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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

#871

Post by deaux »

teravor wrote: post #765

mullvad's mistake was to respond. it's all universally performative, the only reason it elicits reactions (1000+ comments here) when the view of a megacorp don't is because people anticipate the ability to elicit a response from a smaller company like mullvad. rule number one: ignore any and all political controversies, don't respond in any way. deviation is nearly always punished. unless it's part of some PR campaig…

> mullvad's mistake was to respond. it's all universally performative, the only reason it elicits reactions (1000+ comments here) when the view of a megacorp don't is because people anticipate the ability to elicit a response from a smaller company like mullvad.

You're underestimating the large influence of paid actors/FUD here. It's no coincidence that in this very thread, normally supposedly intelligent people conveniently forget that about half the companies they buy stuff from have blatant MAGA-like CEOs. HN didn't suddenly suffer from a 20 point IQ drop.

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

#872

Post by deaux »

brachkow wrote: post #818

Mullvad does more for internet privacy than any other company. There are a lot of people saying that they will not use Mullvad anymore. What are they going to do? Support ExpressVPN or some spyware VPN with unknown owners? To achieve what – reduce the roster of companies fighting for a free internet to 0? Remember, currently individuals elected by you, from parties ranging from goodest to kindest, are voting for pass…

> Mullvad does more for internet privacy than any other company. There are a lot of people saying that they will not use Mullvad anymore. What are they going to do? Support ExpressVPN or some spyware VPN with unknown owners? To achieve what – reduce the roster of companies fighting for a free internet to 0?

Exactly. This blatantly obvious fact being conveniently ignored by hundreds of comments here, is not organic.

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

#873

Post by deaux »

Aachen wrote: post #751
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #655

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 h…

It's different. There are things you can reasonably vet, and things you reasonably can't vet. For example, "is the diamond in the wedding ring I'm buying lab grown". "Is the fish I'm buying endangered". In many countries, "what kind of conditions did the chicken who laid these eggs live in". "Is this shirt I'm buying made to last or going to fall apart after a few washes".

Whether $0.01 of every $1 you spend to a company goes to someone who donates to far-right views, is absolutely impossible to vet and this news changes nothing about it. Would every $1 given to ExpressVPN lead to less $ ending up with someone who promotes such views? The truth is, we have absolutely no clue, we can't know, and there are so many factors in play here that this news doesn't move the needle. Pretending otherwise is performative behavior to make one feel better about themselves.

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

#874

Post by deaux »

dmantis wrote: post #392

Such a convenient time frame with all think-of-the-children bs wave to point fingers at the one of the best VPN services our there with spotless reputation and raise a hysteria with duplicated stream of posts, isn't it? Surely just a coincidence.

Sad that I had to scroll down so far to see someone pointing this out. This is the least organic comment section I've ever seen on HN. Also very convenient that the manner of moderation has kept this on the front page for most of 3 days, quite unheard of.

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

#875

Post by deaux »

pesus wrote: post #407
al_borland wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who engage in these antics would quickly find that there isn’t a single company where all the employees align with all their values. They would then either need to accept their hypocrisy or reject society completely to live in the forest somewhere.

Maybe we can start with not supporting companies that have cofounders that directly financially support ethnic cleansing.

Why set the bar at cofounders? Why not company donations, which are much more direct than a cofounder donating personal funds? Or why not CEOs? In terms of "support ethnic cleansing", indiscriminate ICE raids arresting people based on ethnicity sure sounds like a form of it. Why not include those too?

Oh right, because if we'd start with that, most people in this thread would have to stop using the device they're currently using, and that's inconvenient. Better put the goalposts exactly so that there's no such inconvneience!

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

#876

Post by deaux »

have_faith wrote: post #625
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 litt…

> 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.

So you're saying the majority of the people here who say they're leaving Mullvad, have:

1. Not heard of Bezos' funding of the Trump family, or don't use Amazon at all 2. Not heard of Zuckerberg/Meta's [insert countless despicable things here], or don't have Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp installed at all 3. Not heard of OpenAIs free pass on the Trump administration using their models for war purposes without limitations, or don't use OpenAI at all 4. And so forth?

Clearly, no. Because it has nothing to do with coming across information without obsessively staying up to date with every entity. The same people have come across much of the above information, yet continue not to act on it, despite most of them being magnitudes worse than this case.

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

#877

Post by deaux »

dnlzro wrote: post #583
corford wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>do you actively scrutinize and examine the key people of every service and product you use Yes >or it just a reflexive change of footing whenever you happen upon news like this? No (only when my personal screening didn't already flag it) >do you really switch Yes, where it's feasible

> Yes, where it's feasible I think that's what a lot of people in this thread are missing. There are alternatives to Mullvad, so it's pretty easy to take your money elsewhere if you're unhappy with where it's being spent right now. The counter-reaction to the reaction is so dumb. If you think it's silly to boycott a company because of a co-founders political donations, fine. But it's just as silly to try to argue peo…

There are no alternatives to Mullvad where you _know_ that all of the founders have "better" beliefs than this guy. If you have one, share it.

What proves the point is that someone suggested moving to Proton, whose founder (not even co-founder AFAIK) is outwardly pro-MAGA. And comments calling that out are the ones that get downvoted. This shows people are just pretending to care.

It's not silly to boycott companies in general, but this specific case it's silly. Not because of the reason, but because boycotting only makes sense if it's very likely that an alternative is going to be better in the specific factor that instigates the boycott. In this case, it's not likely, you have no clue whether an alternative is going to have more or less $0.0x of your $1 going to people supporting far-right parties.

Especially when VPN companies are known to be some of the dodgiest tech companies in general. Mullvad is one of the most transparent ones.

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

#878

Post by grafmax »

Auracle wrote: post #505
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.

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…

Immigrants are a timeless scapegoat for the problems faced by the working class.

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

#879

Post by fleroviumna »

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…

[dead]

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

#880

Post by foxes »

Auracle wrote: post #505
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.

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…

You mean the Overton window or whatever has drifted right.

Nationalism is a right wing concept.

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