Any other verified sources?
For some people, the answer is obviously yes. For others, they'll judge Mullvad purely by its track record, audits, and technical design.
Honestly, you could say the same about the CEO of ANDURIL in the US - the Oculus guy...but he just cares about the US and wants to make money by making weapon systems etc.
Is he a bad person? Is he a patriot? Who knows, I ain't gonna play the ultimate judge game - but he did release a cool gameboy clone which is literally the closest I will ever get to his work... [1]
https://www.analogue.co/products
https://www.analogue.co/editions
I think these look a lot cooler, though they're less hackable.
...as long as they don't have opinions that differ from ours, in that case we might punch em in the face...
Very weird interpretation of "voluntarily choose to not continue supporting them financially"
Presumably you want everyone to be forcibly compelled to finance the political parties they disagree with? And you would define this as a democratic society?
The CEO’s extracurricular activities are none of my business.
Would you subscribe to an excellent VPN service, if it was run by [insert universally abhorred brutal dictator from history here]?
It includes a short statement from the CEO.
I'm not personally inclined to be so strict about this, but there are people with objections against the Proton CEO who once agreed with Trump on twitter, or DHH (there is this one blogpost about his extreme views). Etc.
He has the right to do what he’s doing. Other people have the right to react and say “That sucks, it’s against my values, I no longer trust you or want to do business with you.”
Right wing should be boosting immigration to give businesses cheaper labour and erode worker rights.
Explains why they UK immigration rose massively with the tories.
Many parties outright lie about this to grow their voter base, but the difference in policy vs promise is huge.
Free dental care is considered "extemely left wing" now? That's just bizarre tbh.
If a country would decide to use tax money to provide health care services for free to everybody that's not much different than using tax money to maintain an infrastructure network that's free to use (like roads), or free police and firefighting services - and I think none of those examples are considered particularly 'left-wing'.
The other owner replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800
I am not sure "far right" is an accurate label. Maybe populist? Its a mix that would probably get a lot of support in other European countries.
The party was founded after the founder was thrown out of the Left party for liking a far-left extremist group on Facebook and not backing down from that. Since then the party has evolved to also include goals traditionally attributed to the right, like large scale remigration and a stricter immigration policy.
The party also seems inconsequentially small, even at the municipal and regional level. They have 0 seats at the national level
So I'll assume he owns about 50%. Well, that ends my usage of Mullvad.[1] I appreciate that probably many of Mullvad's employees have different views, and obviously Berntsson has every right to his opinions and to express them, and I also appreciate that someone can have control over an opinionated company and run it for one particular set of reasons but not for other causes that someone believes in, but in the end I just don't want my money supporting anti-people causes.
[0] https://mullvad.net/en/about
[1] If it was a small amount, say less than 5% or maybe 10%, I might have decided differently. But it's still millions, so probably not.
> Stricter immigration: The party supports significantly tighter immigration policies than Sweden has traditionally had. More recently, it has also advocated policies encouraging or expanding the return of some migrants to their countries of origin.
> Anti-establishment and anti-corruption: A central message is that established political parties are wasteful and disconnected from ordinary people. The party proposes reducing politicians' salaries and cutting what it considers unnecessary public spending.
> Protecting core public services: It argues that savings should come from administration and projects it views as non-essential, while prioritizing healthcare, schools, elderly care, and other local services. Free dental care: This has been one of its more prominent welfare proposals.
> Social conservatism and secularism: The party is generally described by political scientists and reference works as socially conservative and nationalist, while also supporting a secular state.
I asked more about the immigration point which seems to be the only right-wing position here and even that seems based around reducing immigration from culturally incompatible (and often far-right) countries and migrants who are an economic burden to Swedish tax payers. Which would be weird to brand far-right? Maybe slightly right-wing, but hardly unreasonable.
ChatGPT seems to think they're neither really right-wing or left-wing, but more populist which seems to be a better description if this is a good summary of their beliefs?
Asking because I don't really trust MSM sources to be unbiased against populist parties and I know ChatGPT has it's biases and issues. Would be nice if a Swede can explain if this is actually a far-right party, or just "far-right" by Swedish standards.
<Explanation>
Now if someone could give us a trustworthy explanation."
So who do people recommend now?
I see no problems
Up/Down (authoritarian/libertarian) is what matters there.
If he has high allegiance to the extant power structure then promises should be questioned.
If he is for radical decentralization and antiwar then I'm more likely to trust promises made about privacy and autonomy.
Then there's international confusion about left/right. Scandinavia is known as a good place to run a business because businesses regulation is much lighter than places like the US which are heavily regulated. In the US business regulation is "left wing" in Scandinavia it's "right wing".
We'd use a 14-dimensional vector for political positioning if we wanted to be studious but most folks are just looking for a friend/enemy distinction. Even many of the comments here looking to dump a well-regarded service if either "tastes great" or "less filling" is confirmed. The false dialectic as means of control and all that jazz.
Uncontrolled migration needs to stop.
On the other hand, he might have other strong right-wing views that users don't agree with, and which might take precedence in one's set of priorities. If I like football and they like football, but they also want to kill me because of <other reason>, I don't think I'd want to give them my money.
Is that somehow undemocratic?
Is anyone censoring the guy?
These are not contradictory - they are both essential freedoms.
https://knowyourmeme.com/sensitive/memes/richard-spencer-pun...
[0] I suppose unless they have a very influential position and it's about a matter that contradicts main company goals
Nobody is calling for violence though?
In a free democratic society nobody is forced to do business with anybody they don't agree with, and free speech means they can talk about their decision without fearing repercussion.
And some opinions cannot be tolerated in a democratic society. An obvious example is anti-liberal/anti-democratic opinions as they threaten the system itself. You cannot have a free democratic society if a majority removes the freedoms of a minority.
sourcecodeplz•1h ago
Risse•1h ago
Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20260629105534/https://det.socia...
sourcecodeplz•1h ago