this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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Daniel Berntsson, founder of Mullvad, gave a personal donation of 5 million SEK (roughly 450,000€) in 2025 to Örebropartiet. This enormous donation accounted for 72% of the party’s revenue in 2025.

How does this affect Mullvad’s legitimacy as a company advocating for a free and open internet, while also funding a political party whose agenda seem to contradict these values? The official party website (in Swedish) can be found via the link below.

https://orebropartiet.se/om-oss/

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[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago (19 children)

Thanks for the heads up. Switching to Proton because of this. Mullvad has been bad lately anyways with most of their servers getting blocked every where.

The only thing keeping me on them was their reputation of being a bit less cooky than Proton but this pushed me over the edge

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[–] vapor_body@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean, moderates are invariably SuperHitler, especially in Scandinavia where their social welfare is synonymous with creating apartheid, but I don't see why that would bother most Lemmy users :0

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How did 9+ people even parse this comment?

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[–] Mikelius@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

So I'm definitely not familiar with swedish politics, but does this site actually represent the entire party? The party site is just a very vague description of some group of people that sound like they're anti left and anti right at the same time. The Wikipedia article on the party doesn't really help make sense to what they expect to accomplish, but again that could just be my ignorance to it.

Would love to know more about all this, with more reliable sources if possible (vs a website that just says something without really providing sources). Mullvad is about trying to protect privacy with fighting big brother, and I'm really not seeing anything about the party that indicates it wants the opposite.

[–] orc_princess@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 week ago

They're practicing the rhetoric strategy known as Bonapartism, which is when you claim to be neither left nor right, but a third way, which is nonsensical as realistically you gotta stand for something. As for this party's actual views, they're social fascists (socialdemocracy for me, fascism for thee). They're wildly racist.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

note that this is a local party, and as such their policies are focused on their local area only. apparently they plan to be on the national ballot this year but i've not seen any policy changes to reflect that. reading from an interview the founder did in 2022, he had to start his own branch of the left party youth wing because there wasn't one where he lived, and as soon as they became official he found out that they didn't like his opinions so he was forced out. as for what those opinions are...

– Vi började fråga oss vad som var relevant i människors vardag. Är radikalfeminismen relevant? Nej. Är frågan om hur många kön som finns relevant? Nej. Är gamla mossiga resonemang om huruvida Sovjet var en arbetarstat relevant? Nej.

Han upprördes av skatteslöseri och kommunala skrytprojekt som genomfördes samtidigt som utanförskapet växte.

– Jag tog frågan till nutid. Vilken klass tjänar egentligen på den förda migrationspolitik som lett till utanförskap och kriminalitet?

"we started asking ourselves what was relevant in the daily lives of people. Is radical feminism relevant? No. Is the question of how many genders there are relevant? No. Are tired old arguments on whether the Soviet Union was a worker-led state relevant? No."

He was upset by wasted tax money and bragadocious projects the local government spearheaded while social exclusion kept growing.

"I brought the question to present day. What class makes money from the immigration policies that have led to exclusion and criminality?"


He's coined a term for the class of people he says are the main tax money wasters; "transferiat", as in the macroeconomic concept of transfer payments. these people, he says, just profit from the system without adding value. as examples, he lists "genusvetare, mångfaldsstrateger, HBTQI-certifikatörer [,] i viss mån även journalister (inom public service). Det finns även ett lägre skikt av transferiatet – de bidragsberoende, framför allt den stora massan av arbetslösa invandrare som kommit att hamna i utanförskapsområden": gender studies graduates, diversity strategists, LGBTQ-certifiers, journalists in publicly funded media, and unemployed immigrants.


...honestly i was with him for a while there. i thought he was gonna go on a tirade against "bullshit jobs", but instead he went off the deep end. later on he cites "public art" and "community centers in areas where more limmigrants live" as a waste of taxpayer money.

[–] Deer_Tito@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 week ago

Sounds like at "best" NazBol, at worst just Nazi.

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disgusting? yes

surprising? no

libertarians and borderline-criminals have always shared the privacy space with anti-capitalist lefties, since before the Bolsheviks bulk-ordered their red shirts.

[–] jorge@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 week ago (8 children)

I use Kaspersky VPN, from Russia, part of BRICS. The Global South lives on its own work, unlike the Global North, who kills and robs the Global South.

[–] TiredTiger@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I remember all the FUD about their anti-virus back in the day, even though it consistently tested the best. I didn't know they had a VPN. I'll have to look into it.

Edit: website says "purchase is unavailable for US customers". I'm sure that's the US government's doing and not their own choice, if I had to guess.

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[–] dropdrip@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

A VPN does not protect the user from the type of sophisticated mass-surveillance that exists now and will only become increasingly more sophisticated without political critique. Users who are confused about the criticism of a capitalist-company when its benefactors are known to further entrench a beneficial political-ideology are simpletons who do not grasp the relationship between the Western-democracies and its political mass-surveillance organs that go on to spawn the private-surveillance companies that do get public critique (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Palantir, et al.).

No, a VPN is not better than nothing. Do more. Do better. Adopt real solutions like GNUnet. Liberate your computers with free software.

inb4 simpletons just want to use a VPN to watch mah netflix. Ok boomer.

[–] StumblingWasabi@lemmy.today 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Points for mentioning a solution, but being condisending and talking down to people isn't a great way to get them excited about becoming involved. It's better to let people in on the joke rather than make them the joke.

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[–] Godric@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Mentions GNU

Condescending asshole about it

You wouldn't believe it

[–] dropdrip@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Yes. I am just tired, comrade. Once can argue about the tone, but the reality is there needs to be a rectification on computer-education on a scale that only a government can enact. I can not do it. I can just rebuke.

Juvenile views do need to be rebuked. If you believe you can regain a portion of control back via payment to an entity, whilst still living in ignorance of the substrate you wish to increase control over you are a moron. You are merely paying for a belief.

I can not understand the user's insistence on ignorance. All the users here are aware, to differing degrees, of the abuses that are inflicted on them due to this ignorance, yet there is a crowd who adamantly refuse to use their eyes; they wish merely to do the same things they were doing before, with no change in their own behaviors. They will continue to be abused.

I think the reality is they have no interest in the topic.

[–] traxex@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago

A VPN has its place in the security stack that should be everyone’s goal. I would genuinely be impressed if you could tell me how a VPN or any other layer in that stack works.

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[–] NGC2346@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You use a vpn to watch netflix, i use vpn to watch porn, we are not the same /s

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[–] jjlinux@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 week ago

So, anyone that doesn't have the technical expertise to start moving to a more private online experience is a simpleton. Thanks for clearing that up for all of us simpletons. GNUnet is nowhere near ready to even begin to be a part of anyone's digital life, ansd the developers say so themselves:

Please be aware that this project is still in an early alpha stage when it comes to running software – its not an easy task to rewrite the whole Internet!

While it's great to put the word out hoping that more people gets involved, vexing others has the opposite outcome.

All this to say, fuck you, get off of your high horse.

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago

I do not find their program on the web. They say they will publish before summer.

Any other official document about their political stances besides that really vague introduction they do on their website?

[–] unitedwithme@lemmy.today 5 points 1 week ago (12 children)

So, now everyone's going to hate Mullvad like they do Proton bc of personal decisions by the CEO??

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago

Yes bit ironically I will switch to Proton since its cheaper and now equal to Mullvad anyway

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[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Regardless of what this dumb party is, it's first and foremost a donation by a private person. Who happens to run Mullvad. So in the medium term this should have no bearing on the company and how it operates from their point of view. The article hints at disagreement on the board about many things. So if this news story turns into subscribers leaving by the thousands, I would sooner think the "generous" donor might be pushed or bought out.

The tech sector is run by people too. Some of them are mad. Our modern outrage economy demands drastic and public knee jerk reactions to be on the good side. If you're considering leaving Mullvad, voice your concerns to them first. Put pressure on and wait and see for a bit. If they all turn out to be Nazis in trenchcoats, by all means leave. But they could correct this internally (push out/buyout) and then there is no need to destroy an otherwise okay VPN provider just because one of the founders turned into meatball Melon Usk.

I don't use Mullvad but I have used Proton VPN and am now using AirVPN. It's my experience that if you're using VPN to stream Netflix content or the iPlayer from the UK, you'll be equally sol on other providers because the streamers have gotten better at spotting and defending against VPNs. So switching in a huff may still leave you disappointed as well.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago

Yeah, the only issue is that any profits from paying for their service will eventually line the person's pockets. It's not like the company is directly doing it, or spreading the bullshit.

Makes it a slightly different issue, but it is still an issue

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