4 ms·

I'm a long-time Mullvad customer, and I respect what the company has been doing and the pro-privacy political stance it openly and publicly stands for. I agree

I'm a long-time Mullvad customer, and I respect what the company has been doing and the pro-privacy political stance it openly and publicly stands for. I agree that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, and shouldn't be. But what I do care about, strongly, is that Mullvad as a company doesn't bow to pressure from pro-immigration activists who are attempting to impose social and financial consequences on people and institutions like Mullvad that tolerate anti-immigration political speech. Which is of course why people are publicizing this donation and publicly stating that they will no longer do business with Mullvad because of it. I want to state publicly that what would make me no longer do business with Mullvad is if Mullvad, organizationally, attempted to pressure Daniel Berntsson into not donating to anti-immigration political parties because it induces pro-immigration activists to attempt to boycott the company. I don't want to live in a world where people trying to run a pro-privacy VPN feel pressure to police anti-immigration speech unrelated to the core mission among people in their organization, and that's the principle that my customer dollars are riding on.

kfreds 3mo ago
> I'm a long-time Mullvad customer, and I respect what the company has been doing and the pro-privacy political stance it openly and publicly stands for. Thank you.
gpm 3mo ago
The speech people are objecting to isn't anti-immgiration. It is pro crimes against humanity against people who previously immigrated, and their descendants. A stance that Sweden should reduce the amount of immigration they accept would be utterly unremarkable and never result in outrage like this.
- JuniperMesos 3mo ago
  > A stance that Sweden should reduce the amount of immigration they accept would be utterly unremarkable and never result in outrage like this. I don't believe this claim, because immigration is a live political issue in my country (the United States) just as it is in Sweden; and people absolutely claim that reducing the amount of immigration the US accepts is immoral and genocidal. Seriously, claims of this nature are a huge amount of contemporary American politics and this is obvious to anyone who has seen the name "Donald Trump" in a news publication talking about the US in the past decade. Also I've read Bryan Caplan's argument that not having open borders is morally equivalent to Jim Crow, and read plenty of other people who think similarly to him.
  - paulryanrogers 3mo ago
    > people absolutely claim that reducing the amount of immigration the US accepts is immoral and genocidal I'm in the US too. Can you provide some sources?
    - mlrtime 3mo ago
      A simple google search finds quite a bit https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueUnpopularOpinion/comments/1llz6jt/deporting_illegal_immigrants_is_not_a_direct/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueUnpopularOpinion/comments/1llz6...
      - paulryanrogers 3mo ago
        One Reddit thread that wasn't even on my first page isn't saying much. Top comments are mostly that mass deportations and forced removal are what's problematic, not limiting entry or reducing immigration in the first place.
  - skulk 3mo ago
    Immigration in the US is a completely different problem with its own crazy complex history of cause and effect. Using one as a lens to study the other seems foolish at best.
    - mlrtime 3mo ago
      That is sort of the point, this has become a wedge issue to separate people. You are either pro-immigration (world wide) or not. It's the same "You're either with us or not" argument that forces a side. So it is related.
  - armchairhacker 3mo ago
    No, plenty of people in the US want to limit illegal immigration and expand legal avenues. It’s the Democrats and Republican politicians and party activists who can’t compromise. The Democrats don’t address illegal immigration, even the easy wins like when immigrants were placed in hotels while homeless Americans were in the street and crummy shelters (Maine). Then Trump finally deports criminals, but also technically-illegal people who’ve lived decades and started families here (and haven’t commit any crimes beyond speeding tickets), and restricts and harasses legal immigrants. There’s something wrong with politics where parties can’t even accept the most obvious exceptions to their “controversial” issues, maybe because of the stupid “slippery slope”. I expect people to fight over 1 million refugees who aren’t misbehaving but overloading systems. I don’t expect people to fight over an immigrant who assaulted someone, or a legal immigrant who is giving more than they take.
bigyabai 3mo ago
> Which is of course why people are publicizing this donation and publicly stating that they will no longer do business with Mullvad because of it. But you're doing the same thing, making the same threat. You've only escalated it from a conscientious protest to a Mexican stand off. I'm not icked-out by immigration discussion, but I am concerned by business owners starting down a political path. VPNs are not a very glamorous segment of the industry, and Mullvad had carved out a niche in taking a neutral side and fostering trust through a transparent product. My former boss spoke well of them and visited their sites in-person after hearing the marketing line about their RAM-only VPNs. Their appeal was not in protecting politicized speech, but protecting all speech and defending it as an apolitical technological imperative. Now more than ever, it's hard for me to believe their brand identity. You're allowed to have political opinions, voice them and vote for them when you're a CEO. But spending your paycheck on inordinate political investments is how you ask for a boycott. It's how I would feel about any political investment that their CEOs make, and its already tarnished the Mullvad brand for me.
- JuniperMesos 3mo ago
  > But you're doing the same thing, making the same threat. You've only escalated it from a conscientious protest to a Texas stand off. Yup, because I want the people attempting the conscientious protest to have less power to influence businesses and the people businesses employ. An apolitical firm is less likely to bow to pressure from one group of activists if they know that another, opposing group of activists is paying attention to how they respond to pressure from the first group of activists. Really, this has nothing at all to do with Mullvad specifically, except it does happen that I am a long-time customer of theirs. > Now more than ever, it's hard for me to believe their brand identity. You're allowed to have political opinions, voice them and vote for them when you're a CEO. But spending customer money on political campaigns is how you ask for a boycott. It's how I would feel about any political investment that their CEOs make, and its already tarnished the Mullvad brand for me. I don't see a meaningful difference between voicing political opinions and voting based on them, and making private donations to a political cause. Any money at all that an owner of a company spends on anything, down to their groceries, comes from their ownership of the company; just as any money at all that an employee of a company spends on anything comes from their salary. But also lots of CEOs of companies make all kinds of political donations, many of which I think are bad. The reason this particular donation is making the news is because it's to an anti-immigration party rather than a pro-immigration party or NGO or some other cause; and a lot of people want to exert social pressure to make that specific political stance dangerous. Those are exactly the people I want to lose.
fzeroracer 3mo ago
[flagged]
- HDBaseT 3mo ago
  Mullvad isn't doing anything here. A person within Mullvad is. If I work for Google and buy a BMW, that doesn't mean Google endorses BMW. > while cozying up to the government Uh, the Örebro Party isn't even elected. In fact, they have 0 seats at the Swedish parliament. A political entity =/= The Government.
  - fzeroracer 3mo ago
    This isn't 'a person', this is one of 'THE' people. Elon Musk is technically just 'a person' at Tesla, but their actions have clear and profound effects. The same is true here. When you're a founder or one of the c-suite your actions represent the full company. That's part of your job.
    - kfreds 3mo ago
      I disagree. Daniel's private actions does not represent the company. The difference between the private actions of a CEO and an employee's is that if the actions are controversial they are much more likely to affect the company's reputation if a CEO did them than if an employee did them.
      - roryirvine 3mo ago
        Does Swedish corporate law not have the concept of bringing the company into disrepute? In the European countries I'm familiar with, company directors are held to a higher standard precisely because they represent the company and have a duty to avoid damaging it through their private as well as public acts. Is Sweden really so very different?
        JuniperMesos 3mo ago
        If this is the law in Sweden it should be immediately repealed, precisely in order to prevent people from arguing that a political donation counts as legally-punishable "damage to a company" if it's the wrong kind of political donation. The fact that you're claiming that a donation to an anti-immigration political party is the sort of conduct that people "held to a higher standard" by law should be forbidden from doing is a type of political censorship that you're trying to enact via the mechanism of corporate law, and it's worth destroying that mechanism of corporate law over it.
bingoMen 3mo ago
> pro-immigration activists literally translated, “humans with empathy”
- RuslanL 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - bingoMen 3mo ago
    What do you mean by 'no'?
    - krieger_857 3mo ago
      no because it is a very reductionist clause
    - copper-float 3mo ago
      No because it's a childish oversimplification. It's legitimately the kind of argument a middle schooler would make. It frames your position as the only morally reasonable one, implying that anyone who believes anything differently lacks empathy. It's an intentionally insulting, black-and-white view with no nuance, just like how middle schoolers view the world.
- throwawaypath 3mo ago
  [flagged]

kfreds 3mo ago

> I'm a long-time Mullvad customer, and I respect what the company has been doing and the pro-privacy political stance it openly and publicly stands for. Thank you.

gpm 3mo ago

The speech people are objecting to isn't anti-immgiration. It is pro crimes against humanity against people who previously immigrated, and their descendants. A stance that Sweden should reduce the amount of immigration they accept would be utterly unremarkable and never result in outrage like this.

JuniperMesos 3mo ago
> A stance that Sweden should reduce the amount of immigration they accept would be utterly unremarkable and never result in outrage like this. I don't believe this claim, because immigration is a live political issue in my country (the United States) just as it is in Sweden; and people absolutely claim that reducing the amount of immigration the US accepts is immoral and genocidal. Seriously, claims of this nature are a huge amount of contemporary American politics and this is obvious to anyone who has seen the name "Donald Trump" in a news publication talking about the US in the past decade. Also I've read Bryan Caplan's argument that not having open borders is morally equivalent to Jim Crow, and read plenty of other people who think similarly to him.
- paulryanrogers 3mo ago
  > people absolutely claim that reducing the amount of immigration the US accepts is immoral and genocidal I'm in the US too. Can you provide some sources?
  - mlrtime 3mo ago
    A simple google search finds quite a bit https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueUnpopularOpinion/comments/1llz6jt/deporting_illegal_immigrants_is_not_a_direct/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueUnpopularOpinion/comments/1llz6...
    - paulryanrogers 3mo ago
      One Reddit thread that wasn't even on my first page isn't saying much. Top comments are mostly that mass deportations and forced removal are what's problematic, not limiting entry or reducing immigration in the first place.
- skulk 3mo ago
  Immigration in the US is a completely different problem with its own crazy complex history of cause and effect. Using one as a lens to study the other seems foolish at best.
  - mlrtime 3mo ago
    That is sort of the point, this has become a wedge issue to separate people. You are either pro-immigration (world wide) or not. It's the same "You're either with us or not" argument that forces a side. So it is related.
- armchairhacker 3mo ago
  No, plenty of people in the US want to limit illegal immigration and expand legal avenues. It’s the Democrats and Republican politicians and party activists who can’t compromise. The Democrats don’t address illegal immigration, even the easy wins like when immigrants were placed in hotels while homeless Americans were in the street and crummy shelters (Maine). Then Trump finally deports criminals, but also technically-illegal people who’ve lived decades and started families here (and haven’t commit any crimes beyond speeding tickets), and restricts and harasses legal immigrants. There’s something wrong with politics where parties can’t even accept the most obvious exceptions to their “controversial” issues, maybe because of the stupid “slippery slope”. I expect people to fight over 1 million refugees who aren’t misbehaving but overloading systems. I don’t expect people to fight over an immigrant who assaulted someone, or a legal immigrant who is giving more than they take.

bigyabai 3mo ago

> Which is of course why people are publicizing this donation and publicly stating that they will no longer do business with Mullvad because of it. But you're doing the same thing, making the same threat. You've only escalated it from a conscientious protest to a Mexican stand off. I'm not icked-out by immigration discussion, but I am concerned by business owners starting down a political path. VPNs are not a very glamorous segment of the industry, and Mullvad had carved out a niche in taking a neutral side and fostering trust through a transparent product. My former boss spoke well of them and visited their sites in-person after hearing the marketing line about their RAM-only VPNs. Their appeal was not in protecting politicized speech, but protecting all speech and defending it as an apolitical technological imperative. Now more than ever, it's hard for me to believe their brand identity. You're allowed to have political opinions, voice them and vote for them when you're a CEO. But spending your paycheck on inordinate political investments is how you ask for a boycott. It's how I would feel about any political investment that their CEOs make, and its already tarnished the Mullvad brand for me.

JuniperMesos 3mo ago
> But you're doing the same thing, making the same threat. You've only escalated it from a conscientious protest to a Texas stand off. Yup, because I want the people attempting the conscientious protest to have less power to influence businesses and the people businesses employ. An apolitical firm is less likely to bow to pressure from one group of activists if they know that another, opposing group of activists is paying attention to how they respond to pressure from the first group of activists. Really, this has nothing at all to do with Mullvad specifically, except it does happen that I am a long-time customer of theirs. > Now more than ever, it's hard for me to believe their brand identity. You're allowed to have political opinions, voice them and vote for them when you're a CEO. But spending customer money on political campaigns is how you ask for a boycott. It's how I would feel about any political investment that their CEOs make, and its already tarnished the Mullvad brand for me. I don't see a meaningful difference between voicing political opinions and voting based on them, and making private donations to a political cause. Any money at all that an owner of a company spends on anything, down to their groceries, comes from their ownership of the company; just as any money at all that an employee of a company spends on anything comes from their salary. But also lots of CEOs of companies make all kinds of political donations, many of which I think are bad. The reason this particular donation is making the news is because it's to an anti-immigration party rather than a pro-immigration party or NGO or some other cause; and a lot of people want to exert social pressure to make that specific political stance dangerous. Those are exactly the people I want to lose.

fzeroracer 3mo ago

[flagged]

HDBaseT 3mo ago
Mullvad isn't doing anything here. A person within Mullvad is. If I work for Google and buy a BMW, that doesn't mean Google endorses BMW. > while cozying up to the government Uh, the Örebro Party isn't even elected. In fact, they have 0 seats at the Swedish parliament. A political entity =/= The Government.
- fzeroracer 3mo ago
  This isn't 'a person', this is one of 'THE' people. Elon Musk is technically just 'a person' at Tesla, but their actions have clear and profound effects. The same is true here. When you're a founder or one of the c-suite your actions represent the full company. That's part of your job.
  - kfreds 3mo ago
    I disagree. Daniel's private actions does not represent the company. The difference between the private actions of a CEO and an employee's is that if the actions are controversial they are much more likely to affect the company's reputation if a CEO did them than if an employee did them.
    - roryirvine 3mo ago
      Does Swedish corporate law not have the concept of bringing the company into disrepute? In the European countries I'm familiar with, company directors are held to a higher standard precisely because they represent the company and have a duty to avoid damaging it through their private as well as public acts. Is Sweden really so very different?
      - JuniperMesos 3mo ago
        If this is the law in Sweden it should be immediately repealed, precisely in order to prevent people from arguing that a political donation counts as legally-punishable "damage to a company" if it's the wrong kind of political donation. The fact that you're claiming that a donation to an anti-immigration political party is the sort of conduct that people "held to a higher standard" by law should be forbidden from doing is a type of political censorship that you're trying to enact via the mechanism of corporate law, and it's worth destroying that mechanism of corporate law over it.

bingoMen 3mo ago

> pro-immigration activists literally translated, “humans with empathy”

RuslanL 3mo ago
[flagged]
- bingoMen 3mo ago
  What do you mean by 'no'?
  - krieger_857 3mo ago
    no because it is a very reductionist clause
  - copper-float 3mo ago
    No because it's a childish oversimplification. It's legitimately the kind of argument a middle schooler would make. It frames your position as the only morally reasonable one, implying that anyone who believes anything differently lacks empathy. It's an intentionally insulting, black-and-white view with no nuance, just like how middle schoolers view the world.
throwawaypath 3mo ago
[flagged]