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.
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.
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’.
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.
I would’ve hoped that the CEO of a privacy company would’ve already known that both corporate parties of the US have demonstrated they are anti-privacy.
His comments also don’t really make sense, since Trump’s first term only ever removed regulations on big tech and monopolies, while Biden’s second term appeared to be taking at least some actions towards regulating and reining them in.
If we assume Yen really did believe that the second Trump administration would somehow turn a new leaf, then we must also then assume he is either extremely gullible, extremely misinformed, or both. Not something you want to see in someone running a privacy service someone may rely on.
I can totally see him being gullible. Don’t know the guy, but at the end of the day there are more executives in charge of things that the CEO only requires results for (CTOs, CXOs, and a bunch of other C-letters).
I get where you’re coming from, and I also believe in voting with my wallet, where I think that you and I differ is in how we take what is out there in terms of 'information’and what we decide to do with it.
I no way, shape or form can I speak about you without the ahadow of a doubt, all I can do is infer based on our conversation so far.
In my case, anything coming from social platforms, I qualify as noise if there’s no source attached to it, and if there’s a source, I try (not always do) to figure out if it’s just more left throwing rocks at right, or the other way around, or if there’s any merit to the information. In this case, you are giving me a source, which I can confirm has an accurate content, and that Yen indeed said that, since Proton didn’t even try to deny it.
In my case, I still believe that Yen was under an impression that was, evidently, entirely wrong, and decided to run his mouth on it. The Mullvad case, I don’t use Mullvad VPN, but only because, for my purposes, its too expensive, but I do believe it is currently the beat commercial VPN available, hands down. What their CEO did, it’s fucked up, assuming that the patry is as radicalized against any spectrum as I’m seeing in the sources provided.
the other thing that I consider before saying “fuck 'X’company” is how this will affect anyone trying to get off from under big tech’s thumb and recover some semblance of control over their privacy. I have left all mainstream services, no exceptions, and because of that, I know all too well how hard, long and tedious it is to do so. The last thing I want to do is make it harder for people that are only making peace with the fact that they will lose some (in most cases, a lot) of convenience, and then find themselves in a place where there are no good alternatives, which will result in many just going back and dropping the attempt altogether.
Yes, we need to blow the whistles, because not doing that is just as damaging to the end-goal, but we all have to remember how hard we had to work to get to the place we are at today, and the toll it took on us to get here, so that we can guide the next batch in the best way possible without building a fortress around their potential freedom.
Shit, I’m sorry this ended up being so long 🤣
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?