cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8915892
(original article in Swedish that reported this)
Posting this because I hadn't heard about it before and I'm probably not the only Mullvad user here, so might as well.
The party claims to stand for a "class-conscious populism" which according to party leader Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology and unites the "productive" classes of society against the "Transferiat", with the "Transferiat" being a term coined by Allard to describe the classes of society that lives off transfers that are a net negative for society such as those who, despite having an ability to work, live off social welfare benefits, as well as those who work "made-up services"[...]
The party differs from modern day left-wing parties by seeing the working class as co-dependent with people working in enterprise and business and instead sees the classes that "live off transfers", as specified, as a large economic net-negative and an obstacle for a functional society.
Their ideology is nonsense fake-marxist revisionism to redirect anger at capitalism and turn it against immigrants and people who need social welfare (though they do back some generally left oriented social policies, their main thing appears to be racism)
Even if you're comfortable with funding this, it still begs the question of just how trustworthy Mullvad actually is.
I guess this still beats any of the dozens of Israeli VPNs that definitely spy on you, but it's not great
Their response quoted here was too subtle, but you know it is pr for a very serious issue for the company.
"not part of Mullvad's values" ,perhaps we interpret this differently because we are different people. If something is not part of my values, I am against it, because I am value based, how I interact with society is completely defined by my values.
For all I know you are corn chip based, maybe even a corn chip cooked in palm oil, using child labour, purchased from amazon, and delivered by ubereats.
If they wanted you to think his actions were against their values, they would have said "against". The fact that it's a company owner and CEO, means that the company values and the owner's values are the same, whether they publicly state it or not. That's why they've made such a fence-sitting PR statement. Even when they're trying to downplay the link between the company values and the owner's values, they don't commit because the owner's values are the company's values.
Using the word "fact" doesn't make something a fact, do you find people usually fall for that obvious bs?
People are deliberately trying to mislead other people with click bait headlines. Discredit the company by making it look like he is the company. Many people do not read past headlines, many people just follow the crowd, and are eagerly manipulated by it.
If he was the only owner, then yes his company would very more than likely be very much in line with his own morals, or lack of.
But he isn't the only owner, he isn't the company.
Decent customers should be getting refunds to apply pressure to the dodgy co-CEO in the hope that he does the right thing and leaves mullvad, or is somehow removed, or so that the (as far as we aware ) decent CEO makes his own vpn company with the morals that we believe(d) mullvad to have.
The irony of clearly dodgy people deliberately trying to make this a 'mullvad is evil' thing, is pathetic, but not surprising.