Most people aren’t demanding Mullvad fire the founder,
except they kind of are by saying they’re switching because of his donation specifically, which implies to me that those same people would have to think its acceptable for a company to know and have influence over its founders political beliefs or donations. Like what other result are people expecting other then to have him step down from the org (because probably it would be illegal to actually oust them over political donations, so it’d have to be voluntary anyway).
Lets say it was the case for you, you founded a VPN company and turns out your partner is a fascist but you had no idea when it started because it wasnt until 5 years after the founding that they started dropping hints, what would you do? Start a brand new company? You could pressure them to step down privately, you could release a statement saying the company does not support those causes, and you could do everything in your power internally to ensure that person (and really NO person) has access to any kind of logging or things that could expose users (and thats also just practical in terms of keeping your reputation as a VPN provider in tact really). Mullvad has aready done the last bit, any VPN provide worth using would have to be setup in a similar way really.
Benefit of the doubt that you aren’t asking in bad faith.
How would this be in bad faith? I’m saying i think its short sighted because it seems to me they didn’t think through the entire consequences of what happens if it gets flipped on you or someone you support, while ignoring the things that would actually put more limitations on their own risks, primarily if you just switch to another VPN provide but dont ALSO stop paying with a card or something linked to your name/bank then you are not actually improving your own situation much.
It’s similar to the reaction for Proton “exposing” a customer’s payment information, of course i dont agree with them doing it, but I also understand they are a corporation and subject to laws of their country and court orders so the lesson should not be “dont use this VPN provider because they will rat on you” it should be “Dont give VPN providers enough information TO rat on you”
This is where its clear you you aren’t actually listening to what im saying. I didnt say it should be ignored. My point is that i think people are learning and sharing the wrong solution, The solution isnt to use your name associated bank account to pay a different VPN provider, its to avoid giving ANY vpn provider information that could link you to the account, and verify that they don’t keep logs. You can do this with LOTS of different vpn providers by looking at their transparency reports and how they respond to court orders, but very few people actually do that, they’d rather just be perforamtive and say “im voting with my wallet” which is lazy and does nothing to improve the situation for anyone.
This same sort of thing happens anytime a VPN company (like proton) responds to a legal court order, everyone was all “How could they do this to us!?!?” and not “Why would an activist pay using a credit card?, maybe we should teach people how payment systems work so they can avoid this in the future” I think we should focus more on the latter, preventative education, so that less people can be targeted or exposed in general.
I see this as a teachable moment, I’m not trying to get people to ignore the underlying issue, I just think it should be part of a more complete re-evaluation of how we all use and pay for VPN providers.
When i say its astroturfing, i don’t mean against mullvad alone, I think there is a coordinated effort going on to instill division and mistrust among vpn users and providers. I think the goal is to amplify negative publicity for any VPN provider they can, its becoming a trend now.