I used Mullvad for a long time, but hearing about one of the two CEOs actively supporting and financing swedish Nazis, I’m looking to put my money elsewhere. That’s the second one after Private Internet Access (who supported Gab).
I had AirVPN and Surfshark being recomnended, how do people here feel? What do you use?
I use Proton but I’m also in their ecosystem (ie, I also pay for ProtonMail and get the rest of their suite alongside it)
Wasn’t Proton’s CEO in some hot water a year or so ago, or was that a bunch of hooey? I know it’s impossible to find an ethical CEO, but just curious.
…sure I could look it up, but my phone battery sucks and it helps boost activity.
He made a couple of supportive tweets about a Trump anti-trust appointment (who was later fired by Trump) and the Republican Party that offended some people, mainly the American left. People seem to forget that he is not American, nor is Proton an American company, so none of this actually means anything. He cannot vote, he and his company do not fund the American right in any way and he is not someone with a huge online presence, so it’s unlikely he has much influence.
More recently a far right influencer in France signed up for Proton’s affiliate program and promoted Proton on his channel, which led to some misleading claims about Proton “funding Nazis”. Proton immediately removed him from the affiliate program upon being notified of this and apologised for what it claims was an oversight.
Personally I’m very sick of the purity tests and cancel culture on the left and wish people would slow down a bit and really consider whether these “controversies” are actually worth burning it all down for. Proton provides mainstream, easy to use alternatives to big tech and is better existing than not. Its VPN is also one of the few that retains port forwarding, which can be useful for piracy. After the attempts to cancel Proton, the left hard shilled for Mullvad and now it turns out that’s objectively worse in terms of its political influencing. Mullvad is another company that does more good in the world than bad, are we going to cancel it too?
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
I use Proton. but I find it suss how they are trying to do it all, so I don’t use most of their products
They made a very naive comment suggesting a authoritarian regime supports privacy
Technically it is true, it makes easier to spread their propaganda in other countries by using bots.
So some of anti-age verification agenda is generated by russia and china etc. to make easier to create bot accounts.
And doubled down then changed their comments as if the way back machine doesn’t exist in order to backtrack without having to admit they were wrong.
Same boat, really don’t want to keep supporting them, because of the reasons others have mentioned. But I have something like four or five emails, not to mentioned hundreds of relays, it would be really hard to lose if I ditched them as my provider.
Same here, the cost is just way more worth it if you already pay for other Proton services.
Does seem like IVPN is closer to Mullvad in how it works though for people who just want to pay for a VPN separately. No email needed for an account, similar price, open-source clients. Also debubks misinformation used by VPN peddlers to convince people to buy VPNs who don’t need one.
here’s an interview with IVPN with techlore:
https://odysee.com/@techlore:38/ivpn-breaks-industry-silence-on-logs,:b