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submitted 3 weeks ago by zaylon@sopuli.xyz to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

Daniel Berntsson, founder of Mullvad, gave a personal donation of 5 million SEK (roughly 450,000€) in 2025 to Örebropartiet. This enormous donation accounted for 72% of the party’s revenue in 2025.

How does this affect Mullvad’s legitimacy as a company advocating for a free and open internet, while also funding a political party whose agenda seem to contradict these values? The official party website (in Swedish) can be found via the link below.

https://orebropartiet.se/om-oss/

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[-] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 3 weeks ago

Av vänstern anklagas vi för att vara fascister och av högern anklagas vi för kommunism

Accused of being fascists from the political left and communist from the political right...not exactly a reassuring description IMO.

[-] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 89 points 3 weeks ago

Calling nonwhite migrants "parasites" is a pretty clear signal which end of the spectrum they're actually on.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 38 points 3 weeks ago

So nobody can agree if they're far-left or far-right, but everyone agrees they're far-authoritarian?

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[-] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 21 points 3 weeks ago

So, they’re socialists, only national?

[-] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 27 points 3 weeks ago

so like, national socialists. who do we know who also called themselves that?

[-] SirSmoothAES@lemmygrad.ml 20 points 3 weeks ago

Well, the political right calls anyone to the left of Mussolini a communist, so we can safely assume they're wrong here.

[-] sudo@programming.dev 8 points 3 weeks ago

Accused of being Nationalist from the left and being Socialist from the right. What a novel idea. A nEw PoLiTiCaL tHiRd WaY!

[-] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Wondering if it's time that we as a progressive left community, establish our own VPN...

[-] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Anything shared here would inevitably be (or become) a honeypot. If you want a community-driven VPN, it would need to be something like Tor. Individual nodes being hosted by the community, and a zero-trust system to ensure no single node sees enough traffic to ID users.

But the issue with this is that a malicious actor (like the government) could simply spin up enough nodes to be able to capture the system. A zero-trust system like Tor is only secure because it is large. It’s not economical for a single actor to run enough nodes to reliably capture all three connections in the chain. But if it’s a small group (like Lemmy) starting up their own system, then it would be trivial for a larger organization to simply outnumber the two or three dozen safe nodes.

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[-] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 weeks ago
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[-] pineapple@lemmy.ml 28 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Dang, Mullvad instantly loses its credibility of the go to lemmy shill VPN overnight.

[-] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 3 weeks ago

If people were shilling for Mullvad, then they wouldn't give a shit about this would they?

[-] TiredTiger@lemmy.ml 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Apparently they've now posted a response:

We also live these values by being tolerant in our daily work. Everyone is welcome to collaborate with Mullvad if they share these narrow core values. As employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, lobbyists, campaign partners or whatever it might be. No matter what their other opinions are and no matter whether the founders or anyone else in Mullvad dislike them. The founders themselves fundamentally disagree on several important issues.

In context, this seems...tone-deaf. "It's okay! Immigrants are welcome to work for Mullvad even if the founders 'dislike' them." Yikes.

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.

I would argue that those three things aren't even all on the same level, and that's without even addressing the fucking fascism of 're-migration' policies.

That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it's important to honor that, and will gladly refund you.

Unless you were smart enough to pay anonymously, in which case you're welcome to doxx yourself, I guess.

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[-] Kenvexity@lemmy.ml 21 points 3 weeks ago

Im sorry, but people here in the comments seem to be complaining to complain. If both Mullvad and Proton are known to fund/support fascist parties, then what do you suggest we leftists use? And dont just blindly recommend eastern spyware VPNs either. Maybe we just go back to distributing newspapers and using radio, just like our comrades back then did

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[-] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 18 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks for the heads up. Switching to Proton because of this. Mullvad has been bad lately anyways with most of their servers getting blocked every where.

The only thing keeping me on them was their reputation of being a bit less cooky than Proton but this pushed me over the edge

[-] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Proton's CEO praised Trump, just saying. There's IVPN which is Gibraltese.

[-] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 45 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Proton CEO praised something Trump did which isn't a great look but debateable.

That's wayyy less bad than donating $500k to a Nazi party which advocates for remigration.

[-] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It's not just praise though, Proton claimed Trump was standing up for the little guys which is rich considering that the fascist is a billionnaire, supporting the wealthiest to repress the labourers even more. And besides that, it's also insane.

Hitler was somewhat an environmentalist, but cheering on Hitler for being that is insane, because that is ignoring all the other heinous shit he did.

[-] novafunc@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 3 weeks ago

Proton did not claim anything; the CEO of Proton claimed that Republicans (not Trump) would do better on big tech anti-trust.

This view is not that crazy given that the person Trump appointed was doing her job quite well. Too well to the point that Trump removed her from the position later on.

[-] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Bullshit, Trump is the most big tech and corrupt claimant to Usonian president since a hefty while.

And Trump IS what the RINOs are nowadays, those that the pro-fascist CEO praised. Republicans are those like Bill Weld and Charlie Baker from Massachusetts.

[-] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 weeks ago

What's worse, cheering on something Hitler did or donating to Hitler?

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[-] vapor_body@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 weeks ago

I mean, moderates are invariably SuperHitler, especially in Scandinavia where their social welfare is synonymous with creating apartheid, but I don't see why that would bother most Lemmy users :0

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[-] Mikelius@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

So I'm definitely not familiar with swedish politics, but does this site actually represent the entire party? The party site is just a very vague description of some group of people that sound like they're anti left and anti right at the same time. The Wikipedia article on the party doesn't really help make sense to what they expect to accomplish, but again that could just be my ignorance to it.

Would love to know more about all this, with more reliable sources if possible (vs a website that just says something without really providing sources). Mullvad is about trying to protect privacy with fighting big brother, and I'm really not seeing anything about the party that indicates it wants the opposite.

[-] orc_princess@lemmy.ml 18 points 3 weeks ago

They're practicing the rhetoric strategy known as Bonapartism, which is when you claim to be neither left nor right, but a third way, which is nonsensical as realistically you gotta stand for something. As for this party's actual views, they're social fascists (socialdemocracy for me, fascism for thee). They're wildly racist.

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disgusting? yes

surprising? no

libertarians and borderline-criminals have always shared the privacy space with anti-capitalist lefties, since before the Bolsheviks bulk-ordered their red shirts.

[-] jorge@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 3 weeks ago

I use Kaspersky VPN, from Russia, part of BRICS. The Global South lives on its own work, unlike the Global North, who kills and robs the Global South.

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[-] dropdrip@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

A VPN does not protect the user from the type of sophisticated mass-surveillance that exists now and will only become increasingly more sophisticated without political critique. Users who are confused about the criticism of a capitalist-company when its benefactors are known to further entrench a beneficial political-ideology are simpletons who do not grasp the relationship between the Western-democracies and its political mass-surveillance organs that go on to spawn the private-surveillance companies that do get public critique (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Palantir, et al.).

No, a VPN is not better than nothing. Do more. Do better. Adopt real solutions like GNUnet. Liberate your computers with free software.

inb4 simpletons just want to use a VPN to watch mah netflix. Ok boomer.

[-] StumblingWasabi@lemmy.today 20 points 3 weeks ago

Points for mentioning a solution, but being condisending and talking down to people isn't a great way to get them excited about becoming involved. It's better to let people in on the joke rather than make them the joke.

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[-] Godric@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago

Mentions GNU

Condescending asshole about it

You wouldn't believe it

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[-] jjlinux@lemmy.zip 10 points 3 weeks ago

So, anyone that doesn't have the technical expertise to start moving to a more private online experience is a simpleton. Thanks for clearing that up for all of us simpletons. GNUnet is nowhere near ready to even begin to be a part of anyone's digital life, ansd the developers say so themselves:

Please be aware that this project is still in an early alpha stage when it comes to running software – its not an easy task to rewrite the whole Internet!

While it's great to put the word out hoping that more people gets involved, vexing others has the opposite outcome.

All this to say, fuck you, get off of your high horse.

[-] NGC2346@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 weeks ago

You use a vpn to watch netflix, i use vpn to watch porn, we are not the same /s

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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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