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

det.social

751–760 of 1001 posts

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

#751

I get that this is in the news (or at least the nerd news), but really...do y'all canvass the companies you buy things from, figure out on net who the people who work for them support in politics, ask whether that's what you like, and move your business around based on that? It seems crazy to me. Part and parcel of having a pluralistic society is that we treat each other the same in public-facing parts of life withou…

I don't know the verb canvassing (I'm not a native speaker) but assuming you mean something like vetting each company I buy from: that seems impossible. One can only do so much. Seems important to do what you can, though. I could understand the viewpoint that this person's earned money is theirs to spend; I can also understand people that don't want to fund this and are happy to have heard of it (even if the damage has been done now)

The argument, if I've understood it correctly, sounds a bit like the common pattern of asking someone who tries to buy ethical products whether they're impeccable/perfect themselves. Like asking someone who is in favor of a local wind turbine whether they've ever flown or such. You can only do so much as an average individual

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

#753

Aren't far-right parties opposed to government control and censorship? Ideally a provider should be politically neutral, but I'm wondering if it's preferable to have one that is opposed to government control and censorship.

> Aren't far-right parties opposed to government control and censorship?

They say they are, but their behaviour once they get into power suggests otherwise.

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

#754
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…

I'm a long-time Mullvad customer, and I respect what the company has been doing and the pro-privacy political stance it openly and publicly stands for.

I agree that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, and shouldn't be.

But what I do care about, strongly, is that Mullvad as a company doesn't bow to pressure from pro-immigration activists who are attempting to impose social and financial consequences on people and institutions like Mullvad that tolerate anti-immigration political speech. Which is of course why people are publicizing this donation and publicly stating that they will no longer do business with Mullvad because of it.

I want to state publicly that what would make me no longer do business with Mullvad is if Mullvad, organizationally, attempted to pressure Daniel Berntsson into not donating to anti-immigration political parties because it induces pro-immigration activists to attempt to boycott the company. I don't want to live in a world where people trying to run a pro-privacy VPN feel pressure to police anti-immigration speech unrelated to the core mission among people in their organization, and that's the principle that my customer dollars are riding on.

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

#756
post #738
post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not defending his choice, but consider reading Daniel's rationale in the Flamman article. There's also his blog [1], which explains some of his views. I know he doesn't share all of Örebropartiets views, but I should let him provide that nuance. As I said in another comment, speaking for myself, I don’t like that he made this donation and I know this view is shared by many of my colleagues…

> I'm not defending his choice, but consider reading Daniel's rationale This is literally defending his choice. More than that it is providing direct support to the views you are apparently trying to distance yourself from by suggesting people read literature in favour of them - not in a context where they even see opposing arguments. But as a fun aside to the people debating that his views aren't right wing... consi…

Back in my day, the right wing was "conservative" and used to be the ones making the permitting processes to slow down "progress".

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

#757
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…

> We also live these values by being tolerant in our daily work.

> The more people do this, the better a place the world will be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

The more people tolerate the far right, the worse the world will be because they will take your good faith and use it to extinguish tolerance for anyone but themselves. This is literally textbook. I don't know how you can invoke the word tolerance without understanding this.

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

#758
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.

I think you'd be surprised at how quickly that sentiment has moved from the far-right to close to the center. People are (rightly, in my opinion) pretty upset at their governments for letting mass migration happen with pretty much only downsides for their actual citizens. People are all about the idea of helping the downtrodden when it's just an ideal, but when they realize it's having negative consequences for them…

Migration in my part of Europe (Holland) has largely been workers for jobs the Dutch won't do. These people are abused as a sort of semi-serf labour mainly in the farming sector.

Some groups are a big net benefit to our (looking at the income the group benefits / social support costs) and others slight net negative. But once you take the economy into account it's positive.

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

#759
post #483

Slightly tangential on Swedish society, there are similarities between USA and Sweden. There's a large segment of society that is white and very blond, and there's a largish segment which is not. Along that same line there are all kinds of divisions: economic, education, religious, sets of values, and of access to things and possibilities. What pisses me off is that the cast of "CEOs of successful companies" live in…

What's the relationship between race and immigration status? It's not entirely clear what the argument which unites them is supposed to be. This unification is always in the mind of the white matry not the person opposing immigration. In the UK polish immigration was opposed, en mass, poles are white. SUPPOSE there are large numbers of poorly assimilated people in a country, whose culture of origin is very different…

> The refusal to treat large scale immigration as a cultural and economic phenomneon

> and insult opponents of this position as racist

On the other hand, you treat the negative effects of current immigrant milieus as eternal and innert to their ancestry (dare to say: genes).

This way, you can look at integration as if it has to happen in a single generation and also, allows you to ignore the more important part of diminishing social mobility, which effects the natives as much.

Look at germany, where after WW2, alot of turkish "guest workers" were invited and stayed. After several generations the descendant of those immigrants are as german as you can be. They are still soft muslims, drink alcohol, engage with german bureaucracy, have a heavy turkish accent -- some of them are even candidates for the far right AfD. Please note, they migrated into an economic boom.

Isnt that utterly ridiculous? When time proves you wrong, it reveals your narrow mindedness.

And when you reduce immigrants to percieved negative innert properties, isnt that racist? When you broaden your scope, youll see the bigger problems are elsewhere, dont get distracted by bigotted populists, that are as clueless about problems or their solutions.

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

#760

I understand Mullvad has historically been a leader in privacy among the big VPN options. What are some other equally affordable and user friendly options that you all have been satisfied with? Think for someone who saw Mullvad advertised during the Super Bowl but looking to leave because of this news.

What is the general consensus on NordVPN? They are frequent sponsors on youtube but I haven't heard much substantial about them either way.

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