Swedish VPN vendor Mullvad is facing a backlash from some customers after co-founder Daniel Berntsson personally donated SEK 5 million (£385,000, $519,000) to the controversial populist Örebropartiet, which is running in Sweden’s national elections for the first time.
Berntsson has this week published a blog post explaining the donation, alongside posts titled “Immigration,” “Political individualism,” and “Moral individualism.” Before that, he had not posted since 2019.
The flurry of posts follows weeks of customer criticism over the donation – for example, Finnish blog Moonwriting’s post “I’m done with Mullvad.” Another blog, Unutterable, is more direct: “Mullvad funding the far-right and the problem with tech company ownership.” The Hacker News discussion thread about the donations has reached a remarkable 1,784 comments so far.
Mullvad was co-founded and is still jointly owned and run by two CEOs, Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg. Its name, as reflected in the company’s logo, is Swedish for “mole.” It also offers the Mullvad Browser, a privacy-enhanced fork of Firefox ESR co-developed with the Tor Project. Swedish socialist newspaper Flamman (“The Flame”) revealed the donation in its story “High-profile techie gives millions to the Örebro Party.”
In a post on X, the company said it was devoted to freedom of speech and tolerance, saying: “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.”
Cool, which ones?
The laundry list, especially in the US is very big. Just look at the donations on any big left wing politician. Easy to find the donor lists. Starting from FTX and all their lying and scheming up to every big tech company that was tip toing around left and right when presidents change.
And who might that be?
They are a troll or a fascist, so any response is going to involve mental illness.
Damn, I was hoping to find a VPN donating to left wing politicians cause that would be dope.
Porque no los tres?
what an incredibly low effort troll. Mamdani might be the only center-left politician in the US. There are no far-left politicians in the US empire.
Well it doesn’t start with FTX because they didn’t offer a VPN service. Can you name just one then please?
You mean specifically a VPN? Nope, not really. I thought we are talking in general.
Yeah it’s weird how these generalizations fall apart when you try to find a single example of a far-left VPN provider but all you can come up with is a years-defunct criminal crypto hedge fund whose “far-left funding” was donating to a middle-right democrat’s election fund.
I never generilized nor I said VPN. I said people. If you actually put an effort in the conversation and pur your obvious left leaning biases aside and your right leaning hatetred you will understand my point. I could not care less who finds who, all of them are shit, and not a single politician left or right thinks of you or the good of the people. Not a single one.
So you’re here to defend an argument you didn’t make?
Most honest user on lemmy.
What? Can you read what I said? Try again if you sis.
Purrrrr?~~ :3
You named a cryptocurrency company, not a VPN company.
My idea was tech in general. They flip to sides very fast when it suits them.