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Donation Controversy

mullvad.net

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Re: Donation Controversy

#51

Post by ninjin »

sapphicsnail wrote: post #45
teravor wrote: post #9

it was a mistake to respond, over 90% of the controversy is performative as it nearly always is. the ideologues will posture and claim that they are dropping mullvad while being unlikely to follow through. most people wouldn't even know the controversy happened nor care. with the response, you now trigger various human instincts that draw attention, promote further gossiping and wondering where the fire is with all t…

I'm really sad about it but I'm not going to renew Mullvad once the 6 months I already payed for are up. I'm fine supporting companies that have people with poliical views I initially interested in Mullvad for political reasons and one of the founders giving a significant amount of money to a political group that wants to restrict the rights of other people is too much for me. Not everyone is cynical. Some of us have…

I am in a similar situation and I am out from this point as well. Mullvad does a lot of wonderful work, but I think debating whether Örebropartiet's positions are reasonable or not misses the point. Head over to Allard's Twitter feed [1], as he has not yet published a coherent manifesto anywhere from what I can tell. If you do not read Swedish, get some sort of translation tool going. Keep in mind, this is how he wants to appear to the world.

[1]: https://xcancel.com/markus_allard

Sure, you find the odd reasonably put politic position. But, mostly, it is memes. Screaming. Ranting. Insults. Calling the head of the Swedish police a "crying bitch". Retweets of posts from who are not even shy in terms of being bigots and racists. The man is a toxic toad and I would rather have seen him paid to shut up than anything else. Yes, we need diverse viewpoints to be heard and we should be respectful and careful to shut them down. But, Allard is not this person and he is just ruining public discourse even further and waging an insane culture war (in my mum's constituency at that). Call me old-fashioned, but I expect representatives to at least try to strive towards holding morals and behaviour above the mean of society.

I have read Mullvad's blog post, but not Berntsson' yet (it is bloody long and I am at work, but skimming it, I saw nothing arguing why "public discourse arson" is warranted and just "something needs to be done, this is something"), so maybe I am missing some context. But if the answer to your question is "Bank-roll Allard", maybe it is time to take a step back and ask yourself what on Earth your question was in the first place? Because it seems to me like you are playing with fire and risk burning all that we hold dear to the ground. Do your views not have a Johan Norberg-like [2] character (something very rare, a Swedish Libertarian that has contributed to public discourse for over twenty years) that you can support instead? Or is the direction you want to see only professed by people that behave very close to what I would describe as the very worst our species have to offer?

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Norberg

Re: Donation Controversy

#52

Post by constantius »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #35
viccis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, this looks more like pre-1990s leftism that you see from people like Caesar Chavez. Broadly redistributive policies towards the working class and a strict curbing of immigration as a source of exploited labor underclass for corporations to fatten their margins. There's a reason Bernie called open borders a "Koch brothers proposal".

There is a very, very, very large gap between "open borders" and "keep all those disgusting foreigners out". I guarantee if you ask the average "immigration control activist" in most countries what the acceptable number of brown people to let into their country is, the answer is zero. Because the most active members of these movements are motivated by racism.

You seem to have decided that people who are against immigration are stupid, racist, authoritarian, and evil: by all.means, that's an understandable bias, as the most noticeable part of most countries' populations who hold this view indeed appear to be what you think. However, it is still a bias, that leads to you engaging in the kind of self-righteous, irrational rage that might make you feel like you're standing up for the oppressed when you're actually not.

Most people seem to conflate immigrants with refugees, which is false (refugees are a small minority of all immigrants), to see immigrants as poor, hard-working people who just need one chance, which is also false (most immigrants are skilled workers, generally not the poor of their country, and most immigrants you see are probably family members of other skilled workers), and to view immigration as a leftist cause (again not true, immigration is something that's mostly lobbied for by corporate interests).

But many more people feel opposed to migration for entirely different reasons: personal hardships directly due to immigration (loss of job or house), political leanings (pro-working class can mean anti-immigration), social cohesion/sustainability/community considerations, etc.

Not empathising with those people and having a reductionist view of immigration, which often stems from simply being shielded from any negative effects of it, as most on this forum are, lets people take a position like yours, which further polarises society and plays into the cards of the powerful you seem to oppose.

We probably agree on almost every political view apart from this.

Re: Donation Controversy

#53

Post by wasmitnetzen »

dijit wrote: post #38
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because they are wrong, immoral, and stupid. They're grovelling in the crumbs left over by the rich, and then getting pissed that there are other people groveling for the same crumbs. Blaming immigrants is easy because you get an immediate base amongst racists (the immoral). They'll perk up at the sound of your dog whistles, and immediately start barking shit like "finally someone had the bravery to say what w…

Sorry, you speak about this as though you are an American (not sure if you are) but you can't hope to understand the realities of living in a country that just injected 1/10th of its population in a decade. The demographic of the largest cities in Sweden has changed from 17% foreign born in 1986 to over 55% today- in a single generation. (Malmö, were I live as a migrant myself). At the same time, the healthcare servi…

Note that while Sweden has a low income inequality, it has one of the worst wealth inequalities in the world.

Re: Donation Controversy

#54

Post by m4xp »

viccis wrote: post #24

I don't see how that particular political expression is a risk to their VPN's stance. This is a lot of nothing; would have been better to ignore the screeching from Bluesky.

In fact I would argue that if he was cancelled like the mob wanted it would reflect badly on mullvad, If you cave to a bunch of Twitter warriors am I supposed to trust you from keeping my privacy when the government comes knocking?

Re: Donation Controversy

#55

Post by streetfighter64 »

JLO64 wrote: post #6

Personally, I'd rather not have a company I work for police my social media and political activities just so that they fit with what the company desires. That would make me quit as I value a separation between my personal and work activities. That said, the fact that the person involved is the founder of this company (not a regular employee) does change things though. I don't know anything about the politics involved…

> or at least do so quietly

No, I think it's pretty good that they don't hide it. Customers should be well informed what their money goes to, and if the profits go to funding politics the customers disagree with they should be able to make an informed decision about that.

Re: Donation Controversy

#56

Post by streetfighter64 »

letmevoteplease wrote: post #32
teravor wrote: post #9

it was a mistake to respond, over 90% of the controversy is performative as it nearly always is. the ideologues will posture and claim that they are dropping mullvad while being unlikely to follow through. most people wouldn't even know the controversy happened nor care. with the response, you now trigger various human instincts that draw attention, promote further gossiping and wondering where the fire is with all t…

A mistake from a public relations perspective, but I think taking an explicit stance against deplatforming and self-censorship is consistent with Mullvad's stated mission.

> deplatforming and self-censorship

What? How's publishing information about where a company's profits go, and letting the customers decide if that's something they want to support, in any way related to "deplatforming" or "censorship"?

Re: Donation Controversy

#57

Post by stego-tech »

It’s Cloudflare and Stormfront all over again, at least from my perspective. As much as folks want to somehow find a way to separate a company from its leadership or founders, the reality is that giving money to Mullvad rewards someone who in turn gives their share of the money to, well, fascist scumbags.

People need to understand taking that position is itself free speech. Nobody is saying he can’t give money to Nazis or fascists or some other problematic group, what we’re saying is that there are consequences for doing so. If Mullvad wanted to distance itself from these problematic positions or people, they could just buy them out and tell them to fuck off. That, too, is a perfectly valid response that doesn’t impugn upon anyone’s speech.

The problem with people claiming to be pro-free speech or anti-censorship while supporting authoritarian regimes or ideologies is that the two are inherently in conflict: the absolute last thing a fascist actually wants is freedom of speech, and so hiding behind such a virtuous shield while directly contributing to groups whose goals would dismantle and destroy that shield wholesale is such a naked act of hypocrisy that anything else they say or do should be suspect.

Mullvad’s position, much like Cloudflare’s before it, is that we must tolerate the intolerant, even though the goals of the intolerant are to exterminate tolerance. This is the sort of Middle School thought experiment that should be a no-brainer, yet here we are again. For a company like Mullvad, that undermines their core currency - trust - at a foundational level that’s impossible to reconcile.

Re: Donation Controversy

#58

Post by akimbostrawman »

dijit wrote: post #46
sapphicsnail wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really sad about it but I'm not going to renew Mullvad once the 6 months I already payed for are up. I'm fine supporting companies that have people with poliical views I initially interested in Mullvad for political reasons and one of the founders giving a significant amount of money to a political group that wants to restrict the rights of other people is too much for me. Not everyone is cynical. Some of us have…

Its worth considering that this is a left wing populist party that doesn’t like immigration, and what was actually said (the major controversy) is that even if you are born in Sweden, if you commit crimes and do not make any effort to be Swedish: you probably shouldn’t be here. How this is represented by people is different than that, and its hard for people who don’t speak Swedish to listen to the original sources,…

[flagged]

Re: Donation Controversy

#59

Post by viccis »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #35
viccis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, this looks more like pre-1990s leftism that you see from people like Caesar Chavez. Broadly redistributive policies towards the working class and a strict curbing of immigration as a source of exploited labor underclass for corporations to fatten their margins. There's a reason Bernie called open borders a "Koch brothers proposal".

There is a very, very, very large gap between "open borders" and "keep all those disgusting foreigners out". I guarantee if you ask the average "immigration control activist" in most countries what the acceptable number of brown people to let into their country is, the answer is zero. Because the most active members of these movements are motivated by racism.

You're inventing a person to get mad at. I don't see any evidence that this founder holds those kind of views.

Re: Donation Controversy

#60

Post by Moomoomoo309 »

dijit wrote: post #39
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key observation missing from the conversation here is that you're being judged by Americans, where damn near everybody (save ~1% Native Americans) belongs to "an entire family tree" of immigrants. Race relations are one of those things that the US catches a lot of shit for because we've had to deal with it for the entirety of our nation's history, which lets us look at the attitudes alarmingly prevalent in Europe…

I think the other lesson we could draw from America is that we shouldn't let everyone in, they'll kill us, take our place and feel bad about it a few hundred years later... maybe.

Don't forget the small detail you're neglecting to mention: That over 90% of their population had already been wiped out by disease over the last few hundred years prior to large-scale European expansion in the Americas. (And it was not intentional! The whole "small pox blankets" thing was in the 1700s, well after most of the deaths had occurred!)

Adding that detail, the situations are a bit more apples-to-oranges.

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