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.”
I think you articulated greatly something that’s been around my mind for a while.
I’ve been a while thinking how migration policies should be revised in the EU, attending to human rights and seeking the best for everyone. Personally I think the route to take is improve the countries of origin, do whatever we can so people doesn’t even feel the need to leave all their friends and family behind for economic reasons.
But as the EU is not addressing this because corporations profit from mass inmigration, the alt-right way of thinking about inmigration (which is basically genocide) is rising.
I might be misreading your comment, but I kinda want to be a bit on defence here. I apologise if my comment is misplaced.
Some people migrate because they genuinely want to live elsewhere. I’m from Russia and migrated to Germany for family, but before that I also lived in other countries. The reason was not because living in Moscow was bad (years ago before the current war, it wasn’t), but because it’s exciting to embrace new cultures and maybe fall in love with a city and its people on another part of the Earth.
Similarly, a few of my German friends migrated to the US, UK, Spain and Southeast Asia because they followed their hearts, not because they can’t make a living at home… And a couple of my American buddies now live in Germany. Is it that bad? Do the foreigners really bring thar much unrest?
I think the mood changed significantly in the last decade. Now everyone is seen as a part of evil mass of immigrants. (And more often than not, racism plays a significant role in those discussions. the darker the skin, the least welcomed people are).
We could work on improving technology for building high density housing, producing food and clean water with little space and energy and then exporting that into desperate areas. We could massively uplift the quality of life all around the globe while spending much elss energy and resources. With automation and AI this could be even easier. But practically this won’t happen. We can’t even stop the US imperialist wars and conflicts that are producing so many refugees.