Daniel Berntsson, founder of Mullvad, gave a personal donation of 5 million SEK (roughly 450,000€) in 2025 to Örebropartiet. This enormous donation accounted for 72% of the party’s revenue in 2025.
How does this affect Mullvad’s legitimacy as a company advocating for a free and open internet, while also funding a political party whose agenda seem to contradict these values? The official party website (in Swedish) can be found via the link below.
Thanks for the heads up. Switching to Proton because of this. Mullvad has been bad lately anyways with most of their servers getting blocked every where.
The only thing keeping me on them was their reputation of being a bit less cooky than Proton but this pushed me over the edge
Proton’s CEO praised Trump, just saying. There’s IVPN which is Gibraltese.
Proton CEO praised something Trump did which isn’t a great look but debateable.
That’s wayyy less bad than donating $500k to a Nazi party which advocates for remigration.
I’m pretty sure Proton also sponsored far-right influencers, although that sounds less shitty than being the primary funding source for an entire party then doubling down on it
It’s not just praise though, Proton claimed Trump was standing up for the little guys which is rich considering that the fascist is a billionnaire, supporting the wealthiest to repress the labourers even more. And besides that, it’s also insane.
Hitler was somewhat an environmentalist, but cheering on Hitler for being that is insane, because that is ignoring all the other heinous shit he did.
Proton did not claim anything; the CEO of Proton claimed that Republicans (not Trump) would do better on big tech anti-trust.
This view is not that crazy given that the person Trump appointed was doing her job quite well. Too well to the point that Trump removed her from the position later on.
Bullshit, Trump is the most big tech and corrupt claimant to Usonian president since a hefty while.
And Trump IS what the RINOs are nowadays, those that the pro-fascist CEO praised. Republicans are those like Bill Weld and Charlie Baker from Massachusetts.
What’s worse, cheering on something Hitler did or donating to Hitler?
I keep hearing about that praise, yet never once have I seen proof of it. Maybe I’m just using the wrong search engine. Might need to Google this.
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
OK, so he said that in January 2025. Just when Trump was taking over, and it did look at the time that the reps were actually at least talking with Proton execs, which is way more than the dems did. Proton reached out to Biden’s team more than once and they never were even given the time of day, Trump’s team got them in to talk. Whatever the environment is today (which I agree is complete shit and everything is ceumbling down because of Trump, Starmer and others), I can’t blame Proton for seeing that when this administration at least talked to them. Having said that, those do not qualify as praises, they qualify as comments on what it looked like at the moment. Praise means: to express a favorable judgment of someone or something. Saying that anyone is ‘more likely’ to do something does not qualify as a praise in my opinion. Much less saying anyone ‘was the evil and now the tables have turned’.
Anyway, thanks for the info, I was not aware of this, and because of what it is, my thoughts on this remain as they are.
We’d already had Trump’s last presidency to know that he wasn’t going to reign in big tech, so the CEO’s positive thoughts and hopefulness for the republican party and Trump’s picks were already insanely out of touch at best, IMO.
I agree that his first term was a shit show, this one is even worse. But regardless, try to put yourself in Yen’s shoes. He pushed to try and get into talks with the Democrats to lobby for privacy, not a hint of interest from them. Tries the same with the Republicans and is received with open doors. What should his comments be?
I guess I’m just glad I’ve been one of the few people that flat out rejected a green card that was almost 8 years in process because of the way the US has been for the last few years. I’m OK not living there and only visiting my brother every now and then.
have you validated the statements of the article, or do you just outright believe it?
if not, that’s a weakness with which you can be made to hate all the useful privacy tools.
What is validating according to you, personally traveling to the guy and asking him?
this is just one rando saying something on the internet!
okay, then lets hate everyone, you can trust nobody, because I say everyone is nazi or some other undesirable, there’s no one without ulterior motives, trust me bro. look even linus torvalds is nazi! look he still lives in the USA, and I have insider knowledge about a secret donation he made to trump! no you can’t check it anywhere, just trust me, look my account is 3 years old, super legitimate. instead use my super cleaned out distribution of windows 11, leave your CIA bugged linux behind, and you can sign up to my services because no where else but here you will be safe! pinky promises. if you let the community be divided like that, here you go.
So you’re saying the guy didn’t donate $500.000 to a Nazi party and the article just made it up?
yes. until we have
furtherevidence, we shouldn’t take this at face value.or do you have a reason to believe this is not likely a smear campaign?