in 2025 – from a single person. This is shown in the party's income statement, which Flamman has reviewed.
Behind the giant donation is Daniel Berntsson, founder and co-owner of the internationally successful IT company Mullvad.
"This is a donation from me personally," he writes in an email to Flamman.
The company has made large profits in recent years through the sale of so-called VPN services, which make it possible to surf anonymously. In 2024, the company had a turnover of 314 million kronor.
The five million from Berntsson constitutes the majority – a full 72 percent – of the Örebro Party's income last year. It is also the largest single private donation to a party in 2025.
As far as I can tell he has not made a statement other than emailing flammen to tell them it was a private donation, Mullvad has made a questionable one though (please do not shoot the messenger):
As far as I can tell he has not made a statement other than emailing flammen to tell them it was a private donation, Mullvad has made a questionable one though (please do not shoot the messenger):
Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. These are firmly held values of the founders of Mullvad.
Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don't agree with. We protect the right of everyone to access views we don't agree with.
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.
This is what allows us to advance our common causes. Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking.
The more people do this, the better a place the world will be.
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.
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.
This is questionable? I might chalk this up to differences in political landscapes between the continents, but it seems normal to me that companies do not represent the views of their employed...
This is questionable? I might chalk this up to differences in political landscapes between the continents, but it seems normal to me that companies do not represent the views of their employed people.
Personal politics generally don't come to the fore, and one can be professionally able while never showing any of their personal convictions on the shop floor.
I understand there's a difference in an inherently political entity like VPNs, but alignment on privacy might not include conversations about the other problematic views.
I think the rub here, at least for me, comes in just how much money is being funneled directly from one of the founders of Mullvad into a political party with (some) terrible views. Per the...
I think the rub here, at least for me, comes in just how much money is being funneled directly from one of the founders of Mullvad into a political party with (some) terrible views.
Per the article, it's the equivalent of five millionfive hundred thousand dollars from Daniel Berntsson to Orebro. I can't imagine that Berntsson is absurdly wealthy; I'd imagine this is a fairly-significant amount of the money he earns going directly to Orebro. I also don't know what his employment or personal wealth situation is like; pure speculation on my part.
I also know that most of Orebro's funding is coming from Berntsson, again per the article. So let's put the pieces together:
Mullvad makes a bunch of money (likely millions of USD in revenue per year);
A significant chunk of Mullvad's earnings go to Berntsson, by virtue of him being a cofounder;
A significant chunk of his pay is being donated to Orebro;
The majority of Orebro's funding is coming from Berntsson.
What that means is, a significant percentage of the money that I, and others, are paying into Mullvad is going directly into the financing of Orebro. It's very nearly a straight line, from my wallet to a racist political party. It's not hard to follow.
With some companies (Nestle, for example), the lines are a lot murkier; there's a lot of sub-companies that are ostensibly doing good, while the money filters up towards Nestle fucking the planet over. But it's not a straight line, it's not as visible. And, of course, the trouble with how interconnected the world is comes into play - it's very hard, if not impossible, to do anything "purely good" due to how connected everything is.
At the end of the day, and at the end of this rambling mess ... Mullvad is now very visibly funding racist, Nazi-adjacent political efforts, and there's a lot of options out there that aren't Mullvad. There may not be any purely ethical VPN providers, but there has to be some that are not funding Naziism.
You can have privacy (sort of; the actual privacy of VPN offerings is always up for debate), and you can have closer alignment on political views as stated by the company's themselves, or as stated by their founders.
I apologise for the short response, I promise I will return to read and answer in kind, but I would like to dispel the 5 million dollar thing. That's a translation error from 5 million kronor. It...
I apologise for the short response, I promise I will return to read and answer in kind, but I would like to dispel the 5 million dollar thing. That's a translation error from 5 million kronor. It should be around 450-500k USD as the title indicates.
As a thought experiment, what if the other founder also donated 500k to a party that does seem on the up and up? Their statement distances them from the actions of Berntsson. In my eyes, the...
As a thought experiment, what if the other founder also donated 500k to a party that does seem on the up and up?
Their statement distances them from the actions of Berntsson. In my eyes, the service they provide for privacy and safe internet access is a political net good as a whole that outweighs the actions of the individual's political eccentricities. I'm also funding the existence of a service that lets repressed Iranians access the internet*. To me, that counts for something. While on the other hand there is no world in which I agree politically with every individual.
I do believe there's a difference between a Rowling directly funding anti-trans movements on the back of ultimately irrelevant entertainment media, and a company providing a critical piece of software that has one rotten apple at the top.
*I don't know if Mullvad works in Iran, I'm sure it helps people elsewhere too though.
The key difference is that Rowling is the only person who provides Harry Potter to the world, while there are many, many other companies that offer VPN service. Everyone seems to be glossing over...
The key difference is that Rowling is the only person who provides Harry Potter to the world, while there are many, many other companies that offer VPN service. Everyone seems to be glossing over that fact - Mullvad is not the only option here. There are options that do not fund a Nazi party.
As for the thought experiment, I don't think it changes my mind, because at the end of the day they're funding a racist party. At best their good donations only equals their bad ones, which means mathematically there's no net benefit. Any one of the other VPN services can do literally as much good, mathematically, by donating nothing to anyone.
And I feel I need to stress this point - there are other companies that offer comparable VPN services to Mullvad, for a comparable price, that don't also donate their money to racist political parties. This feels like a very easy choice.
Good on ya for taking the principled stance. I think I've been burnt enough by random companies that at this point I'm not sure there are any other good options. To restate an earlier point, I do...
As for the thought experiment, I don't think it changes my mind, because at the end of the day they're funding a racist party.
Good on ya for taking the principled stance. I think I've been burnt enough by random companies that at this point I'm not sure there are any other good options.
To restate an earlier point, I do think there's a divide in how personal and professional convictions are seen. A multiparty system generally means there are multiparty opinions on any work floor, it'd be impossible to agree with everyone. I think he's an idiot, but I still believe in the message a privacy focused VPN brings to the table.
I don't know, just like religion, politics is something you do at home and doesn't come up at work. US rhetoric seems to make personal things equally important. It's sufficiently difficult to explain why and how this is different in Europe.
Edit to add: Mull(vad)ing some things over.. every salaried employee can potentially donate to questionable parties, so where does the buck stop? The personal and professional divide is important here, because it becomes impossible to deny every company business when any of their employees can have a different political opinion than yours. Just like I can't stop paid employee Joe Schmoe from donating to Orebro, a salaried employee high in the hierarchy doesn't really change much in that equation.
I think I'm going to stop responding to you now, because it's clear you're looking to pick a flight and I've indulged you long enough.
I hope you didn't think those responses were mine. Our discussion was a fun one so far.
What ones? What evidence do you have that not only are they not funding a 'Nazi' party, but they they aren't also funding something else bad? Also don't forget that part of what put Mullvad into a...
There are options that do not fund a Nazi party.
What ones? What evidence do you have that not only are they not funding a 'Nazi' party, but they they aren't also funding something else bad?
Also don't forget that part of what put Mullvad into a better category of VPN are to some people seen as essential for a VPN. So there needs to be some actual parity of trust and service beyond just being another VPN.
Asking for proof that something isn't happening isn't reasonable. You can only ever prove that something did happen, not that it didn't. Or would you like to prove right now, in front of us all,...
Asking for proof that something isn't happening isn't reasonable. You can only ever prove that something did happen, not that it didn't. Or would you like to prove right now, in front of us all, that you aren't a criminal? Prove you didn't commit a crime.
Right? It doesn't work that way. There's no way to prove something didn't happen. That's why most justice systems work on a presumption of innocence. Because innocence cannot be proven.
As such, asking anyone to prove that other VPNs didn't do something just as bad is asking for the impossible.
That's partly the point. You don't know that I'm not a criminal and I can't prove it. You don't know that every other VPN co-founder isn't funding Nazis and you can't prove it. What can be done is...
Asking for proof that something isn't happening isn't reasonable. You can only ever prove that something did happen, not that it didn't. Or would you like to prove right now, in front of us all, that you aren't a criminal? Prove you didn't commit a crime.
That's partly the point. You don't know that I'm not a criminal and I can't prove it. You don't know that every other VPN co-founder isn't funding Nazis and you can't prove it. What can be done is looking for clues or evidence that show absence of those markers, which while does not definitively prove anything, it serves as likely indicators. I don't have a criminal record, doesn't mean I'm not a criminal or that I don't commit criminal acts, but means from some perspectives anyhow, that I'm less likely to be one.
I just find it ridiculous that they throw out 'There's all these other options out there', but they purposely leave it open ended because they get to leave the comment feeling satisfied they called out the unethical without actually doing any work to provide an ethical alternative.
It's just like the people who were like 'Kagi, they use Yandex, I'm not paying them' and then secretly goes back to using Google. Wow, great moral high ground there.
I won't know what every other VPN does or funds, but they also aren't making those donations public. Like, sure, they might all secretly be Nazis, but there's only one that I know is directly...
I won't know what every other VPN does or funds, but they also aren't making those donations public. Like, sure, they might all secretly be Nazis, but there's only one that I know is directly funding a racist political party.
I've already said I'm looking into options, and several other folks have mentioned other VPN options throughout this thread. As far as I'm aware, none of the options presented have provided...
I've already said I'm looking into options, and several other folks have mentioned other VPN options throughout this thread. As far as I'm aware, none of the options presented have provided majority support, if any support at all, for a political party with an openly racist platform.
But again, literally no other VPN that I'm aware of has openly, and financially, supported a Nazi-esque political party. Proton comes closest with its CEO's spoken support of MAGA, and I'm not sure of every company's politics, but now I'm just repeating myself.
I think I'm going to stop responding to you now, because it's clear you're looking to pick a flight and I've indulged you long enough.
Anyone have any thoughts on Windscribe? Their marketing copy is a touch flavorful for my tastes, but in terms of implementation it looks like they're open source and have native Linux apps which...
Anyone have any thoughts on Windscribe? Their marketing copy is a touch flavorful for my tastes, but in terms of implementation it looks like they're open source and have native Linux apps which are wins for me.
I'm currently subscribed to Mullvad by way of Mozilla VPN (which is just Mullvad with Mozilla branding). Up until now I've been happy with it, and I especially like the idea of financially supporting Mozilla/Firefox, but I obviously do NOT like the idea of supporting "remigration."
I used them for a while. Had no complaints mostly (their marketing, unfortunately, is pretty cringe) but I found Mullvad to have been a bit more consistent. Needless to say when my sub runs out I...
I used them for a while. Had no complaints mostly (their marketing, unfortunately, is pretty cringe) but I found Mullvad to have been a bit more consistent.
Needless to say when my sub runs out I need to figure out whether I go back to Windscribe or try IVPN.
So, I signed up for a month to try them out. As part of the login process, I had a captcha where I had to move a dickbutt into the correct spot. Then, in the news section on the app, there's a...
So, I signed up for a month to try them out.
As part of the login process, I had a captcha where I had to move a dickbutt into the correct spot. Then, in the news section on the app, there's a post about their satirical FuttBux (NSFW) cryptocurrency.
I was originally drawn to them because they didn't have a device limit and you can lock in a good deal when they go on sale. I can also understand how, given that they do not do affiliate marketing, they need to find other avenues for internet attention.
But this sort of juvenile "humor" is extremely offputting for me. I'll be stopping my subscription after my month is done.
After unsubscribing they started sending me emails about how other VPNs are lame and how Windscribe has a level of over 9000. It’s like whoever does the marketing didn’t advance their sense of...
After unsubscribing they started sending me emails about how other VPNs are lame and how Windscribe has a level of over 9000. It’s like whoever does the marketing didn’t advance their sense of humor past 2008.
I deleted the account. I also note that unlike Mullvad they keep your payment receipts permanently on file. That’s a more tangible reason for why I dropped them. I’m really sorry I didn’t recall that earlier.
No worries. I knew their marketing was iffy going in, and I rolled my eyes at the dickbutt thinking it was a one-off. But when I was presented with a fully animated banner of a coin sliding in and...
No worries.
I knew their marketing was iffy going in, and I rolled my eyes at the dickbutt thinking it was a one-off.
But when I was presented with a fully animated banner of a coin sliding in and out of cheeks, I knew they'd lost me.
Then, when I read further and learned that it's not just a satire page but an actual cryptocurrency, it further entrenched my decision.
Eww. That’s obnoxious. If we’re just talking about the tone of a company’s branding and comms… I want my VPN provider to be serious, professional, and responsive. Not puerile and vaguely...
Eww. That’s obnoxious. If we’re just talking about the tone of a company’s branding and comms… I want my VPN provider to be serious, professional, and responsive. Not puerile and vaguely homophobic NSFW jokes. Instant red flag.
That’s not even mentioning the shady crypto-bro scheme. Don’t want my data going anywhere near a company that thinks like that. (It’s worth mentioning that Mullvad accepts payments in crypto, but that’s specifically to facilitate anonymity — it’s not a coin they devised or control being used as a side hustle.)
That's unfortunate. The Proton Mail guy is iffy, the Kagi guy has thin skin or whatever it was - maybe you just have to be a bit nutty to care about privacy enough to do the hard thing of building a product around a service that protects it?
I think it's accurate to say that Kagi's controversies here are nowhere near the same level of bad that Proton or Mullvad's CEOs have now pulled.
But, I do think it's also worth saying that the "bad review" had legitimate criticism – particularly if you don't like AI – of Kagi and it's CEO. Having read it, I do strongly feel that the CEO of Kagi has a number of ignorant opinions, and that those opinions run the risk of causing damage to Kagi down the road. The CEO's response did nothing to quell these feelings, either.
I wouldn't throw the guy to the sharks over it, but if he believes his company can just choose to be unbiased/apolitical, he's fooling himself and it's just a matter of time before a poor decision is made because of it.
Hey thank you for the deep comment. I wish I had been more clear in my top-level comment but we're completely on the same page - I too was pretty unhappy about the Kagi backlash when that was happening, and it bums me out when I see it brought up again. (But, I couldn't make my point without bringing it up.) It wasn't a good look for them but it also wasn't toxic to the point that it should keep anyone from using their product, unlike Proton and Brave (and Automattic, and Twitter/X, and Hyprland, ...). I'm a diehard, I only google with Kagi. For now I'll still use Mullvad but I'm keeping an eye on this.
Ouch! You do what now with who?
But, yes, I understand! I'm trying to remember to use "duck", "margin" "ecosianing", or just plain "search" but it's not easy ;)
Google the company actually dislikes it when people use "google" as a generic term for searching for something online because it dilutes their trademark. They as a company are the only ones who benefit from you avoiding it.
Not sure I agree with that. Google may benefit from a standpoint of trademark security, but when everyone uses “google” generically they benefit from brand recognition, which is arguably more valuable to them. Especially in these hyper-competitive times, when the staying power of search engines as an entire category is on the rocks, they want their name on your lips. When no one is saying “google” anymore they’ve lost the mind share battle to Claude or whatever.
Google themselves instructs employees to always say "search with/using Google" because of the trademark dilution issue, so your assessment of the value to Google certainly isn't the same as theirs. I personally think it would be preferable (and funny) to live in a world where anyone offering a search engine can call it "google", even if Google themselves fade from relevance. You could have Kagi Google and Claude Google and so on.
It’s like when voat started out with a user base exclusively of people banned from Reddit and immediately turned into a nazi bar - because, of course, if you select from the population of “people permabanned from Reddit” there’s going to be a lot of people who were banned for a reason. Even if there’s also a lot of people who weren’t banned for a good reason.
If you, like me, had no idea what the Örebro party is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#Ideology
I'm still a bit confused on what they are actually trying to accomplish, but I'm (in my head) putting them in the same bucket I put the "authoritarian left" groups into, as it seems they share a lot of concerning behaviors and views.
You've skipped the part right after:
Just another one of "those damn people leeching off of welfare". Swedish Democrats did a much better job of that by hyperfocusing on immigrants (actually non whites and especially Arabs/Muslims, but nobody in this crappy country is honest enough to admit this).
Just FYI that 20% of Swedes vote for that party, its literal Nazi roots and all, while something like 80% support broad actions against the groups I mentioned above to various degrees.
I think it's also worth drawing attention to their policy of "remigration", i.e. ethnically cleansing Sweden by kicking out everybody without Swedish descent.
I'll have to reconsider Mullvad when my time runs out.
What's the best alternative? I've heard good things about IVPN (and it uses quantum resistant algorithms), but I'd like something that supports port forwarding. Does such a service with the trifecta exist (quantum resistance, port forwarding, good reputation)?
I don't know about quantum resistance but ProtonVPN and AirVPN both support port forwarding and have good reputations.
In this context: If you are reconsidering using MullvadVPN there is only a minuscule way you can consider using ProtonVPN instead.
And I'd be baffled if anyone on Tildes prefers other tiny, nationalist parties/groups over "Örebro partiet" that much.
I know nothing about AirVPN.
Looks like AirVPN is waiting to implement quantum-resistant ciphers until they deem quantum computers a threat. This seems short-sighted, since harvest now, decrypt later attacks can happen.
I’ve been mulling over (heh) this news since it was posted here and I’m really torn. Mullvad is a great service. It works well and the client is frequently updated with improvements. From a privacy standpoint they’re doing everything exactly right… they’re the gold standard of what this kind of company should be.
I’m not anywhere near Sweden and don’t know much about its politics but obviously I don’t want to fund fascist anti-immigration movements anywhere. Ugh.
When I first started using VPN services many years ago I was proud of my decision to use Private Internet Access. They were doing everything right, and I loved the endorsement / involvement of Rick Falkvinge. After a few years I realized Falkvinge had at some point quietly parted ways with PIA — sus! — and of course their acquisition by Kape Technologies was bad, bad news. If you can’t trust your VPN provider, what’s even the point? Just from a basic opsec/privacy standpoint, I had to jump ship.
After a pretty lengthy research phase I landed on Mullvad. It was following all the same best practices that initially won me over to PIA, going even further in some respects. Not being operated from a Five Eyes country was a nice bonus. So is the fact that (AFAIK) Mullvad’s never been one of those spammy VPNs with all the aggressive YouTube and podcast marketing campaigns. As far as I’m aware Mullvad remains uncompromised by hacks, leaks, breaches, etc. and their third-party audits always come back clean.
So yeah, I’m torn. I’m a satisfied customer! I don’t think there are any better alternatives on the market right now. Mullvad has earned my trust.
…but fascism. Argh! Why is it always fascism?! 😩
In a sea of shady VPN companies out there, Mullvad really felt like they were one of the only ones that were aboveboard.
I started with them directly, and then Mozilla decided to white-label them. That cemented my choice even further, as I saw it as an incredibly strong vote of confidence. I have to assume that Mozilla did their due diligence and chose to pair with a trustworthy company.
I feel what you're feeling, in that I had a lot of goodwill built up regarding their product, and this news is causing some pretty serious whiplash for me.
I'm like really annoyed too I'm a pretty damn happy Mullvad customer. I know it's impossible to be like a completely ethical customer but there are too few edges between my money and a fascist party in this graph
An IT nerd with an extreme penchant for privacy and being off the grid being overly much into a strange form of NAZBOL? Colour me unsurprised.
I just went through several VPNs before settling on SurfShark (wiki) again for now. The wiki entry gives the impression they spend their money back into the security community. They've got audits from multiple companies instead of just the same one over and over. I was able to get it at like $1.58/month after using a discount code from Google.
This site compares different providers, though won't help you discern their rep.
https://vpn.techlore.tech/
(If you remember me seeking a VPN w/ port forwarding on the proton post, turns out providers conflate that with p2p NAT traversal so mind that while searching. But my real issue was DNS blocklists listing my tracker's IP block as malicious)
Preamble and some kind if defensive manoeuvre
It's really fucking hard to write anything nuanced about this without coming off as a fucking Nazi.
I'll try... (And maybe it becomes apparent that I'm a fucking Nazi and then I'll have to reeducate myself because I really don't want to be one!).
And I want to try because I want a little more nuance in the world sometimes.
And I want to try because I think Mullvad is actually trying to do good too, and I think it is important that as long as we have countries & companies that there are multiple companies from several countries selling essential services, and in this point in time I consider VPNs essential services. (If they weren't we wouldn't have this discussion in the first place.)
But obviously I'd prefer to live in another world than the one we are in now where techno-fascists with global companies are leading governments into a dystopian nightmare of control and surveillance.
Of all the terrible alternatives it seems to me like Mullvad is a decent one: from a technical point as well as a geopolitical one.
I don't agree with Örebropartiet or other nationalist, rightwing, right leaning or even left leaning parties: Ethnicity doesn't matter and immigration is not in any way the root cause of any societal problem in Sweden or the world. It is now and has always been about wealth and wealth distribution!
(Where wealth is mostly about control and usage of natural resources including human work but also about the numbers in the ledgers that give that control. Obviously social class, ethnicity, sex, gender, ability, age, etc are being used to justify this, but they are not in themselves the cause and reason.)
Disclosure: I'm born in Sweden to European migrants who came here in the 1970s. I'm white, heterosexual cisman, middle age, culturally middle class, currently working class. Physically able with a couple NPDs under investigation.
Lost in translation/copyright-violation-fear
In the article it is stated that the other co-owner does not agree with this, but says that they do agree around issues relating to "freedom of speech, freedom of information and privacy". The company has stated that this donation is not endorsed by it but rather is a personal one.
And now, finally, my thoughts
This seems like a repeat of the TPB story where it is obvious that you can land in an interest for privacy, etc issues from different starting points and you can draw terrible conclusions about the world from a sane starting point too. We know too little about Daniel Berntssons ideological journey to know what's what.
This also seems like a repeat of the TPB story in that it is awfully convenient for the powers that be that they fail now. But I'm certainly not accusing Flamman of being part of the powers that be! Although I disagree we them on a fundamental level the paper is still a fringe leftist paper with no real power and a comparatively decent analysis of the world.
And while I hate Nazis I think we also need to keep another thing in mind: today's alternatives (to VPNs and Mullvad) are quite bad too (but possibly not in the same way)
It is also obvious that we have problems in Sweden as we have in the world at large. The few are fighting over the resources and as always the many are caught in the crossfire.
Climate change, historical economical inequality and inequity (if that is even a word), war, etc are all making our lives harder.
But maybe I mostly want to try to add some nuance here because I too feel some kind if despair around Sweden, and the only thing we can talk about in the public discourse is immigration and criminality (and in that conversation they are essentially inseparable) because trying to say anything else gets drowned out by "but, but, the immigrants and the criminals!!". And there are real, actual problems with how old governments from at least the 1970s have dealt with immigration to Sweden.
(But obviously there are larger problems with how all the same governments have redistributed wealth during the same timeline.)
Sweden has failed its immigrants in spectacular ways and instead of owning up to it we let the wealthy and powerful shift the blame for that failure from themselves onto the immigrants. This is nothing original, new or unexpected.
We, as a society, have not used enough resources to make sure immigrants get enough support to have good lives here and integrate well into our society. Note that I don't used "assimilate", but "integrate", so I don't think about abandoning their/our culture and behave like imaginary swedes from the 1950s or earlier, etc but rather be able to learn Swedish and how the Swedish society works and be part of it and contribute to it like the rest of us.
And know it's too hard for me to keep track of all my thoughts and write them down coherently (if the above can be deemed coherent!), so I'll stop here, but I'm obviously willing to discuss this further
I think it sounds like maybe what you’re trying to get as is the varying levels of “guilty by association”?
Like, you don’t agree with the Örebro Party’s views, but you do want to still have a decent VPN.
And Mullvad’s VPN is good, aside from the fact that its founder donated to the Örebro Party, and you’re not sure if that is a line too far for you to drop it?
I think we all struggle with this in our own way, it’s very frustrating when the “good” products in a space are supporting things and are one of a few that are as good at their product as they are.
E.g., if my local coffee shop donated to Nazis, I would go to the other coffee shop instead. A little harder when there is less choice.
I struggle with this too, because I work for a company that does a lot of work with customers that I don’t always agree with, but I got hired when the job market was bad and it hasn’t really improved, and my wife is currently still looking for work. So I still work there, and I enjoy what I work on, and I’m not directly supporting the worst aspects and that’s what I have to live with.
So I sit here and make excuses and the college student me who studied ethics and got a minor in Philosophy and really liked the concept of “Virtue Ethics” dies a little bit every day and wishes the world was a less horrible place, and wonders how much I’m contributing to the current state of things, and what I could be doing differently. But I also haven’t shopped at Target in 3+ years (after their anti-pride debacles) and I used to shop there weekly.
Ethics is hard and we can all only do what we can, and it’s all squishy and horrible and would be so much easier if there weren’t Fascists and Nazis and bigots.
I've read your post and I don't know what your point is.
Orebro calls for remigration, and I think this bit from Wikipedia says it well.
"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."
That's ethnic cleansing at worst, incredibly racist at best.
I don't care about how good the VPN is; if a political party like that is being fueled by my money, I do not want to support them in any way. I'm currently a paying Mullvad customer. I won't be anymore.
As always, if a post starts with "I'm not a Nazi, but" ... I think you may want to reconsider what follows that but.
I agree, and have already considered that a possibility that I'm willing to do whatever work needs to be done to change that to become the antifascist I consider myself to be.
Maybe you'd be willing to help me? Or point me into some kind of good direction.
Fair and good and I'm glad you have that line and that you aren't willing to cross it. It is an important line to have, and I'm not trying to change your mind about that, that's not what this is about (I'm fairly certain about that anyway).
I'm sure I'm not the only one that would be glad to know where you decided to go instead, please share your choice.
Neither do I.
Intentions
I promise you I'm not trying to derail, what-about, muddy, fud, straw man or whatever. I find this topic interesting because I think it has to contain something more than "Nazi = bad!" without compromising with the fact that "Nazi = bad!", or maybe it doesn't.Maybe I just want to try to talk about difficult things here on tildes, to be reached by a slightly larger array of perspectives than are in my social circles.
It's quite possible there isn't anything of value to say here, I just sense that there is something here worth talking about.
I think one thing that freaks me out is this kind if drive by online activism, that while I agree with the sentiment I have a hard time reconciling with how I feel its done and how that just drives the wedge in deeper.
And I know who put the wedge there and drove it in at first but still, it doesn't feel right. Because right now we are stuck with persons like these as our neighbours, coworkers, bosses and politicians. I think we agree that we have to get rid of them, I hope by changing their minds or what do you suggest?
There has to be a way to talk about this or maybe there just isn't anything to say...
I can certainly see the allure of xenophobia, racism and victim blaming to someone that sees technical solutions like a VPN to social problems and that is also fine with profiting from it. I can extend that understanding to millions of people everywhere through all times. And maybe I want other tools than a boycott to deal with that, because it's a real fucking problem and denying €5/month from one company led in half by a techno-fascist isn't it.
I mean by all means do boycott Mullvad, but for me, in my life there has to be something more than consumerism.
Maybe I'm spending a lot of time thinking about my background and how those societies have contributed to the state of the world in tremendously egregious ways. And I understand a little about the Swedish context, and I would love to talk about that and how there are specifics that matter.
Maybe I'm just tired and sad and exhausted and somehow I only manage to muster any kind of will and energy to engage with social justice and politics when someone else brings something to the board that is in some way close to me.
I should probably stop being reactive and start being proactive to ellicit your thoughts about matters that are important to me.
It's general advice. "I'm not a Nazi, but" statements should be analyzed before spoken. They suggest that you're about to identify with something a Nazi/the Nazis did in a positive light. You shouldn't. You can rephrase that thought to more clearly state your point, without drawing a positive connection to Naziism.
I haven't made a choice yet. I'm still reviewing my options. Turns out, there's a lot of VPNs out there whose founders/leaders/whatevers all have shit politics (Proton VPN, Njalla, etc). So it might be a matter of picking which VPN providers' politics I can stomach.
And yes, I understand that my $5/month is a drop in the proverbial bucket. I personally will not be changing the world by not spending $5 a month on a specific VPN. But I can do my best to align my spending with my personal politics and ethics. And my politics and ethics do not align with Mullvad's founders' views. I'd rather not financially support something that I fundamentally disagree with.
We can talk about difficult things on Tildes, but there are some things that I don't think warrant "discussion". We can discuss the ethics of consumerism and capitalism, we can discuss the nature of war crimes, we can discuss the ongoing genocide in Israel and Gaza and all sorts of things. But there are some topics that don't warrant "discussion", in my opinion - and one of them is the "pros and cons" of Naziism and ethnonationalism. I don't believe there are any "pros" for remigration, as outlined by the Orebro Party and by Mullvad's founder. There is only racism, hate, and suffering.
I also recognize that I, as an American, have zero functional ability to affect change in Sweden from where I'm typing this right now. Hell, my country isn't exactly doing great on the racism and human rights front, and I'm doing what I can to affect positive change in my community here. What little power I have in Sweden is reflected in my ability to not directly fund racist political parties, which is what my subscription to Mullvad does.
The problem is certainly bigger than you, me, Mullvad, or Sweden itself. We, as individuals, don't have the ability to change everything by ourselves. But we can do what we can, and maybe that is enough. And what I can do, is not spend money on Mullvad. I can leave them a piece of my mind while I'm at it. I can encourage people to not spend money on Mullvad. And maybe, when enough is said and done, enough people pull back that Mullvad stops spending money on Orebro. A man can imagine.
If you're looking for ways to affect change that don't involve your pocketbook, then look to your community. There are probably groups already organized that are "doing the work" you want to be doing. Find them, join them, and spend time (and money) on them. That's what I've done. It may not be much, but it's something.
If there are no such groups doing the work you want to be doing, then maybe it's time to make one.
I will drop this attempt, but I want to state a couple of things about how I see what I wrote. Everyone else is ofc free and encouraged to see it as you wish.
I specifically chose the phrase "I'm not a Nazi, but..." to get the scrutiny you have put on (? done to?, sry my English is failing me) me. To make sure I couldn't hide. I do know the trope, and I'm scared to realise that I'm not that good at expressing myself as I think.
I feel misrepresented, but it is most likely that I'm just not good enough at bring coherent, etc. It has never been my intention to be apologetic or to discuss the "pros" or cons of nazism, rasism, remigration or any other racist policies that Örebropartiet have.
When I'm ready I will try to write something proactive around what I was trying to do here, maybe I will never be. We will see.
Finally: thanks! I do really mean it. I think the world is better because people care about important things the way you care.
Thank you for engaging and being willing to listen even when it's tough and can make you feel defensive. Especially being vulnerable and doing all this in a secondary language.
That matters too.
I think in this case, the "I'm not a Nazi" bit did exactly what you intended here; reading that tends to make people put their guard up, and when you combine that with Drewbahr openly stating that he didn't understand what point you were trying to make, I can see why he was concerned.
If it helps, the best way to say it is that scrutiny is given, e.g. in this case "scrutiny you've given me." That said, while what you wrote is unusual, it's perfectly understandable!
More generally, I'd say that your writing style does have a tendency to be a bit confusing to follow, but I've always gotten the impression that you mean well and are trying to be friendly, and I consider that to be much more important. I don't want to give too much advice without being asked, but if it helps, I'd suggest focusing on where in your comment you state your points; leave asides or minor things for the footnotes,1 and make sure your conclusion is at or very near the end of your comment, since people might forget/miss it otherwise.2
1. Like this! I love doing this. Every time I write a post, I end up with extra thoughts I want to share, and this is the perfect place to put them without distracting anyone. If you're curious how I make these footnotes, you can click
More...→View Markdownon my comment to see what I did directly.2. Disclaimer: I am not an English teacher by any stretch! I trust this advice is good, but don't take it as gospel. I've got my own writing issues after all, haha. This comment was originally supposed to be one paragraph, for example, and I constantly have to stop myself from writing run-on sentences.
You can also put conclusions at the beginning and restate your conclusion at the end:
Idk, there's a lot of Swedish political parties, it's not that hard to not give money to the one that promotes "remigration".
I agree.
And there is no question about Örebropartiet being Nazis or that Daniel by this donation must be considered one too.
I think I'm trying to think about several things at once (which is always hard), one of them being how far that association reaches.
Also: thank you for replying even though I didn't manage to be very clear in my comment. This helps me think and possibly refine and change my thoughts. Something I value a lot especially in these bonkers times. I'm working on a longer reply to Drewbahr in another tab and I would appreciate if you would read that too.
Machine-translated:
What I fucking get for glazing them…
Does he give any motive or reasoning for doing this?
As far as I can tell he has not made a statement other than emailing flammen to tell them it was a private donation, Mullvad has made a questionable one though (please do not shoot the messenger):
This is questionable? I might chalk this up to differences in political landscapes between the continents, but it seems normal to me that companies do not represent the views of their employed people.
Personal politics generally don't come to the fore, and one can be professionally able while never showing any of their personal convictions on the shop floor.
I understand there's a difference in an inherently political entity like VPNs, but alignment on privacy might not include conversations about the other problematic views.
Edit: sp
I think the rub here, at least for me, comes in just how much money is being funneled directly from one of the founders of Mullvad into a political party with (some) terrible views.
Per the article, it's the equivalent of
five millionfive hundred thousand dollars from Daniel Berntsson to Orebro. I can't imagine that Berntsson is absurdly wealthy; I'd imagine this is a fairly-significant amount of the money he earns going directly to Orebro. I also don't know what his employment or personal wealth situation is like; pure speculation on my part.I also know that most of Orebro's funding is coming from Berntsson, again per the article. So let's put the pieces together:
What that means is, a significant percentage of the money that I, and others, are paying into Mullvad is going directly into the financing of Orebro. It's very nearly a straight line, from my wallet to a racist political party. It's not hard to follow.
It's very much like how JK Rowling has explicitly said that the money she earns from the Harry Potter IP is going straight into anti-trans legislation. By paying for Harry Potter-related media, a significant chunk of your payment goes into Rowlings' pockets, which is then being used, per her own words, to fund anti-trans efforts.
With some companies (Nestle, for example), the lines are a lot murkier; there's a lot of sub-companies that are ostensibly doing good, while the money filters up towards Nestle fucking the planet over. But it's not a straight line, it's not as visible. And, of course, the trouble with how interconnected the world is comes into play - it's very hard, if not impossible, to do anything "purely good" due to how connected everything is.
At the end of the day, and at the end of this rambling mess ... Mullvad is now very visibly funding racist, Nazi-adjacent political efforts, and there's a lot of options out there that aren't Mullvad. There may not be any purely ethical VPN providers, but there has to be some that are not funding Naziism.
You can have privacy (sort of; the actual privacy of VPN offerings is always up for debate), and you can have closer alignment on political views as stated by the company's themselves, or as stated by their founders.
I apologise for the short response, I promise I will return to read and answer in kind, but I would like to dispel the 5 million dollar thing. That's a translation error from 5 million kronor. It should be around 450-500k USD as the title indicates.
As a thought experiment, what if the other founder also donated 500k to a party that does seem on the up and up?
Their statement distances them from the actions of Berntsson. In my eyes, the service they provide for privacy and safe internet access is a political net good as a whole that outweighs the actions of the individual's political eccentricities. I'm also funding the existence of a service that lets repressed Iranians access the internet*. To me, that counts for something. While on the other hand there is no world in which I agree politically with every individual.
I do believe there's a difference between a Rowling directly funding anti-trans movements on the back of ultimately irrelevant entertainment media, and a company providing a critical piece of software that has one rotten apple at the top.
*I don't know if Mullvad works in Iran, I'm sure it helps people elsewhere too though.
The key difference is that Rowling is the only person who provides Harry Potter to the world, while there are many, many other companies that offer VPN service. Everyone seems to be glossing over that fact - Mullvad is not the only option here. There are options that do not fund a Nazi party.
As for the thought experiment, I don't think it changes my mind, because at the end of the day they're funding a racist party. At best their good donations only equals their bad ones, which means mathematically there's no net benefit. Any one of the other VPN services can do literally as much good, mathematically, by donating nothing to anyone.
And I feel I need to stress this point - there are other companies that offer comparable VPN services to Mullvad, for a comparable price, that don't also donate their money to racist political parties. This feels like a very easy choice.
Good on ya for taking the principled stance. I think I've been burnt enough by random companies that at this point I'm not sure there are any other good options.
To restate an earlier point, I do think there's a divide in how personal and professional convictions are seen. A multiparty system generally means there are multiparty opinions on any work floor, it'd be impossible to agree with everyone. I think he's an idiot, but I still believe in the message a privacy focused VPN brings to the table.
I don't know, just like religion, politics is something you do at home and doesn't come up at work. US rhetoric seems to make personal things equally important. It's sufficiently difficult to explain why and how this is different in Europe.
Edit to add: Mull(vad)ing some things over.. every salaried employee can potentially donate to questionable parties, so where does the buck stop? The personal and professional divide is important here, because it becomes impossible to deny every company business when any of their employees can have a different political opinion than yours. Just like I can't stop paid employee Joe Schmoe from donating to Orebro, a salaried employee high in the hierarchy doesn't really change much in that equation.
I hope you didn't think those responses were mine. Our discussion was a fun one so far.
What ones? What evidence do you have that not only are they not funding a 'Nazi' party, but they they aren't also funding something else bad?
Also don't forget that part of what put Mullvad into a better category of VPN are to some people seen as essential for a VPN. So there needs to be some actual parity of trust and service beyond just being another VPN.
Asking for proof that something isn't happening isn't reasonable. You can only ever prove that something did happen, not that it didn't. Or would you like to prove right now, in front of us all, that you aren't a criminal? Prove you didn't commit a crime.
Right? It doesn't work that way. There's no way to prove something didn't happen. That's why most justice systems work on a presumption of innocence. Because innocence cannot be proven.
As such, asking anyone to prove that other VPNs didn't do something just as bad is asking for the impossible.
That's partly the point. You don't know that I'm not a criminal and I can't prove it. You don't know that every other VPN co-founder isn't funding Nazis and you can't prove it. What can be done is looking for clues or evidence that show absence of those markers, which while does not definitively prove anything, it serves as likely indicators. I don't have a criminal record, doesn't mean I'm not a criminal or that I don't commit criminal acts, but means from some perspectives anyhow, that I'm less likely to be one.
I just find it ridiculous that they throw out 'There's all these other options out there', but they purposely leave it open ended because they get to leave the comment feeling satisfied they called out the unethical without actually doing any work to provide an ethical alternative.
It's just like the people who were like 'Kagi, they use Yandex, I'm not paying them' and then secretly goes back to using Google. Wow, great moral high ground there.
I won't know what every other VPN does or funds, but they also aren't making those donations public. Like, sure, they might all secretly be Nazis, but there's only one that I know is directly funding a racist political party.
What are we even doing here?
So you know many other better options exist, but you can't mention any of them. What are we even doing here?
I've already said I'm looking into options, and several other folks have mentioned other VPN options throughout this thread. As far as I'm aware, none of the options presented have provided majority support, if any support at all, for a political party with an openly racist platform.
But again, literally no other VPN that I'm aware of has openly, and financially, supported a Nazi-esque political party. Proton comes closest with its CEO's spoken support of MAGA, and I'm not sure of every company's politics, but now I'm just repeating myself.
I think I'm going to stop responding to you now, because it's clear you're looking to pick a flight and I've indulged you long enough.
Anyone have any thoughts on Windscribe? Their marketing copy is a touch flavorful for my tastes, but in terms of implementation it looks like they're open source and have native Linux apps which are wins for me.
I'm currently subscribed to Mullvad by way of Mozilla VPN (which is just Mullvad with Mozilla branding). Up until now I've been happy with it, and I especially like the idea of financially supporting Mozilla/Firefox, but I obviously do NOT like the idea of supporting "remigration."
I used them for a while. Had no complaints mostly (their marketing, unfortunately, is pretty cringe) but I found Mullvad to have been a bit more consistent.
Needless to say when my sub runs out I need to figure out whether I go back to Windscribe or try IVPN.
So, I signed up for a month to try them out.
As part of the login process, I had a captcha where I had to move a dickbutt into the correct spot. Then, in the news section on the app, there's a post about their satirical FuttBux (NSFW) cryptocurrency.
I was originally drawn to them because they didn't have a device limit and you can lock in a good deal when they go on sale. I can also understand how, given that they do not do affiliate marketing, they need to find other avenues for internet attention.
But this sort of juvenile "humor" is extremely offputting for me. I'll be stopping my subscription after my month is done.
After unsubscribing they started sending me emails about how other VPNs are lame and how Windscribe has a level of over 9000. It’s like whoever does the marketing didn’t advance their sense of humor past 2008.
I deleted the account. I also note that unlike Mullvad they keep your payment receipts permanently on file. That’s a more tangible reason for why I dropped them. I’m really sorry I didn’t recall that earlier.
No worries.
I knew their marketing was iffy going in, and I rolled my eyes at the dickbutt thinking it was a one-off.
But when I was presented with a fully animated banner of a coin sliding in and out of cheeks, I knew they'd lost me.
Then, when I read further and learned that it's not just a satire page but an actual cryptocurrency, it further entrenched my decision.
I'll be trying IVPN out next month.
Eww. That’s obnoxious. If we’re just talking about the tone of a company’s branding and comms… I want my VPN provider to be serious, professional, and responsive. Not puerile and vaguely homophobic NSFW jokes. Instant red flag.
That’s not even mentioning the shady crypto-bro scheme. Don’t want my data going anywhere near a company that thinks like that. (It’s worth mentioning that Mullvad accepts payments in crypto, but that’s specifically to facilitate anonymity — it’s not a coin they devised or control being used as a side hustle.)