Technology

Moved to ivpn. Fuck mullvad.

“It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, in the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn't.”

The part being unsaid here is “that Daniel's private donation to a political party is NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH Mullvad's values or mission” (pardon the double negative)

That’s what I have issue with. They’re saying Daniel’s own personal purpose/mission (the donation being an expression of that) is compatible with their mission, or at minimum does not conflict.

What does “freedom of speech” have to do with expression of Mullvad employees? Mullvad isn’t a government. Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences. If Daniel’s own personal mission/purpose is incompatible with Mullvad’s, severing their relationship with him would be appropriate and not a violation of his freedom of speech. Of course, this goes back to, it’s not incompatible.

The “tolerance” bit, Daniel’s own personal mission/purpose as expressed by his donation is inherently inhumanely intolerant. Again, Mullvad is indirectly stating that intolerance is not incompatible with their mission/purpose, which makes the “tolerance” bit a contradiction. They might as well have people working for them that believe you have zero right to privacy.

fwiw - Windscribe (based in Canada) has been working well for me, and they are fully open source - https://windscribe.com/

I'm seriously worried about what's going on around this.

There is quite the push here for people to move to VPNs under the legals jurisdiction of surveillance heavy states, not just the US and UK but also places like Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands which are British Overseas Territories with the same laws as Britain except were they passed specific local legislation that overrides British Law.

We're talking about places with Information Courts which issue secret mass surveillance orders to companies based in or operating there and it doesn't mater if that VPN is no logs because for all you know they've been forced to install realtime surveillance equipment/software and they can't even tell you because BY THE LAW OF WERE THEY OPERATE if they did so they would end up in jail.

I would expect that the kind of people who would leave Mullvad because one of it's owners is a far-right nutter are also the kind of people who don't want everything they do and say tracked by the likes of the US or UK.

Further, the push is pervasive. For example https://vpn.techlore.tech/ is supposed to help you choose a good VPN, only if you look at those VPNs based in British Overseas Territories (Gibraltar, BVI) they're listed as "Not 14-eyes" which that's bullshit - I was actually curious and went and look at how Legislation works in Gibraltar and, as I wrote above, they have the same as in Britain except were they wrote their own legislation that overrides British legislation, which means that (unless somebody can point me out the legislation in Gibraltar that overrides it), the very same legislation that support the mass surveillance activities in Britain as a member of not only the "14-eyes" international surveillance agreements but the actual "5-eyes" one, applies to Gibraltar and hence to the likes of IVPN.

Frankly, looking for a replacement for Mullvad whilst having some awareness of the mass surveillance shit in supposedly democratic nations is scary as fuck, since most VPNs, for all their (possibly theatrical) "No logs" and whatnot, are actually in places with Information Courts which can issue secret court orders forcing them to install mass surveillance equipment.

Absolutely, if all you care about is avoiding lawyer letters because of pirating stuff, any "No Logs" VPN will probably do, but if you're worried about the rise of the Far-Right then it makes sense that you're not into there being a real risk that all you're doing over your supposedly "No logs" VPN is in fact being logged directly into NSA or GCHQ systems (in the kind of country whose governments think being a leftwinger is "extremism" or even "terrorism"),

I have prepaid Mullvad so will use that until it expires. Then they never get my money again.

Örebro party advocates for "remigration" which is an alt right term for mass deportation or ethnic cleansing. The article is a bit obtuse on this. Basically this means crimes against humanity because it would mean detention centers or concentration camps and insane cruelty. Unfortunately this needs to become the end of Mullvad.

None of this is really surprising though, backlash is to be expected. Most people in most countries are against mass immigration, which does not make one a fascist. Sweden is now 8.1% Muslim which is a lot to ask of people. Since 1990 it rose from <1% and still seems to be rising. Most are not actually practicing Islam though, only like 25% or so according to the numbers on wikipedia. Which also has been my anecdotal experience in my country.

The issue is that the large parties do not budge on the neoliberal idea of immigration, to fuel economic growth and depressing wages. So only extremists or fringe parties remain to be voted on. Some people simply feel very strongly about "this is our land". And in most countries this is completely different than the mostly empty / very low population density USA which is traditionally an immigration country. It is not just a question of ideology. People have a right to feel less than holy thoughts about preserving their homeland. My point is that ignoring these feelings is irresponsible politics. Especially in times of looming economic decline and coming mass refugees from climate change.

Of course, Örebro is not acceptable because it advocates fascist policies and should be outlawed and all supporters shunned.

So if I use Mullvad, some of that is funding far-right politics?

Considering the far-right push to obliterate privacy, current and historically, it’s a really poor look for a company with a privacy product.

It’s rumoured that Australia will look to banning VPNs next for “protecting the children” after recently mandating proof of age laws to a bunch of services like social media and pornography.

Any recommendations that work well with Linux? I'm a beginner, and it was challenging enough to get Mullvad going on my immutable system. So any easy good transitions would be helpful.

Since there are always people who, purposely or not, misrepresent what's going on here and I've hashed it out in other threads I'll paste it here as well as some links to share alternatives. Like, how do I see upvotes on a comment saying it's a marxist far left party? The National Socialists also promised homes and dental and everything good for the Aryan race once they ethnically cleansed the rest. They certainly weren't any kind of left wing.

Sorry for the wall of text, copying and pasting from some of my other comments, I'll bold the main points to create the throughline:

What, by definition, constitutes fascism?

Merriam Webster

often Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition

At the core of fascism is loyalty to tribe, ethnic identity, religion, tradition, or, in a word, nation. —Jason Stanley

Just to make sure we're not looking at a singular definition, let's look at Wikipedia too

Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement that rose to prominence in early-20th-century Europe.[1][2][3] Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.[3][4] Opposed to communism, democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and socialism,[5][6] fascism is at the far-right of the traditional left–right spectrum.[1][6][7]

And now, let's look at what the Örebro party's own stated platform, which received 72% of its funding from the Mullvad founder, which also amounted to 27 times their total funding in 2024, and has directly led to them stating that with this funding they can field candidates whereby they couldn't previously:

Some of its key issues include strong secularism, a 30-hour workweek with retained pay, lowered wages for politicians, ending taxes on energy and fuel, ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art, large-scale remigration, expanded social housing, a stricter assimilation policy, and free dental care.[3][4]

https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut

Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden. "I'm prepared to cross corpses," he said.

One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to "Sweden is the country of Swedes".

In a section of Yoshi's Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to "go over corpses" to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. "It's not going to be pretty to send these people home," he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.

He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There's a difference. It's a qualitative difference," Allard said

And what's remigration?

Remigration is a far-right concept referring to the ethnic cleansing[1] via mass deportation of non-white minority populations, especially immigrants and sometimes including native-born citizens, to their place of racial ancestry.[2][3]

So fascism is about racial and national purity and hierarchy, as we defined, and the Orebro party supports remigration, which is a concept of forcing immigrants out of countries to preserve the purity of "culture" and the race of the nation.

"Sweden is for the Swedes"

"Israel is for Israelis"

"America is for Americans"

"Germany is for the Germans"

For those looking for other vpn options:

https://vpn.techlore.tech/

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ijfqfLrJWLUVBfJZ_YalVpstWsjw-JGzkvMd6u2jqEk/htmlview#gid=231869418

"It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, in the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn't."

I'm not sure what they mean by this. Plenty of corporations do make animal rights, taxes, public healthcare, etc. an important part of their values and mission. Why would it be obvious that they're not?

Besides, we do want Nazis and fascists to be pariahs. Putting pressure on Mullvad not to associate is a good thing.

What VPN do lemmy users recommend? Mullvad founder is funding right wing politics. Proton ceo is praising Trump. PIA has deep ties to Israeli intelligence.

If they are rich they are almost always a right wing asshole. Why would anyone be surprised by this?

It should be obvious that [founder's] private donation to a political party is not part of [his company's] values or mission

Riiiiiiiiiight, because it always shakes out like that