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.”
Rage bait title. Really feel like this is over reaching. If you stop using goods and services entirely funding things you disagree with the world would stop turning. I’m in full agreement of not funding bad things and companies who do bad stuff. Mull seems to be one of the only main fighting bastions left for good service and privacy. Not losing a customer here. Perhaps there is closed door reasons we don’t understand. Who knows. I paid for the service to function as intended, and it does.
Edit: They took the word Millions and put it first to induce a reaction. Like many titles on the internet this is poor practice. But it drives clicks and traffic.
Just to be clear, you’re saying you’re OK with potentially helping to establish a far right government in Sweden?
Sorry if I’m being blunt but this is essentially the case, no?
No. I am saying I’m paying for a service that hits above all other services in value and properties which I think are important for privacy, free speech, internet access, cost, and quality of service rendered. Mullvad offers and proves that their service functions as intended. They stay or try to stay ahead of the curve of laws, privacy eroding tactics, AI, etc. I do not support the private funding of negativity in any kind or oppression. But the service itself is better than many others I’ve tried. Court and agency tested no logs. Long standing track record of being truthful and reliable to their customers in regards to their needs. I still believe their service is quality outside of what a single person does involved in the business, like there aren’t many people surely working hard to make a good product at Mull. Their CEO or whoever donated. Is not the sole owner and operator. I paid for the service, and don’t plan on stopping. If things get worse or they start becoming full blown Nazis then things will change. For now I see benefit of the doubt.
He isn’t just the CEO. He’s the owner of the company. Your money is directly funding far right populism.
That’s a bit of a nihilistic philosophy don’t you think? “Everything is bad and terrible but I can’t be bothered to do anything about it so I’m just going to ignore it”. You know about the poem right? Your worldview is the entire point of the poem. It’s not good to have that worldview.
I think it was mis understood and possibly the language wasn’t well spoke. Vote with your wallet and your ballots. Vote everyone should vote as often as possible. There are so many companies conglomerates you say that are evil or atleast further evil like agendas. That voting with simply the wallet won’t work in practice everytime. I survive off of nestle feeding tube formula to live. I hate nestle as their a horrible company overall. But out of 12 formulas or more atleast I have tried this one is the only one that keeps me alive. The world is not black and white as a simple thought can be. Sometimes you must use something not so good to further good elsewhere as an offset.