I can't keep track of all the assholes. Going to need an asshole tracker soon.
Privacy
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
So.. Is there any VPN provider without controversy?
I think Mullvad was the last one I knew of.
They're either lying about logging, lying about backdoors, or apparently Nazis?
i would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)
SOCKS
Insane amount of Nazi sympathizers in this thread. “Aw but poor baby is just the CEO!! It’s not his fault he’s a Nazi! Let him do what he wants!” Freaks.
As far as I’m concerned, ‘liberal’ is the most meaningless word in the dictionary. History has shown me that as long as some white middle-class people can live high on the hog, take vacations to Europe, send their children to private schools, and reap the benefits of their white skin privilege, then they are ‘liberal’. But when times get hard and money gets tight, they pull off that liberal mask and you think you’re talking to Adolf Hitler. They feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long as they can maintain their own privileges.
Assata Shakur
IIRC it is not the CEO but a co-founder. The CEO condemned it. But it's all the same, money flowing into Mullvad floes into a neo-nazi group.
I would love to take my money elsewhere, but... Where? Everywhere else is just as bad or worse. Half the VPN's are owner by one Israeli billionaire. I'm running out of options here.
The company Mullvad do not support nor like Daniel Berntsson's donation which is a personal donation from Daniel himself.
Mullvad as a company do not support far-right.
https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.html
So long as Daniel is paid from Mullvad, Mullvad financially supports the far right by proxy.
That is true, but since the other employeers at Mullvad don't like Daniel's donation, they don't take his side. Of course it's very shameful that he did that donation, and I truly hope he gets fired.
But one thing must be clear: facts should be just that: facts! Daniel took his own money and personally donated it to that shitty party - not Mullvad!
Once again, it feels like too much money and power just makes people into freaks. None are completely immune, too few are effectively resistant.
When money makes you complicit in the system where money is power, there is no way to leverage money to fix the system unless you're somehow completely insulated from direct personal gain.
Morality, ethics, humanity... These must be maintained, have we all just moved on? Maybe it's just me that's given up.
I believe that a person's world view, ethics, moral system, etc is almost entirely molded to fit their incentives. When I was a manufacturing engineer, I was effectively automating people's jobs. I created an elaborate narrative that not only let me off the hook, but made me the good guy. I was making the workers more productive and therefore setting the stage for them to negotiate better pay or treatment. That plant closed down 3 years later.
If everyone who punched a child in the face received $1000, people would initially be appalled by anybody who would take that money. After a while, people would start to fondly remember moments when they had been beaten or hurt. They would consider it a vital part of growing up. "Pain is what makes us strong". People would proudly announce how many children they had punched. It would completely change the morals of everyone with the opportunity to receive the benefit.
Many people have personal evidence of this. A work friend suddenly becomes a prick when they get promoted to supervisor. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it". In this case, A CEO feels his power in society threatened and he adopts whatever politics is needed to ensure he retains power. He isn't doing this out of cold calculus. He will actually believe the politics because that's what fits his incentives and makes him the good guy, actually.
How many degrees of separation do y'all deem acceptable and why? If Mullvad donated that money directly, that's bad. If the owner donated that money, that's also bad. What if the owner instead bought something from another company and the owner of the company donated the money? What if this second owner then bought something else from yet another company and the owner of that company donated the money? When can you stop saying "my money is used to fund this thing I don't want"? Because money will spread so fast in the economy that inevitably, no matter what choices you make, your money will fund things you don't like. For example, should the "true scotsman" vegan never buy anything because it is pretty much guaranteed that their money will end up in the pocket of someone who will spend it on meat? Again, I am not criticizing anyone, I am simply asking: where do you draw the line, why, and why not draw the line one step further than you currently are?
You can really tell how cut-throat and efficient the free market is when founders just have millions spare knocking around to play at Blackshirts.
That ideology sounds wild lol. Almost literal "national - socialism"?
The issue is rich people using undemocratic power to fund things like this. Which ironically sounds exactly like the “Transferiat” siphoning money and power from VPN users to funnel it into unwanted, fringe channels.
This isn't good. It's also not entirely correct. Mullvad isn't financing this party directly. One of the owners took his money he made from the company and donated it to the loonies. He could've bought crypto with it, spent it in blow maybe, but he didn't. "Mullvad is financing this party" is not correct. "Your Mullvad fees may have ended up indirectly financing this party" is correct and an ongoing concern. So is their tepid response to the story breaking. I would still advise caution, hammer them with public outrage pressure on the socials, and hope they get rid of the loonie party donor before you bankrupt an otherwise serviceable VPN provider. If that guy is still there in a couple of months, by all means leave.
There is no shortage of c@<%s in the tech sector.
Their ideology is nonsense fake-marxist revisionism to redirect anger at capitalism and turn it against immigrants and people who need social welfare (though they do back some generally left oriented social policies, their main thing appears to be racism)