Technology

For what it’s worth, I paid for an annual subscription in February. When the news that their CEO is funding the far right came out, I emailed Mullvad support asking them to refund the remainder of my annual subscription, and the reason, and they did it. So if you would like to, you can ask for a refund and don’t have to wait until subscription expires.

Likewise. Bought a three-month sub so's that I wouldn't have to top it up too often, and then they came out with all that shit. Subscription expires in two days - forever. Hello, iVPN.

Once my current subscription expires, I will never buy their vpn and switch to another provider.

I pay Mullvad. They pay the Founder. The Founder makes a large donation to anti-immigration parties.

Is that really enough abstraction for you?

I mean, it's at least one degree of separation, right? Not giving money to Mullvad directly means Nazis have less money. So at least one.

the problem is that the same people who buy vpn services are the people who care that parties like he supports don't get to power... so when they learn that their money (that they paid for the vpn) directly helped to pay for that donation (via the company that made him rich) they are understendably pissed.

edit: this guy below said it much better than me https://lemmy.world/post/51539700/25684523

Benefit of the doubt that you aren’t asking in bad faith.

Most people aren’t demanding Mullvad fire the founder, but that also doesn’t mean that we have to give him money to donate to fascists.

Mullvad are free do what they like with their right wing founder. Just like customers are free to refuse to fund anti-immigration policies. If Mullvad doesn’t like that, it’s up to them to decide how to appeal to customers.

Nobody is denying that Mullvad is a good product, but I need this specific vpn less than I need a safer future for my children.

You do make an excellent point on the differentiation between work and private lives. The majority of jobs I've ever worked would have fired me for my political donations and/or commentary, and as I am not an American Conservative, that would not be a good career move XD

Yeah, I ain't mad at it. Especially with the dubious stuff an exec at mullvad did. Quad9 is my default anyway, but I did use the mullvad dns here and there.

You can go with the default Adguard DNS configuration https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html

Hosting your own DNS resolver is quite simple. Suggest trying PiHole.

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.

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…

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/donation-controversy

"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