this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
365 points (97.9% liked)
Technology
87897 readers
3889 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Can someone catch me up, I thought people liked Mullvad... but this thread seems to suggest otherwise. What did I miss?
My understanding is one of mullvads primary owners and creators donates a significant portion of their country's far right party's annual budget. Their policies, last I checked, included things like remigration or the forced expulsion of citizens based off of arbitrary and immutable characteristics (think bloodline or skin color). They're akin to the AfD or Republicans. Theoretically a meaningful % of money spent on Mullvad goes to a person actively trying to make the world worse, like Elon Musk or JK Rowling.
So some people, including me, stopped supporting mullvad until the person is completely financially and influentially disconnected from the company.
Yeah, but what have immigrants done for us?!
Performed menial, back-breaking labor at rates well below the legal minimums? Contribute to our economy and society while being treated as absolute garbage? Seek out a better life while being spit on by those around them? Have a lower property and violent crime rate than the general public while being multiple times more likely to be a victim of a crime?
Wait, why am I supposed to hate them again?
Appreciate the explanation. What's the generally trusted/suggested VPN then?
As another user said, IVPN or airvpn were the ones that came up in my last search. I have removed proton for them having the same trump supporting tech bros problem.
IVPN, AirVPN, and Proton all fairly popular here. One of Proton's higher-ups is a Trump supporter though
There isn’t a comparable service.
If you don’t need what mullvad is selling then there are others out there but the landscape is hard to navigate if you don’t understand what you’re there for and how to choose what you give out.
The reason why I use a VPN is to protect myself from people like the co-founder of Mullvad. So you see how this can cause a conflict…
Would you be okay with your employer or business partner getting to review every political donation you made during their employ or setting restrictions on what you could spend your money on?
I can understand the conflict if the guy was like in a position where he could reveal data about users but thats nowhere close to being the case because the entire company barely keeps any data in the first place
How will you know there isn't any right wing staff at the next vpn you choose? Seems pretty short sighted.
I want my protection to be such that even if I know the enemy is actively monitoring the network they won't be able to obtain anything useful. I wouldn't want to use a service that exclusively targets people just on my side because that makes it easier to narrow down and target.
There are many nazis and fascists everywhere in society. While is not comforting, that’s how the world is and one Nazi Staff on it’s own can’t do shit. But we’re talking about a leader here with power and influence (money).
But he can, I paid using my credit card. He could disclose the list of clients and payments if he is aligned with a fascist. He could one day decide to install malware on the software and by the time we find out it’s too late. I know it sounds paranoid but how can you trust a Nazi when your life is on the line?
So you've also learned the lesson of not paying with a credit card now right? Otherwise you are just as succeptible with the next vpn you use.
You dont take away the power to by shifting it to some other company which may or may not have less fascists. or some other fasicts (like ones working for the government now) could just as well get the info from your card issuer, or PayPal or whatever gateway you pay with.
I don't trust them, and I am equally untrusting of the payment processors and federal government that's why I avoid paying for vpn or hosting services with anything connected to a bank account in my name. If you do that then they have nothing to expose.
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/donation-controversy
Notable that mullvad calls out the situation themselves
"societies need a great diversity of ideas, initiatives and organizations who can be tested and sifted until the best ones remain" -Mullvad.
This apparently includes nazi ideas
good thing we can test and sift the Nazi ones out by not giving them money
You didn’t miss anything. Haters just finally got a reason to crawl out of their dirt caves
Mullvad is great for my needs. I may try proton next year, not sure.