this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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Could someone fully explain the mullvad controversy. From my knowledge so far it seems like the cofounder donated to an alt right party and it's probably a bad sign for the company. Anything I'm missing?

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[–] ComradePenguin@lemmy.ml 107 points 5 days ago (1 children)
  1. You pay for Mullvad.
  2. Mullvad makes a little bit of profit
  3. Profit goes in large part to one of the two co-owners
  4. Co-owner donates huge sums to a very right wing, incredibly racist party. This is not "just" a party that has some racism. It is a true nationalistic racist party with despicable politics.

So paying for Mullvad indirectly funds this party.

[–] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 25 points 4 days ago

Yup. As in, referring to immigrants as 'parasites' level racism.

Sweden belongs to the Swedes. We have to make sure that we take care of our own damn people and we must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense.

  • Markus Allard
[–] eremophila@lemmy.zip 55 points 5 days ago (2 children)

One of the co-founders/co-ceo's almost single handedly funded a racist political party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party that wants Sweden to manufacture weapons.

The other co-founder/co-ceo stated he did not agree with it, but also doesn't really care because 'free speech'

Mullvad stated that users who were not happy could apply for refunds. some have, some haven't.

Lemmy, and other social media platforms have multiple threads about this, including very obviously biased threads designed to mislead people into believing it was the company who made the donation, or that there is only one ceo.

Paying mullvad does equal funding that political party.

[–] mildseason@sopuli.xyz 23 points 5 days ago (1 children)

But the profits of the company are being used to fund that political party. If people cancel their subscription the Mullvad CEO will earn less money and won't be able to spend as much funding racial segregation. You should vote with your wallet as much as possible.

[–] eremophila@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago

As mentioned in the last line of my comment that you replied to.

[–] shrek_is_love@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That's basically it although I don't think it's technically alt-right. More specifically, he donated half a million USD to the Örebro Party

Nationally the party has set out large-scale remigration, closing the Swedish borders to immigration, a stricter assimilation policy and ending taxes on energy and fuel as some of its key issues.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 19 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Not alt-right, just fascist?

[–] Hubi@feddit.org 19 points 5 days ago

From what I've seen, it's a weird mishmash of ideologies and the party seems to be run by crazy people.

[–] jestho@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago

Alt-fascist

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm missing even more. What does "paying for Mullvad" mean? What is the product?

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

their primary product is a VPN. for ages they've been the best in class for privacy vpn. however, it turns out their CEO is basically singlehandedly bankrolling a far right political party in Sweden so people are looking for alternatives

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago
[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Daniel is one of the founders of Mullvad and part owner. He took a big chunk of change from his private wealth and donated it to a horseshoe loonie party. Horseshoe because they try to marry ideas from the extreme left to immigrant hateful ideas from the extreme right. Loonie is self explanatory. His donation made it possible for that party to run a nationwide campaign.

Mullvad users who got mad simplified this to Mullvad fees finance a Nazi party directly. Which isn't true. How much of this donation truly came from VPN fees is also a matter of debate. They aren't strictly Nazis, more xenophobic communists. But assholes are still assholes and people choose labels differently. There is a lot of kneejerk reacting going on.

The company seems to want to ride it out. They correctly point to this being a decision by a private citizen who may exercise his free speech by donating to the loonie party. But they either don't recognize the PR hell of being guilty by association as a company or they know the subscription drain isn't as bad as the online outrage makes it look like. They publicly say this is all about free speech, which is their DNA, yada yada yada.

[–] willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Mullvad users who got mad simplified this to Mullvad fees finance a Nazi party directly.

You are making this up.

Those of us mad understand how the money changes hands.

It is mathematically correct to say that a portion of the energy I may contribute to Mullvad will end up financing fascism.

This isn't only about the political donations. That's a coowner/cofounder we are talking about. That's significant. If some rank and file schmuck donated to nazis in his spare time and not a cofounder, it would be less bad. Still bad, but less damaging.

This cofounder has outsized infuence on how the culture of Mullvad is shaping up.

Do I want to support that when there are better, more private, VPN companies without the nazi cofounders? For example NymVPN mixnet.

There is no good reason to prefer Mullvad.

It'd be a different story is we only had two VPN companies and both had nazi founders. Then we'd have to weigh privacy vs nazism. But that's not our situation right now.

[–] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 days ago

And not a small donation either. He contributed 72% of their entire funding in 2025.

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

more private

I thought Mullvad was famous for being the gold standard VPN provider. Can you elaborate on who is more private?

[–] whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago

They suggested nym which uses a technology called a mixnet that’s almost self explanatory: you have a network that mixes up the path communication takes so that it’s harder to determine the sender.

Unfortunately that’s got a bunch of problems that basically boil down to it’s more complicated and therefore easier to screw up and the more compromised nodes an attacker has in the mixnet the easier it becomes for someone to screw up.

It’s cool tech but not trustworthy yet compared to the simple alternatives.

Also nym will let you log in with google credentials. Theres some very careful scrutiny a user would want to apply to that.

I do not think nym is a bad vpn like service thing, just that its not comparable to mullvad.

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