Would be fun to know who’s sponsoring this smear campaign. After all, Mullvad has been stepping on many toes with their pro-privacy advocacy and enablement. I’d put my money on some combination of Thorn, Palantir, and whatever other surveillance capitalism corpos there are who’d benefit from less protected populace, both in policy and technology…
Because (at least on lemmy) they spam articles about this, and treat it like some “gotcha” moment that would make the company no longer able to fulfill their purpose.
One of the owners investing in a political party should not be this big of a deal, and the articles provided are clearly made to put suspicion on not only Mullvad but also on ÖP.
The campaign is actually more about positioning ÖP as some sort of “far-right”-party by the now left, because they are afraid to lose votes to them. They also of course wants to make it “shameable” for people to donate to this party so they cannot possibly win some votes this election.
Because (at least on lemmy) they spam articles about this, and treat it like some “gotcha” moment that would make the company no longer able to fulfill their purpose.
Because more militant left leaning views are pretty common here. Seems to be the Occam’s Razor answer.
Yes of course, it is to me just clear that it is not about Mullvad. The post are about ÖP.
To what end? Surely locals would have a better idea of exactly where their politics stand… what’s the point in giving a false impression to people from random countries on the Internet?
So people are mostly driven of “what is popular”, so if you spam the article and astroturf them. You give the illusion that it is a big problem that a lot of people care about. And that leads to people taking it more seriously.
So the end here is to make people who would leave the left-party (Vänsterpartiet) to vote for ÖP, feel alienated. “Oh my god, I can’t vote for a far right party! I better vote for the ‘only’ left party that is left.” is the thought they want them to have.
I guess I’m just skeptical this false impression will work on locals… I’d presume they aren’t hearing from this group from lemmy mainly and likely already have feelings established, no? It just seems to me this wouldn’t be a good forum on which to spread misinformation… strikes me as a lot more likely that a forum known for being pretty left leaning is just latching onto a story that is related to their interest.
Well you can check the comments, and their mastodon page. It works.
The second aspect is that they want to hurt Mullvad as a deterent for other to donate to ÖP, I think that is why they go extra hard on mastodon and lemmy. Because a lot of people who would be interested in Mullvads products would be here.
I want to know if money I’m paying a company is directly contributing to fascists. According to Wikipedia,
Nationally the party has set out large-scale remigration, closing the Swedish borders to immigration, a stricter assimilation policy and ending taxes on energy and fuel as some of its key issues.
Nationalism is a big part of leftist parties also, fascists does not have claim on that within itself.
Also as I have written in previous posts what ÖP is calling for is already part of the government today, and in a Swedish context means that migrants are given help if they VOLUNTARILY wants to leave.
Yes I checked the English wikipedia page, however the Swedish one makes no claims that ÖP would like to close the borders to migration. So I would urge to either check the parties own website about what they want or do a quick search. Clearly some bad actors have edited the page to put some views they have not voiced there.
The only source I find that says that “closed borders” are something they want, is flamman.se (what a suprise /s).
I don’t think you need a targeted campaign for that… give some of the lunaticsextremists left leaning lemmy folks only the slightest hint that some service may not pass the purity testing and they will jump on it like a fly on a big pile of shit.
Would be fun to know who’s sponsoring this smear campaign. After all, Mullvad has been stepping on many toes with their pro-privacy advocacy and enablement. I’d put my money on some combination of Thorn, Palantir, and whatever other surveillance capitalism corpos there are who’d benefit from less protected populace, both in policy and technology…
Why do you think it’s a smear campaign? Did he not donate?
Because (at least on lemmy) they spam articles about this, and treat it like some “gotcha” moment that would make the company no longer able to fulfill their purpose.
One of the owners investing in a political party should not be this big of a deal, and the articles provided are clearly made to put suspicion on not only Mullvad but also on ÖP.
The campaign is actually more about positioning ÖP as some sort of “far-right”-party by the now left, because they are afraid to lose votes to them. They also of course wants to make it “shameable” for people to donate to this party so they cannot possibly win some votes this election.
Because more militant left leaning views are pretty common here. Seems to be the Occam’s Razor answer.
To what end? Surely locals would have a better idea of exactly where their politics stand… what’s the point in giving a false impression to people from random countries on the Internet?
So people are mostly driven of “what is popular”, so if you spam the article and astroturf them. You give the illusion that it is a big problem that a lot of people care about. And that leads to people taking it more seriously.
So the end here is to make people who would leave the left-party (Vänsterpartiet) to vote for ÖP, feel alienated. “Oh my god, I can’t vote for a far right party! I better vote for the ‘only’ left party that is left.” is the thought they want them to have.
I guess I’m just skeptical this false impression will work on locals… I’d presume they aren’t hearing from this group from lemmy mainly and likely already have feelings established, no? It just seems to me this wouldn’t be a good forum on which to spread misinformation… strikes me as a lot more likely that a forum known for being pretty left leaning is just latching onto a story that is related to their interest.
Well you can check the comments, and their mastodon page. It works.
The second aspect is that they want to hurt Mullvad as a deterent for other to donate to ÖP, I think that is why they go extra hard on mastodon and lemmy. Because a lot of people who would be interested in Mullvads products would be here.
I want to know if money I’m paying a company is directly contributing to fascists. According to Wikipedia,
Nationalism is a Key Smell of fascism.
Nationalism is a big part of leftist parties also, fascists does not have claim on that within itself.
Also as I have written in previous posts what ÖP is calling for is already part of the government today, and in a Swedish context means that migrants are given help if they VOLUNTARILY wants to leave.
https://www.migrationsverket.se/du-har-tillstand-i-sverige/internationellt-skydd-asyl/atervandringsbidrag.html
https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2025/10/ett-kraftigt-hojt-atervandringsbidrag/
Yes I checked the English wikipedia page, however the Swedish one makes no claims that ÖP would like to close the borders to migration. So I would urge to either check the parties own website about what they want or do a quick search. Clearly some bad actors have edited the page to put some views they have not voiced there.
The only source I find that says that “closed borders” are something they want, is flamman.se (what a suprise /s).
I don’t think you need a targeted campaign for that… give some of the
lunaticsextremistsleft leaning lemmy folks only the slightest hint that some service may not pass the purity testing and they will jump on it like a fly on a big pile of shit.Yes of course, it is to me just clear that it is not about Mullvad. The post are about ÖP.