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.”
The CEO didn’t support Trump: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
The CEO made an official statement and then the official Proton account doubled down. Praising Donald Trump and JD Vance and insisting, at the time, that the Republican party would be the better party unless Democrats did something about it.
I’m familiar with this link though. It’s the most suspicious, anonymous, intentionally incomplete, poorly written, AstroTurf-looking thing I’ve ever seen before. (How AstroTurfy? Proton officially uses it as a reference. So it gets extra scrutiny.)
I suppose we read different things, because what they said is that republicans aren’t “friendly with big tech” and that’s a good thing. There are other blog posts where they explain their position in detail, like https://proton.me/blog/trump-control-nsa-privacy
Yours doesn’t load for me.
You may be familiar, but you refuse to argue on its merits and sources, of which there are plenty.
And by the way, if we were to talk astroturfing, there are a handful of accounts in this community that consistently post negative comments about Proton. I’m not saying this is an orchestrated attack against them, but it’s really damn suspicious that in every topic tangential to privacy or VPNs, there’s always someone mentioning how awful Proton is.
Hard to critique me if you can’t open the links to see what the official accounts say, and your anomymous Proton-backed blog post doesn’t mention it either. Here’s a relevant snippet they disappeared.
- Proton_Team on Reddit, January 2025
Your link is to a 2016 blog post that says, in large font,
So forgive me if I don’t think this is exonerating evidence, but rather something that resembles Proton moving from a more modest both-sides stance to attempting a very partisan one.
The “it doesn’t matter” part of the blog post is also dangerously inaccurate, implying any privacy violation in Switzerland is illegal while, in reality, Swiss authorities have gotten Proton to disclose user data several times in high-profile incidents. Here’s the biggest one in my mind. And another and another.
At the time it was true, corporate dems were way more likely to be in bed with big tech. That’s just a fact.
Ah, I remember you now. You’re the guy who thinks that privacy equals absolute immunity from court orders! That’s never the case and will never be.
Oh no… It’s you. I actually thought you believed the blog post and didn’t know better. Because its assertion about Swiss law is the opposite of yours right now.
You can’t say Proton is legally mandated to violate privacy while pushing a Proton-backed page that says
Because this is absolutely wrong, and you knew as much.
But even if that nonsense wasn’t in there, the failure to mention the official Proton Team response in the blog post would be enough. Now I know you’re familiar with it, but here it is for anybody else who hasn’t seen it.
https://archive.is/LlbSj
Oh no, Proton PR is pro Bernie Sanders?
I can absolutely say that. Because as much as a trumper you think the CEO is, Proton wouldn’t collaborate with the DOJ under such scenario unless they wanted to be screwed in the courts of the country they operate from. But if they receive a lawful requirement that, under Swiss law, needs to be fulfilled, then they must.
You believe that Switzerland is some sort of haven where international law doesn’t apply. That’s not true. You believe that Swiss law only applies in one direction, i.e. individual privacy protection, but not in any other, i.e. lawful data sharing requests from law enforcement. Then the issue is what you chose to believe. Here’s the thing: any company offering a service must comply with the laws of the country they are based on. And if you think that there are commercial mail providers that would rather cease operations before handing data to law enforcement, oh boy do I have news for you.
Oh, so Proton totally won’t work with Trump’s admin unless they get a lawful order and then they’ll bend over backwards.
Your Proton-backed blog post lies by omitting the second part. Having you say it post facto doesn’t absolve you of pushing deceptive material.
Speaking of lies by omission, any blog post that doesn’t address the official Proton Team response is unreliable. You can be snarky about it, but it’s clear the blog is being deceptive with what it intentionally ignores.
Again, yeah, they will obey Swiss law, exactly what it says in their marketing material. Shocker.
I’m curious to know if you really believe that there are companies out there that would break the law in order to protect their users, and if so, which ones.