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They could do it, some people would align with that stance, and some wouldn't. Exactly how it plays out being a customer: now we've discovered he supports a far-right party here in Sweden, I can choose to not support the CEO with my money and let others know about their political leaning to decide by themselves if they want to support him and his business aware that their money might got to far-right parties.

I don't see any issue with your flipped argument, it's the same thing, no?

by yaris5 hours ago|

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I imagine that if a company really denied a customer due to disagreement on some views there would be similar flood of comments like "my views is my problem, I pay you money you must do business with me". Maybe I'm wrong though

by omnimus5 hours ago|

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Companies can absolutely refuse a customer and many do. Companies will often have public rules about not doing business with weapons manufacturers or tobacco producers.

They also can refuse business due to political stance. They can even give different prices to different customers.

by jzb4 hours ago|

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There's an enormous imbalance between company and customer that you're ignoring, not to mention the difference between a private person and a company's very public personas who own said business.

If a company was sniffing around to learn my political views, that would be a bit intrusive, wouldn't it? I wouldn't expect the same level of anonymity if I were the CEO of a company like Mullvad. There's also a disparity between "I'm taking my business elsewhere, good luck without my $10 a month!" (or whatever Mullvad costs...) and "we've decided to not allow you to use this service".

How large a disparity is depends a lot on whether a company has a lock on a market. Generally, if a vendor in a crowded market decided to turn away customers who are XYZ voters (as an example) I'd be more apt to just comment on that as a business strategy than as a "how dare they, they must accept all customers!" Like, if you are one of 20 VPN providers and you think you can be successful by turning away customers.. well, OK. Good luck with that.

If it's a provider with a monopoly that's a bit different. I live in an area with only one choice of provider for electricity. So I don't think they should be allowed to refuse service to anybody who is paying their bill, even people I vehemently disagree with.

by teddyh1 hours ago|

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You’re not taking it far enough. What if Mullvad has someone you disagree with as a customer, and does nothing about it. Does this mean that Mullvad is supporting them? Does this mean that you have to stop supporting Mullvad? What about Mullvad’s landlord? The company that provides them their electricity? Their internet provider? Their internet provider’s internet provider? Should you boycott the entire internet because Mullvad has not been given the BGP death penalty?

by aoshifo53 minutes ago|

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What are you trying to say with this? This is absurd.

The outrage has nothing to do with Mullvad itself supporting people with certain opinions or not.

The problem I and many others have, is that if the founder takes our money and gives it to causes that I (edit: or rather we) find reprehensible, we don't want to give them our money anymore. Simple as that.

I will not try to stop you from using Mullvad by any other means than my arguments. Hopefully you understand now where we are coming from and agree. If not, just do your thing.

by solid_fuel30 minutes ago|

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It's almost like there's a difference between selling services to someone and directly donating to a political party.

by jzb5 hours ago|

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If the far-right parties they're supporting are similar to MAGA in the U.S., what they're doing is taking customer money and funneling it into a political effort to do just what you're describing - just in a different way. "We don't like groups X, Y, and Z, so we're going to fund a political effort to take their rights away by using government."

As I understand it, the Örebro party pushes for deporting immigrants and has a "Sweden belongs to the Swedes" policy that includes deportation for even those born in Sweden if their parents were born in, e.g., Somalia. So basically, "we don't like certain people, so we want to use customer money to force them out of our country". That really doesn't paint Mullvad as the victim, here.