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.
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 🤣