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Shutting down our public encrypted DNS servers and sponsoring Quad9 instead | Mullvad VPN (mullvad.net)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Hey, I'm a real person who organically discovered this news and made behavioral changes based on the news.

I am not a nazi. I do not want to support nazi policies or beliefs or people who would strengthen and distribute Nazi policies or beliefs. If someone supports forcibly relocating citizens based off their bloodline history or the color of their present day skin, I think they should be as far away from a position of power as society can possibly manage while still treating them like a human.

I believe, based on the Mullvad news, that one of the main benefactors if mullvad - meaning one of the guys who got a % for every euro I spent on the service - actively and meaningfully supports a national party with policies akin to Nazis. I want as much of my money to go to NOT-Nazis as possible, ideally 100%. So I left Mullvad for... I think it's airvpn. Or ivpn actually, although I considered airvpn.

I don't think this is a crazy response. I also wish it was the overwhelmingly common response.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 child)

    meaning one of the guys who got a % for every euro I spent on the service - actively and meaningfully supports a national party with policies akin to Nazis. I want as much of my money to go to NOT-Nazis as possible, ideally 100%. So I left Mullvad for… I think it’s airvpn. Or ivpn actually, although I considered airvpn

    Unless you fully audited every founder, owner, and staff member at IVPN (Nick Pestell et al.) or AirVPN (Paolo Brini / the activist group behind it), how do you know they don't hold similar political views or make donations privately to similar effect? I couldnt find anything looking them up and it seems very unlikely they are fascist algigned, but i think you can understand my point here, unless you have an explicit statement from the company, its very possible they could have a closet fascist in the ranks.

    I don't mean to say the posts here are entirely fake, i mean to say the outrage being stoked seems short sighted, While i agree with not wanting my money to support fascist causes, I don't consider someone's personal donations or how they spend their money any of their employers business, nor would i want to live in a society where an employer or a business gets to have a say in those things. I read mullvads response, if they had doubled down and defended the guy that would be one thing, but they clearly have to walk a careful tightrope due to a difficult situation that i believe the other founders genuinely did not know about until it came out in the news.

    BTW here are the only VPN providers i could find that have openly and explicitly declared anti-fascist beliefs:

    NymVPN / " I am proud to be an anarchist against fascism." - Harry Halpin

    RiseUpVPN

    I wonder what kind of response you'd get if you emailed VPN providers to ask about the personal donation habits or political leanings of their founders, maybe thats a project i'll take on another day. Probably something worth knowing and keeping public.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    I think your responses to this are taking extreme theoretical positions that aren't true. So for instance, the extreme theory of "I don't support them because one of their (still financially connected) founders is a nazi" is "I must research all company's I support for their political beliefs" and that's not true - that's an extreme stance.

    My real stance is "everyone should strive to be as ethical a consumer as they possibly can be - given their time, energy, and financial situations." It's not my job to research every company and I don't have time/energy to research every provider of every product I consume; but I do what I can. It's the job of the journalist to dig up these meaningful stories and distribute them to their community, that's why that job is so important. And easily getting these stories distributed to me is why I'm on Lemmy (or back in the day reddit).

    So no, I do not have to research everyone to reduce my euros from going to Nazi's. If my options are known Nazi or unknown something - I expect a reasonable person to always go with the unknown.

    And I do want to live in a society where Nazi beliefs have real life consequences, including and especially at work. The extreme stance is "all beliefs can be held against you at work" and that's wrong. There's a difference between a person wanting their government to tax them 2% less and a person wanting their government to expunge all black people to countries they may have never even visited. There's a difference between being a part of the NRA and being a part of the KKK. You can be in party that worsens your country and your quality of life and makes the world slowly worse (like pre-trump modern republicans in the US or the CDU in Germany). You can't be in party that is actively looking to dismantle civil rights, harm the out-groups, and make society rapidly worse (like Republicans, AfD, reform for britain, or the Nazi party).

    Everyone should want to live in a society where, if their coworkers are racist their company does something about it. Because that gets rid of racists at best or at worst it makes them sneakier - more quiet. Their has to be societal consequences for holding societally destructive beliefs. Should they starve? No. We should have Universal Basic Income. Should they be kicked out of their home? No, they should own their home and there shouldn't be landlords. Should they be removed from any position of power and barred from ever holding one again? Yes, absolutely. They should be "tarred and feathered", we should put a badge on them that says "dangerous and hateful" and we should treat them as such - they only get to hold jobs which can't hurt other people they seek to hurt.

    There is a difference between ideas destructive to society and most normal ideas and you should want to treat them differently.

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