> Which is of course why people are publicizing this donation and publicly stating that they will no longer do business with Mullvad because of it.
But you're doing the same thing, making the same threat. You've only escalated it from a conscientious protest to a Mexican stand off.
I'm not icked-out by immigration discussion, but I am concerned by business owners starting down a political path. VPNs are not a very glamorous segment of the industry, and Mullvad had carved out a niche in taking a neutral side and fostering trust through a transparent product. My former boss spoke well of them and visited their sites in-person after hearing the marketing line about their RAM-only VPNs. Their appeal was not in protecting politicized speech, but protecting all speech and defending it as an apolitical technological imperative.
Now more than ever, it's hard for me to believe their brand identity. You're allowed to have political opinions, voice them and vote for them when you're a CEO. But spending your paycheck on inordinate political investments is how you ask for a boycott. It's how I would feel about any political investment that their CEOs make, and its already tarnished the Mullvad brand for me.
> But you're doing the same thing, making the same threat. You've only escalated it from a conscientious protest to a Texas stand off.
Yup, because I want the people attempting the conscientious protest to have less power to influence businesses and the people businesses employ. An apolitical firm is less likely to bow to pressure from one group of activists if they know that another, opposing group of activists is paying attention to how they respond to pressure from the first group of activists. Really, this has nothing at all to do with Mullvad specifically, except it does happen that I am a long-time customer of theirs.
> Now more than ever, it's hard for me to believe their brand identity. You're allowed to have political opinions, voice them and vote for them when you're a CEO. But spending customer money on political campaigns is how you ask for a boycott. It's how I would feel about any political investment that their CEOs make, and its already tarnished the Mullvad brand for me.
I don't see a meaningful difference between voicing political opinions and voting based on them, and making private donations to a political cause. Any money at all that an owner of a company spends on anything, down to their groceries, comes from their ownership of the company; just as any money at all that an employee of a company spends on anything comes from their salary.
But also lots of CEOs of companies make all kinds of political donations, many of which I think are bad. The reason this particular donation is making the news is because it's to an anti-immigration party rather than a pro-immigration party or NGO or some other cause; and a lot of people want to exert social pressure to make that specific political stance dangerous. Those are exactly the people I want to lose.
> I don't see a meaningful difference between voicing political opinions and voting based on them, and making private donations to a political cause.
One of them is enabled by customer trust and investment, the other isn't? People wouldn't want to cut off their money if it wasn't going towards political parties. It's the connection between the business and the private donations that is causing the outrage, Mullvad's brand can't really escape that sort of conflation once their CEOs spend their paycheck on those donations. Same goes for the rest of Big Tech, look at Oracle or Meta for example.
> The reason this particular donation is making the news is because it's to an anti-immigration party
It's because Mullvad had an apolitical reputation. Maybe it was a lie, maybe it wasn't, but by either CEO investing in a non-privacy stance they're risking the brand appeal they once had. It's unfortunate, and I don't think it has to be a winners/loser mentality like you're pushing forward. These sorts of investments are the ones that erode principled businesses and divide their customerbase. Whether or not you agree with it is inconsequential, it's the political vacillation that is concerning beyond the outrage/fringe politics angle.
Today you might support them, next year you might be wishing you never gave them the confidence. I understand why many customers, even apolitically, see this as their breaking point.
> But you're doing the same thing, making the same threat.
"I'll boycott you if you keep supporting free speech" and "I'll boycott you if you stop supporting free speech" are hardly the same thing, especially when aimed at a company whose business is all about free speech, which at the dismay of some people also includes speech you don't like.
But you're doing the same thing, making the same threat. You've only escalated it from a conscientious protest to a Mexican stand off.
I'm not icked-out by immigration discussion, but I am concerned by business owners starting down a political path. VPNs are not a very glamorous segment of the industry, and Mullvad had carved out a niche in taking a neutral side and fostering trust through a transparent product. My former boss spoke well of them and visited their sites in-person after hearing the marketing line about their RAM-only VPNs. Their appeal was not in protecting politicized speech, but protecting all speech and defending it as an apolitical technological imperative.
Now more than ever, it's hard for me to believe their brand identity. You're allowed to have political opinions, voice them and vote for them when you're a CEO. But spending your paycheck on inordinate political investments is how you ask for a boycott. It's how I would feel about any political investment that their CEOs make, and its already tarnished the Mullvad brand for me.