Comment by WhitneyLand
3 months ago
Fredrik, while acknowledging everything you said, the fact remains some of my money can end up empowering politics I find repugnant.
If it were a small amount of money, it wouldn’t be an issue. If the politics at stake were less important, it wouldn’t be an issue.
They’re not going to stop at immigration, look at other places in the world to see the future risk.
Sorry, I was a paying and satisfied customer, and now I’m out.
I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not defending his choice, but consider reading Daniel's rationale in the Flamman article. There's also his blog [1], which explains some of his views. I know he doesn't share all of Örebropartiets views, but I should let him provide that nuance.
As I said in another comment, speaking for myself, I don’t like that he made this donation and I know this view is shared by many of my colleagues.
[1]: https://dberntsson.info
I wonder if by this thread's logic, it is now my turn to virtue signal as if I'm leaving Mullvad as a customer, because now you said that don't like someone else's freedom of conscience, and I value freedom of conscience.
Such a bad place we're in: people say they value "freedom", but then you can't choose you own political representation without being witch-hunted to death by the same "freedom" group.
(I honestly think that the perfect response in this case would be to support the cofounder, if anything, to make their own choices, and refuse to hate on the person's political leaning. But alas, the chains of freedom are super heavy.)
At 21 century, especially on a topic regarding Europe, I thought we should have long learnt the lesson from how problematic Legal Positivism and naive "freedom" is from Weimarer Republik‘s constitution.
In short, freedom should at least maintain the capability of preserving basic poltical freedom. From my understanding of that party, they are clearly against other people's existing political freedom.
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The same applies to people who say they support freedom but are then opposed to immigration because their concept of freedom is tied to wealth, privileges, and the preservation of those things. But that has little to do with freedom. We are only free when everyone is free.
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"witch-hunted to death" is a fairly generous interpretation of "I am no longer going to be a Mullvad customer" don't you think?
>without being witch-hunted
I still remember in 2013 to 2021 when this was happening in the US and wider internet on twitter and reddit. A lot of people in Europe / AUS / NZ thought it was some soup opera made up by the internet's few.
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I don't think you understand what these people view as "freedom".
This isn't a simple difference in political beliefs, they believe that certain groups of people are basically subhuman and don't deserve basic human rights.
How can you support that?
It seems there are a lot of far-right extremest trolls/psychopaths on hacker news. What a disgrace.
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>I don’t like that he made this donation and I know this view is shared by many of my colleagues.
Its a strange world now where everyone is expected to have a public opinion on everyone else's opinions to keep them in line. Very anti privacy, anti freedom, and against plurality of opinion.
I'm sorry - you're saying that having a public opinion on another person's opinion is against the plurality of opinion?
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That's... Not really what is happening here.
The guy who made the donation is entitled to his opinions. No one is questioning his right to make a donation.
People are, however, that by paying for the services of a company he owns, they are as a second order effect financing politics they find repugnant.
No, it's not everyone and it's always been this way. Nobody really cares about the opinion of random strangers.
People care about the opinions of those they're invested in (emotionally, politically, financially, etc.) and it's those opinions they want to know. People want to associate with those who share their values. It has always been this way.
Really fighting windmills with the hot takes about things that aren't true. "Sweden actually has a hidden wealth tax" and "The money supply is the real inflation!!"
Really in line with typical views of right-leaning people you see on X etc.
Curious, what’s exactly not true about these? The Nordic (and Central European) countries are surely not friendly to people accumulating wealth, and it’s a widely known fact that monetary supply got out of control especially since Covid. Data about it are all available in public.
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Oh no how dare they /s
> I'm not defending his choice, but consider reading Daniel's rationale
This is literally defending his choice. More than that it is providing direct support to the views you are apparently trying to distance yourself from by suggesting people read literature in favour of them - not in a context where they even see opposing arguments.
But as a fun aside to the people debating that his views aren't right wing... consider this quote from the aforementioned blog (translation made via firefox's swedish to english model)
> A building permit officer at a municipal city building office is primarily dedicated to preventing, making it difficult, costly, delayed and uneasy construction. He causes great damage and thus produces negative value, but still also receives his salary from the tax of others and is thus supported by others.
Can we get more right wing than claiming that imposing standards on industry so they don't go around building death traps that kill people to save a few bucks "causes great damage and thus produces negative value". Not even as an argument that this particular office is overly restrictive, but just as a statement about building permit officers in general.
How did we get to the point where suggesting that you hear out what someone has to say for themselves get equated to "literally defending his choice"?
I'm very far left myself, but I hate this tendency to equate any intellectual engagement with the right wing thought whatsoever with support. It's almost as if rightist politics were some kind of cooties that you catch simply by being in the same room or something.
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Back in my day, the right wing was "conservative" and used to be the ones making the permitting processes to slow down "progress".
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> As I said in another comment, speaking for myself, I don’t like that he made this donation and I know this view is shared by many of my colleagues.
Maybe there's a case to distance Mullvad from him, then. Not taking a stand is also a political choice.
Consider GWB's "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." For and against are not always the only options. Sometimes there are nuances, or other concerns.
Daniel made this decision as a private individual. Some of his colleagues (including me) dislike it as private individuals.
I recognize that the amount as well as his position of power within the company (co-founder, co-owner, co-CEO) make people who disapprove more uncomfortable than if it had been a much lower amount from a regular employee.
However, as others have argued, what would happen if Mullvad started weighing in on politics unrelated to its mission?
Better to see Mullvad almost like a force of nature: Mullvad believes privacy is a universal right. You might disagree but at least it's consistent, and I'd argue that's one path to trustworthiness - you know how we're likely to treat you as a customer. (equally, regardless of your political affiliation)
Obviously everyone is free to make their own choice on whether they like this stance or not.
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> Maybe there's a case to distance Mullvad from him, then. Not taking a stand is also a political choice.
They are making a stand. This stance that they've taken has made me decide that I'm switching from another VPN provider TO Mullvad. Not many people have the backbone to actually stand behind freedom of speech when it may cost them something. It's very admirable.
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If you bought the product, the money went to the company. You don't need to take personal responsibility beyond that, and the company isn't doing the thing you hate so much. By the same token that "some of your money might end up (after many twists and turns) empowering politics you find repugnant", a much bigger share of this money is paying for the food on the table of the employees, their families and their children.
How many people unrelated with your personal gripe, people that were doing a good job since you were paying and satisfied customer, are you willing to punish in order to "send a message"?
This is an impossible standard to live by and demand from everything you buy and every service you pay for. Doubly so if you need to announce to the world you're dropping a product because of something that isn't done by or responsibility of its employees.
I am sympathetic to the sentiment, but the argument does not hold water.
> the fact remains some of my money can end up empowering politics I find repugnant
are you paying taxes? are you using gasoline? are you paying for amazon?
Some ratio of your money will always go toward something you hate. The big question is: is for a mulvad subscription that ratio bigger than for the alternative? The next question is: how is the ratio for things you like?
> If it were a small amount of money, it wouldn’t be an issue.
I'm not speaking for or against anyone's views for or against anything here, but it's worth noting that Brendan Eich's $1K donation caused quite the stir.
I am so so disappointed with Mullvad and this founder. I can’t believe I let myself get suckered and then paid up-front for the year again.
The only influence I have is with my money.
Perhaps you should talk to customer support and try to get your money back. Even if it won't work, there's no faster way to reach the company to make a stand than to have an explicit paper trail to customers that are leaving them because of this.
No offense, but you're being so dramatic for no reason. You're not that important, and it doesn't matter what you believe. Your comment just reeks of smugness and immaturity.