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The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

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Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#621

Post by kfreds »

ryan_n wrote: post #562
kfreds wrote: post #118

Hi, Mullvad has two owners, founders, and CEOs - Daniel Berntsson, and me, Fredrik Strömberg. All posts I've seen yesterday and today, including the newspaper articles, talk about Mullvad as if Daniel is the single owner, founder and CEO. It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission. If you have any questions, comments or concerns you're welcome t…

> It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission Why should this be obvious? I don't think that's obvious at all. The owner of a company could very easily decide to one day use their company to further their political beliefs/ideologies (see: Twitter, FaceBook, etc..). Why would Mullvad be any different?

I'm sorry to hear you'll be leaving us.

To answer your question, we started building this organization in the summer of 2008 for idealistic reasons, and we are still idealists who think privacy is fundamental to a civilized society.

The best strategy for achieving societal impact through entrepreneurship is consistent, long-term, and value-based ownership. For us, this disqualifies taking outside investment, either through venture capital or going public. Mullvad has instead been growing organically without outside investments.

Our principles have withstood the test of time. Our conviction has remained unchanged through multiple serious offers of acquisition and outside investment. Words are cheap of course, but consistent action over the course of almost two decades is not.

Mullvad is about privacy. Neither Daniel nor I have used Mullvad's brand to promote our personal opinions.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#622

Post by OrvalWintermute »

Seems to be intentionally defamatory

From the Wikipedia article on the Orebro party

“ Split from the left

The initiative to found the Örebro Party was taken in early 2014 by Markus Allard, who is also the first party leader. Allard had previously held positions as substitute member of the Örebro municipal council and district chairman of the Young Left in Örebro; in December 2013 he was expelled from the Left Party and its youth wing Young Left for "liking" the Revolutionary Front, a militant revolutionary socialist and anti-fascist organization, on Facebook and refusing to disavow it when questioned.[6] Allard has stated that the real reason for his expulsion was that he was perceived as a threat to the established party bureaucracy.[7][8]

While Allard has described himself as a Communist,[9] and a Marxist,[8][10] at its founding in March 2014 he defined the Örebro Party as "broad left".[9] At that time the party considered itself a "local party that wants to carry on the labour movement's ideals", and "not interested in administrating the current society".[11]”

Colours:

Red Black

This sounds like a socialist, anarchist or Ancap group that believes in borders

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#623

Post by distracted_boy »

spockz wrote: post #298

Is it so hard to imagine that someone willing to take such a principled stance on privacy that they start a company to provide a privacy focused vpn company that they also hold other extreme views? It takes a certain kind of personality to become a founder especially more do for such a strongly principled company and adhere to it.

This comment reminds me of Sweden < 2015, where any critique of immigration labeled you as a supporter of the Swedish Democrats (SD) and possibly a Nazi.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#625

Post by have_faith »

daneel_w wrote: post #315

To the people using Mullvad I have two sincere and unpopular questions: do you actively scrutinize and examine the key people of every service and product you use, or is it just a reflexive change of footing whenever you happen upon news like this? Also, do you really switch , or is it just a heat of moment kind of thing and an opportunity to profess yourself?

There's nothing wrong with acting on new information as and when it surfaces in your life without obsessively staying up to date with every entity you engage with. That's the reasonable, pragmatic approach to trying to do the right thing without overwhelming yourself with the burden of being perfect.

It's not a gotcha if you're inconsistent from an outsiders perspective, we're all doing the best we can with what little insight we have into reality.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#626

Post by ath3nd »

drbscl wrote: post #310

Wikipedia of the party in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party# Doesn't really sound all that far-right to me. Nationalist, sure. I'm not Swedish though, so I would be interested in the thoughts of those who are actually affected by Örebropartiet's policies.

[dead]

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#627

Post by like_any_other »

panarky wrote: post #398
mrhottakes wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're a political company, but you don't want people to examine the politics of the people running the company? That seems naive.

>> Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment ... Karl Popper said, "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." >> the same way that someone's opinions on animal…

> Karl Popper said, "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

It's weird he said that, given that at the time there were many examples of intolerant societies that had become increasingly tolerant. So the statement is factually incorrect, and, given how educated he was, he knew this. In other words, the statement is a lie. But very useful if you manage to put yourself in the position of being the one to define what is intolerant, and which things are so important to tolerate that they should be beyond democratic decision-making.

That said, I don't disagree that private donations can be incompatible with (or more accurately, counter-productive to) the stated mission of a company. And it's not unreasonable for journalists to report on it, on the logic it may affect consumer choices. But I'm not familiar with Örebro, and nothing in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#Policies indicates they're against online anonymity or free expression. But maybe I missed something?

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#628

Post by wat10000 »

something765478 wrote: post #554
yreg wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Doesn't really sound all that far-right to me. To me too, then I got to the leaders quote on TV: "We must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense." Yeah, okay. I know some politicians who speak like that, I feel I get the picture.

Funny, I usually hear that sentiment from left wing sources complaining about billionaires.

Won’t somebody please think of the poor oppressed billionaires!

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#629

Post by distracted_boy »

KaiserPro wrote: post #430
stefanfisk wrote: post #160

To be fair, Örebropartiet can also be called an extreme left party. It’s complicated… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party

Does it matter if they are left or right? The point is, they want to round up lawful citizens and turf them out of the country because they have the audacity to be slightly foreign, or worse born to someone foreign. that is the issue, not how much tax/spend big/little government.

That's not at all what they want. It's comments like yours that create unnecessary controversy, based on nothing but lies.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#630

Post by vitally3643 »

dijit wrote: post #575
vitally3643 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great and all but can I have a refund for the portion of my mullvad subscription that went to supporting organizations who think that people like me don't deserve to live?

Can you point to the charter where the Örebro party ever said that you don't deserve to live? The embellishments of what people actually believe is extremely exhausting. FWIW, I'm an immigrant in Sweden and if they gained power I would be affected, but we talk about people with differing views to us as if they're actively violent in order to shut down conversation. This catasphrophising language will eventually not h…

Talking about how entire races of people deserve to be deported is active violence
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