Comment by kamaitachi
3 months ago
Hi Fredrik
I’m a long time Mullvad customer, likely paid Mullvad upward of 400€ in the past number of years, as well as recommended it to friends and family members.
What you seem to be missing in your comment, is that some of that money I paid, found its way to support an organisation that has extreme racist views.
I’ve reached out to support and requested a refund of my outstanding credit.
I’ll be moving on.
Not just “support”, it’s literally the main source of funds for the party. >70% of donations. If it was a small donation that would be sort of controversial but maybe defendable, but here we are talking about funding pretty much the whole party
Hi. I get what you mean. I made that post with limited time. Sorry to hear you're leaving.
Hi Kamaitachi,
What you seem to be missing is that every single € you've spent on virtually anything in the past number of years, some of it has found its way to support organisations that have extreme racist views.
I did the same, except I'm paying for Mullvad through the Tailscale partnership, so I reached out to them and expressed my desire for them to partner with other privacy focused VPN providers like Njalla, Airvpn and others. I don't feel great about my money funding ethno-fascists in my country.
Where will you move to?
Are there any alternatives left?
For me, Proton isn't one.. not sure what else there is.
What is the issue with Proton?
IVPN, NymVPN
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Yeah, what's your point? Plenty of us are actively opposing the evil things our tax dollars fund all the time. If we could safely opt out of paying taxes for those things, we would.
But Mullvad isn't the government. I can get a VPN from somewhere else. I can opt out of funding something that I consider morally abhorrent.
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> Geez, I hope you do not pay give any money to Google, Microsoft and such.
Yes? I have been divesting from big tech. Not only do I feel good about it but the side effects have been positive too.
Yet Mullvad is small tech. These people work at non-Mullvad small-tech all the same. Such people work everywhere.
So have I and I'm using lots of OSS by people and groups that I'm politically, ethically, morally and whatever else-ly incompatible with and yet they build great stuff for free without restricting me and my use of it. If my revenue allows for it I'll gladly donate to all of them for their work (that is also running my side gig and homelab) without looking into their spending OT donation habits.
I'll happily keep on listening to radical left punk, RAC/rock against Communism as well as anti fascist and NS Black Metal as long as the music moves me.
I can't go around judging all day. Wherever I spend money, I'll probably disagree with 99% of what the people at the receiving end will do with it.
Yes, I check whether my local bakery is run by people with hateful politics.
Yet do you check the same for the company that manufactures your electronic devices, clothes, food, and provides your entertainment?
I think you'll find people tend to disagree on quite a great deal in aggregate.
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In fact, the politics of my local bakery are among the easiest to be aware of! These people are telling on themselves.
There is a thing called political power. The local baker may be the most vile racist out there but he cannot affect my life. The CEO bank rolling a political party can
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You don't think there's a difference between a founder and a random employee?
Also, the concentration of service cost to political affiliation is much higher here.
Their CEOs and the tech megacorps have been openly supporting Trump and financing both him personally and his political projects. There is no ambiguity in that at all.
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Why shouldn't someone divest from big tech companies if they think they are harmful?
If I found out that my local bakery was funding regressive far-right politics, I absolutely would stop going to that bakery.
These are silly questions with easy answers if you have basic moral standards. By mocking people for having standards, you just reveal you lack them yourself.
> [Bad companies] have many employees and I am sure some of them donate to causes you would disagree with using (part of) the money you gave to those companies.
People keep saying these things and I simply don't understand this at all. For sure some of my money goes to things I don't want to support, but for the money I can control and know where it's going without doing active research (though that approach can be also used), and even if it's just what I get as info through newspapers, forums and news sites, it absolutely shouldn't get people who I think of a re extreme rascist (regardless of whether this applies in this specific case).
An employee is different from a cofounder.
For example, I certainly boycott anything to do with Elon Musk, for the same kinds of reasons.
You seem to be falling into the "perfect is the enemy of the good" trap. It's not possibly to perfectly boycott every person and organization that deserves to be sanctioned, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it where it is possible.
> do it where it is possible.
So lets only boycott small and inconsequential companies like Mullvad that are easily replaceable. However not companies like Apple, Intel or Nvidia etc. whose CEOs have expressed their personal admiration of Trump and supported him financially because it would not be very convenient?
To be fair that seems to be reasonably rational i.e. anthropomorphising lawnmowers is a fool’s errand while its feasible to actually make a difference in cases like this
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I'd be among the first customers. North Korean dough products look quite delicious. They don't even use GMOs.
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