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by dnlzro
29 days ago
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Your point is relevant, but it’s not the whole story. A rational actor will act on available information. It’s entirely possible that someone unhappy with Mullvad switches to an alternative that is even worse (on whatever dimensions they care about), and they just don’t know it. The question is whether they could’ve expected that outcome on a balance of probabilities. I feel like the default assumption for a company in the privacy space is that they are close to politically neutral (0). Certainly skewing libertarian, but probably not more right (+1) than left (-1). So, if you see that your money is explicitly being siphoned to right-wing political parties (>0), and you don’t like that, it’s rational to switch to an alternative (expected value = 0). Also, “very likely” to be better isn’t necessary, because switching costs are minimal. Also also, saying that Proton’s founder is “outwardly MAGA” is really oversimplifying things. I’m not sure what your viewpoint actually is — maybe you’re just expressing someone else’s — but I’d encourage you to read: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-tr... |
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That assumption here is wrong, because VPN companies in particular are known to be a lot dodgier than average. Maybe if we were talking bakeries, then I'd agree.
> Also also, saying that Proton’s founder is “outwardly MAGA” is really oversimplifying things. I’m not sure what your viewpoint actually is — maybe you’re just expressing someone else’s — but I’d encourage you to read: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-tr...
One can make very similar arguments for this specific case. Saying that the party in question is far-right is simplifying things. On top of that, a co-founder making a private donation to a party (two layers: 1. private 2. party) is less directly related to the company than a founder directly tweeting an ideological point (1. public 2. direct).
Honestly, the party sounds insane, I wouldn't be caught dead supporting them and would hope that any Swede reading alone avoids them with a ten-foot pole. But the response in this comment section is absurdly exaggerated compared to what any of the Big Tech corps that get talked about daily on here, and whose
I don't believe it's organic at all. Recently there's the biggest push in history of "think of the children" online surveillance, with remote attestation and mandatory identity coupling being rolled out at scale. Mullvad is known to be one of the top privacy-preserving VPN providers in the West, with a large userbase on HN, and now you get this very disproportionately negative reaction to what is realistically a meaningless issue: "$0.01 of every $1 spent on Mullvad might end up with someone who donates to a radical party, if even that" - just like, almost certainly, every other $1 you spend elsewhere does.