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.
That is exactly what he has been saying all along. Most of us know that a commercial VPN is not a silver bullet for privacy, much less for security. Lemmy is full of geeks that know how to deploy their own VPN infrastructure. Good. However, in the commercial VPN space, Mullvad has no competition in terms of keeping the user as private as a commercial VPN will allow. You mention going with a service not run by Nazi CEOs and whatnot, and I’m sure most, if not all, of us agree. Now, if you have information on such a service, that may be even comparable to Mullvad’s offering, I’m sure many of us would like to know about it.
Edit:
I don’t use Mullvad VPN, nor have I ever, yet, but my argument is the same. I just find it a bit more expensive than what I’m willing to pay for that service, which doesn’t mean I think it is too expensive for everyone.