I don't think it's a coincidence that supporters of positions that are broadly considered extremist in their respective countries are also the ones who end up running services like private VPN and email.
Yeah - answered below. As I mentioned, a lot of the tweets and Reddit posts have been deleted so it’s hard to track down now. It was a bit of a shitstorm on Mastodon some months ago though.
There have been many shitstorms, but whenever I looked at the actual tweets or sources, there was not much actual evidence. More often it showed the founder being a poor communicator, but not right-wing.
I also think that there's significant overlap in the venn diagram of "I want to provide a privacy service" and "I hold some right wing views." If you're launching a no-logs VPN service, you probably have some distrust of institutions, lean closer toward techno-libertarian views which are increasingly getting absorbed into the right, have some form of belief in a free market, which is also starting to become a center/center-right view as the left is seeking a post-capitalist society that may or may not have a free market. The modern left is also unfortunately inching closer and closer to wanting nanny state style policies, so it's not surprising to see right wing views among privacy tech CEOs.
For left wing VPNs there's riseup, but it's not the same category of product as Mullvad, it's a free giveaway that you have to request access to, and intended for your personal use only - no excessive bandwidth like torrenting.
Yeah. It’s trace now because many of the tweets and Reddit posts have since been (unsurprisingly) purged but it looks basically the same as what we’re discussing regarding Mullvad right now.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. I keep along the effort, but it just continues to be impossible.