this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026
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The Mullvad founder gave millions to extremist far right party (mastodon.social)
submitted 12 hours ago by e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de to c/privacy@lemmy.world
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The IT company Mullvad’s founder Daniel Berntsson is behind a giant donation to the populist Örebro Party, which advocates “comprehensive re-immigration” from Sweden. “It’s sad that it’s needed,” he told Flamman.

~ https://www.flamman.se/techprofil-ger-miljoner-till-orebropartiet/

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[–] Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Can we stop with the "proton" supports trump. This has been echoing since the tweet. I understand the initial recoil, I had it myself, but proton as an entity very clearly does not support trump.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 32 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

By that logic, Mullvad is fine too, because the entity doesn't support the far right. You are just sending your money to the company which pays the people that do... so...

[–] Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I mean I'm okay expanding that logic here as well for consistency. This is all on a spectrum, one of Mullvad's top employees donates millions to far right politician is on the more extreme end of that spectrum than a tweet that failed to read the room.

Taking your counterpoint even further, if you found out some low level employees at any company used a portion of their paycheck to support far right politics would you boycott? Obviously not, which should show you that you don't believe this should be a binary decision.

To be clear, I feel mullvad crossed the line here, my point was that the proton hate doesn't compare and is overblown.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Proton itself sponsored a fascist influencer in france like just a couple weeks ago... You can pretend that having a MAGA CEO doesn't have anything to do with that, and that they would have stopped the sponsorship and caught their "mistake" without significant public backlash if you like, but the dots are connecting to a lot of us watching.

Also, nice strawman, but are they paying the low level employee enough to donate literally millions of dollars? Probably not. Does that low level employee have direct influence over the company? Probably not.

The idea that you stop using Mullvad because the founder personally made a donation to right-wing extremists, but you are fine with using Proton that sponsors fascists and has a CEO that platforms far-right extremists talking points is bonkers. The claim that you are separating "the entity" from the "people" doesn't even hold water.

[–] ick@infosec.pub 2 points 2 hours ago

I thought it wasn’t an actual sponsorship, just a referral link system anyone could sign up for and promote.