We would like to address the recent controversy about one of the owners of Mullvad making a donation to a Swedish political party.
It was a private donation from Daniel the individual. Mullvad or its parent and sister companies did not endorse and were not involved in it. Since it has attracted attention and questions we still think it appropriate to comment.
Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. One way we achieve this is to make products and services that counteract censorship and mass surveillance. Another way is to support and/or develop privacy and security enhancing open source technologies such as WireGuard, Tor, Qubes, GrapheneOS, Sigsum and System Transparency. A third way is to do political campaigning against proposals such as Chat Control and identity verification.
“It was donated by one person, not Mullvad as an organization” is a nice deflection from the core issue that if you give money to Mullvad, some of it will go to this person (an owner of the company), and some from them on to the problem organization.
Not all my money sent to Mullvad will go to that, but some fraction will and already has. That is the problem.
However you feel about this controversy, this is such a manipulative response from Mullvad. The owners of Mullvad get their money from Mullvad subscriptions. Without subscriptions, the owners would have far less money to make political donations. Within capitalism, there is very little difference between the “official” actions of a company and the “personal” actions of their major owners. It doesn’t matter that Mullvad didn’t officially support this candidate. Your money → Mullvad → Mullvad owners → political candidate is exactly the same outcome as if Mullvad sent the money directly to the candidate, just with one additional step. (Yes, this is also the case for actions taken by the CEOs and major owners of countless other corporations and nonprofits.)
As the co-owner of the company, how Daniel spends his share of Mullvad’s profits is inevitably going to influence how people view Mullvad which factors into whether they’d prefer to support their business. Yes it doesn’t represent the entire company but it represents (half?) the ownership and it is presumably the money Daniel made from this business that allowed him to make such a large donation. Welcome to the “free market”.
I don’t understand why so many people took issue with those who were put off by this donation? It’s not as if Mullvad is the only good VPN which must never be criticized lest people flock to a much worse alternative. With only a few recommended providers, consumers of any VPN service could benefit from more competition in this industry. I doubt this scandal will devastate Mullvad’s business so I don’t see any cause for concern over the availability of their products, I’ll sleep just fine if IVPN gained some much needed income at the small expense of a xenophobe’s company.
Daniel’s post makes even less sense lol
That being said, partnering with political parties is dancing with the devil. Do I like most of ÖP’s policies? No. Are they fit to run a country? No. (Neither are the other parties.) Do I want ÖP to get a lot of power? No. Will giving them a leg up in the competition with the other parties, given the local political circumstances, be a net positive? Maybe. Probably. Hopefully.
The people who are claiming political neutrality in a situation like this clearly do not understand. The issue here it gives a very bad taste to be both part of the solution and the problem. It just seems like they are trying to create a market of people who need extreme privacy and then sell that right back to them. This has made me start thinking that Mullvad is a grift not technologically of course. But financially
Sure sounds like a party to donate money to then! 
So, to be clear, you want companies to dictate to their peers how to vote politically, spend their money etc?
I don’t think it is. The company was, from their words, not involved in any capacity in this decision.
No one said that
Do you expect people to just give their money to companies where the profits end up going to causes completely contrary to their views?
So what?
For what it’s worth, it is in fact normal for companies to tell their CEOs/executives not to pull shit like donating to controversial political parties.
I saw people spamming GitHub issues. I saw people attacking the company and blaming it for the actions of an individual. At the end of the day, the social policing itself is 
.
I know. But i’m asking what do you want to get from a company, from a peer of people working at Mullvad.
This isn’t a norm, i never came across this thorough my career.
Do you have a career as a public figure?
I’ve worked for various companies and never came across this clause. The Wiki article you mentioned has no evidence to back the fact it’s a norm.
I don’t care as long as my money doesn’t go to him moving forward.
Ideally, since Mullvad itself wasn’t responsible, Daniel would divest himself of any ownership stake in the company.
Since that obviously won’t happen, I’m just going to migrate to alternatives, and encourage others to do the same.
Fascists don’t have a place in a free society, actually. They shouldn’t be imprisoned for their views, but no one should support them while they continue to push for an anti-human ideology.
Once again, they are for high-profile figures, executives, etc. lol
I’m tired of good products and the perception of those products being ruined by weird people.
I’ve studied the political party in question and it turned out they’re far left. What makes you think they’re fascist? Or rather, what makes you believe Daniel is fascist? I don’t think you understand his ideology of libertarianism. It’s ignorant to call a clear as day libertarian a fascist.
I obviously understand that. Once again, in my personal experience i never came across such a clause being applied to a CEO/chairman in any company i worked at. Both links don’t address the normalcy part of that.
I guess normal as in it’s a perfectly reasonable thing a company could do if they wanted to. I probably should’ve said it’s an ordinary clause, sure, if perhaps it is not usual.
These two things do not seem contradictory to me 