Some people here are defending Mullvad's political position. But the point is that a project devoted to free speech as such shouldn't be associated with a political, ideological group that favors one set of publicly presented ideas and strongly condemns another set.
The danger is that if the Tor network gets very dependent on Mullvad, then Mullvad might pressure it to make the network censor ideas it doesn't like.
> The danger is that if the Tor network gets very dependent on Mullvad, then Mullvad might pressure it to make the network censor ideas it doesn't like.
glances over at their supporters page [0]... I mean, that's not literally impossible.
While it is true that Mullvad supports at "Shallot Onion" -and has since mid 2023- [1] and "Shallot Onion" is Tor Project's highest support tier, we don't know how much Mullvad is paying. Six years ago, the smallest amount one could donate to get into that tier was 100k USD [2]. In contrast, just one of their eleven (or twelve, depending on how you count the two listed US State Department entities) supporters provided 500k USD per year in 2022->2024, and "committed" to providing 750k USD per year in 2025->2027... until -one assumes- DOGE canceled that grant in its "efficiency" sweeps.
FUTO is another of the eleven-ish entities on that page. While FUTO doesn't seem to mention how much it granted to the Tor Project, their grants page [3] claims that they've granted five million USD to twenty entities in their "Legendary Grants" -er- program, for an average of 250k USD per entity.
There's a lot that we don't know about the details of the financial situation of the Tor Project... but while it's possible that they become captured by Mullvad's money, it seems unlikely to me.
Oh, rad! I had forgotten that that information would appear on publicly-accessible tax documents. Thanks for digging that up. How did you locate it? Punch in something like "Tor Project 990 2025" into a search engine, or were you already aware of this GuideStar organization?
I see that the 1.5 million USD State Department grant is listed on that return. I do hope that they weren't obligated to return that. The Award History section here [0] suggests that they were, but I don't know much at all about how these sorts of grants work.
Anyway. This is where Tor Project seems to officially publish their tax documents [1], but I can only find docs up to 2023->2024...
Notable is that in 2023->2024 (the year prior to the document you link to) Mullvad's funding was 1.4 million USD, whereas in 2024->2025, Mullvad's funding was 306 thousand USD. In that year, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency provided nearly twice the funding that Mullvad did! Perhaps Mullvad donated a enormously large amount of money in 2025->2026, but, yeah, the numbers don't support the "the Tor Project will start censoring because Mullvad is paying them so much" story.
> How did you locate it? Punch in something like "Tor Project 990 2025" into a search engine, or were you already aware of this GuideStar organization?
I searched "tor 990", found the same [1] you did with stale data, and knew from past experience I could find the latest on GuideStar. 990s are really useful when doing due diligence on non-profits before making donations. In an ideal world, they'd be easy to find directly on irs.gov, but, alas.
> Some people here are defending Mullvad's political position.
It is not Mullvad's political position. It is the political position of one of its co-founders, using his own money. The other co-founder openly disagrees with that position.
Personally, I feel _much_ better about relying on a company whose two co-CEOs have diametrically opposed political stance, than I would about a company with a singular one.
Content aside, is there anything or anyone forcing Foss projects to pick up this voice?
I understand that TOR is big and professional and all, but why does this read like a press statement of every tech corp under the sun?
Do we have to talk like this?
if you don't, some will say "you are not treating this seriously, it's not a joke, humans life's are at stake and you can't even bother writing a professional response"
Yes, but, does that someone matter? Do they still have leverage to be of any concern?
Because.. looking at the whole.. uh.. stuff going on in US politics, I'm kinda doubtful. There are a lot of real and big problems going on right now that far outweigh choice of specific tone and words I'd say.
I mean. Their choice and all, but it comes with the trade-off of being massively alienating, and I'd argue that the cost benefit calculation of that might have to be redone, taking the current state of the world into account.
So.. idk? I think they might not care that much? In fact, they might like the people the Tor project is (rightfully (if done genuinely)) (pretending to) distance themselves from.
the existence of this blog post is proof that it matters for them, people/orgs receive emails accusing them every day, and most of the time they dont bother answering
And whatever you do to please these "some", they will never be satisfied and just jump on to the next hate bandwagon the moment you give in to their demands. You never benefit from listening to these online activists, who already hate you and already don't use your product. Even more so when it's a non-profit product.
They clearly just need the funding, which is few and far between on tools like this and they aren’t in a position to be able to take a moral stance. Can’t say I blame them too much other than the co-branding idea.
I am like bleeding heart anti-military anti-war anti prison industrial complex and military industrial complex
I have exception for Tor (and pretty much only Tor) because of the nature of what an anonymity network is and how it functions it requires everyone to use it independent of gov, background, country etc - and the security of adversary sometimes contributes to secuirty of self - so for instance - if they have vested interest in maintaining anonymity of undercover assets in the gulf or something, it helps human rights activists also, etc
To me it's like one of those universal things - I believe humanity with the power to read and write without exception and to chose who to communicate with, independent of considerations of who is watching / reading etc is a great good. And humans will be human.
So yes some peoples backgrounds mean that is them communicating to do shady shit based in greed, or hatred etc. but it's also simultaneously the ability of person who knows about shady shit to get information to others to prevent etc.
Is Tor able to nullify the great firewall of China?
If not, that means that Tor can be crippled by any authoritarian government, and thus making sure authoritarian parties don't get into power is important.
Yeah, completely insane "free speech" absolutist who are also completely fine with punishing people who supposedly don't share "western values" by taking away their citizenship and expelling them.
"The Tor Project’s mission is to advance human rights and freedoms." - I might be completely barking up the wrong tree here, but I thought the TOR mission was to allow spies to access the network and hide among all the other non-spy users.
It was and still is funded mostly by the US Naval Research Laboratory. And considering most of the nodes are hosted on American cloud infra, if those companies share with the US Govt in real-time what is connecting in and out then the entire chain can be figured out much of the time without any kind of timing attacks. The regular person using it doesn't get as much of the privacy benefits, but the charade is making it seem like they do.
I know lots of people really believe in TOR - fair play to them. I just know it in my bones it's not as it seems.
'Meh, and yet anyone can run a relay or onion service in a few clicks.' - of course.
'Just false.'
It depends where you are from. The US constitution is supposed to prevent spying on American citizens, but anyone outside of the USA is fair game. Most of the global population is not in the USA (like me).
'If your model is simply to avoid corporate surveillance and tracking its a fantastic defense.' - I host an onion service exactly for that reason, not for my own privacy but to let customers have that with us if they want.
'If your trying to go up against nation states, it never claimed to protect you from that.' - I disagree, it will protect an American spy a treat.
> I thought the TOR mission was to allow spies to access the network and hide among all the other non-spy users.
Both things can be true... the original need for the network necessitated the mission of the foundation itself... you can't have a global network that only spies use, or you're not blending in, so you have to make it about a public good that many civilians will also use.
Other systems like I2P, SimpleX, Tribler, Datura etc. take additional steps to mitigate such kinds of Sybil attacks that people talk about against Tor, and new methods are being worked on all the time.
Splitting up your traffic across multiple nodes/circuits/etc. as well as persistent dummy/decoy traffic are some methods I've seen discussed recently.
> if those companies share with the US Govt in real-time
IMO This is a colossal "if" and not something we can realistically determine besides saying "we know it happens sometimes, but certainly not all or even most of the time."
Everyone's threat model is different, and hiding from state-level actors is generally 1. much too complicated to succeed at, and 2. you're probably not that special in the first place that you'd actually be targeted. The privacy community is bursting at the seams with all manner of tinfoil-hat wearers and wild conspiracy theorists that think some dark boogeyman is out to get them.
I'd also like to see a source that proves "most of the nodes are hosted on American cloud infra."
I'd also like to see a source that proves "most of the nodes are hosted on American cloud infra."
I will make a correction. What I should have said is that out of the top 10 networks hosting relays or exit nodes, that close to half have an American presence and that the vast majority 80-90% of relays and exit nodes are spread out within 14 eyes countries - you can see it yourself when you look at the network. When was the last time you looked at where it was connected to and did not see a flag within either 5 eyes, 9 eyes or 14 eyes countries? While that maybe isn't the proof you want, it sure is a meaty coincidence and another reason on top of who funds it and what its purpose is for.
Well, it's definitely not like Signal. The idea of it is to give better metadata privacy. It should be similar content privacy to any other good messenger like Signal.
The developer said he stopped writing code many months ago (IIRC). Idk if this means much but something to think about.
They're getting their third audit right now by Trail of Bits. Maybe it's already done and they're fixing the issues.
The developer keeps getting in arguments with this guy, maqp. Well I suppose maqp is getting in arguments with him. At first I was kind of on the SimpleX dev's side, because maqp came off as angry while he argued and at the same time I didn't really understand the discussion.
But maqp's main critique boils down to the fact that SimpleX's goal and marketing is anonymity, by removing user profiles, removing even random identifiers, but they don't implement Tor by default, so your IP address is an identifier.
From what I recall, talking to one of the Tor founders about this, Tor was created with overseas US military personnel in mind. E.g. A soldier’s location could be compromised through foreign ISPs if they accessed sites like .mil domains directly. Tor was a way of preventing this problem. There were other use cases but this one stood out for me and it was one of the initial ones considered.
Pretty on point with what I'm saying. I remember when Tor first launched and it was definitely framed at the time as for human rights. I absolutely believed all of that for years.
The development of onion routing funded by the NRL had a bunch of use cases including the one I mentioned. By the time Tor (The Onion Router) launched, and definitely by the time the Tor Project came along, more general use cases and human rights were a significant part of it.
I did have the chance to attend a talk by one of the cofounders and have a conversation with him afterwards. This was at a math conference a little over a decade ago.
> the TOR mission was to allow spies to access the network and hide among all the other non-spy users
Tor is pretty clear about what their mission is, it's at the bottom of the Tor Project homepage https://www.torproject.org: "To advance human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding."
Claiming anything else is useless conspiracy thinking without evidence.
> It was and still is funded mostly by the US Naval Research Laboratory
The original idea came from the US Naval Research Laboratory, yes (as a way to mask the origin of messages to hide the command boat in a fleet), but the funding statement is patently false. In 2024, the majority of their government funding ($2.1M out of $2.5) came from the U.S. State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, with the rest of the government money coming from even more innocuous sources. You can find this information on p41 of their IRS form: https://www.torproject.org/static/findoc/2023-2024-TheTorPro... also accessible from their Reports page at https://www.torproject.org/about/reports/
Certainly, you can speculate about the motivations of the U.S. State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and whether that's a front for more undercover objectives, but that front lines up pretty well with the US's (former?) foreign policy of undermining (unfriendly) dictatorial regimes, and Occam's Razor applies.
Ultimately though, the tools that Tor provides can absolutely be abused by bad actors, and ever since Silk Road, I've become convinced that the Tor network is overrun by a wretched hive of scum and villainy, where those morally defensible activities are utterly outnumbered by the criminal ones.
"Claiming anything else is useless conspiracy thinking without evidence."
Using the word "conspiracy" in this conversation about TOR is wild to me.
In a post-Snowden world, it surprises me how anyone wouldn't give reasonable doubt to the THE most interesting and juicy tool linked to the US military post-2001. The tool that people think hides what they are doing and hides who they are.
If there's one thing I know, it's that the US would never in a million years leave a data source untapped or a new NIST crypto standard untampered. Their fingers are in every pie.
> Recent concerns about a political donation by a Mullvad co-founder have raised questions about the Tor Project's funding relationship with the company.
It's kind of obnoxious that they assume everyone already knows the details of whatever controversy this is, and don't even provide a link to any explanation.
The most controversial aspect is plans to deport immigrants deemed insufficiently assimilated/productive, even if they have acquired citizenship, I think your description understates that a little.
Markus Allards and Örebropartiets biggest problem isn't the anti immigrant rhetoric but their anti democratic one. The party itself is closed and self selected. They have made it explicit that they want to dismantle the Swedish administration model and allow direct political control over the government agencies. They have frequently acted disruptive in meetings and directed online harassment towards fellow politicians.
I've read about them... What they believe is just so far out, and crazy, I don't even know how to describe it. Those people have a terminal shortage of marbles, straight out crackpot politics.
That generally suggests a lack of empathy on your part. If there are an organised group of people who you don't agree with it should generally be easy enough to state what ideas they believe, why it is wrong and some plausible explanation for why people believe what they do despite being wrong (that goes beyond "well they're just inexplicably stupid").
I can call flat-earther, perpetual motion machine makers, moon landing truther, etc. stupid, and I don't believe I need to explain myself. And there are for sure organised large groups of people of those.
Sure. But the beliefs are easy enough to describe. Eg, the flat earthers believe the earth is flat. And it's obvious why that isn't the case because even with a good telescope I can see stars but not mountains in foreign countries. Case pretty much closed, earth can't be flat.
And that probably isn't exactly correct but it is a big chunk of the way there. It isn't "what they believe is just so far out, and crazy, I don't even know how to describe it". It's easy to describe.
It’s a bit silly to expect ordinary citizens to have a near infinitely more mature attitude towards democracy than their elected representatives though? It’s not like anybody could have ever expected until relatively recently that one of the (objectively) most immature public figures in the country would somehow end up its president
Easy, three examples of where the US system has failed in the last two years:
1. Congressional authority for federal spending. The current administration has withheld or redirected spending that lawmakers had already approved.
2. Independence of the Department of Justice. A number of examples where the current administration has pressured DoJ representatives to pursue obviously ridiculous and un-pursuable charges against political 'enemies'.
3. Almost anything that DOGE did. Choose your example from the grab bag.
And the bonus round of breaching constitutional norms such as birthright citizenship and outright defiance of court orders.
The system hasn't failed because someone I dislike got elected, the system failed because the system is not constraining the current administration from their overt system-contravening actions.
I'm very sorry, and I'd rather it wasn't the case, but the system has failed.
1. The President has ultimate authority over the executive and how money is spent. And the President is not forced to spend money on “fraud, waste and abuse”. That’s in the Constitution and legal code.
2. The President has authority over placing judges, as per the Constitution. Every President puts judges they want in, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
3. See point #1
You seem to think the system failed because you don’t understand the powers the Executive has
I wouldn't necessarily say that the U.S. federal administration is in a super healthy state right now.
The Swedish administration model has its roots in the seventeenth century and is thus older than the Swedish democracy. It has generally worked well, Swedish authorities are trusted in a high degree in general and the authorities can work independently and professionally without too much direct meddling from the government.
Not sure how you got to that determination from reading that comment. Perhaps you should educate yourself on the subject matter before making such statements.
I am Swedish and understand the relationship between our government and the various agencies. Elected people make laws to direct the agencies, and the agencies implement said directives.
I have educated myself and having agencies who make their own independent decision about implementation would be less democratic than one under the control of those elected by the people.
No, the same way it isn't more democratic if all branches of government all tie the same party line.
Modern democracy is based on the separation of powers and, in the vast majority of countries, a constitution or charter(s) that can't be overturned by a simple majority vote. For example, a party can't suspend Habeas Corpus on a whim, even if said party won the presidency, the Congress and the Senate.
But just ask the Supreme Court who carved an exception for the FED and not other government agencies...
Yes, it is. This is for the same reason that deciding all things by plebiscite is a full or direct democracy, yet also a stupid thing. Your error comes from doing what many people now do, which is treating democracy as "good things", and more democracy is when we have more good things, and it as an inherent good. It's not.
There are a lot of different ways to measure democracy but most of the established ones (my own selection based on a quick glance at the “Democracy Ranking” Wikipedia page) ranks Sweden as more democratic than the U.S. so I guess more direct government control and more directly elected officials doesn’t necessarily translate to more democratic system of government.
I think that's completely disconnected from the word Democracy. Democracy is a form of government where political power is vested in the people of a state. As opposed to a Monopoly or Oligarchy. "More democratic" is not necessarily "more good". If 99% of people vote to arrest a specific person because they don't like what he said. That would be the most democratic system but it would be a terrible system.
I think the people making those "established measures" are just measuring what they think makes a good government and then calling that Democracy.
Isn't that how all parties work? If you accept ideological opponents of a party in then the party will just collapse. There has to be a process to make sure that new members of the party agree with its core principles before they join. Which is to say, the party has to be closed and self-select members.
If a party just lets any person join then there isn't any point to the party.
Sure, political parties are meant to be ideological groupings of people. In a democracy, if you treat the political spectrum of ideologies as ranging between the extreme left- and the extreme right- you find that extremist ideologies are unfortunately more limiting and non-accepting of the "others" (either because they are scornful towards democratic values or believe only in a subset of it, i.e. majoritarian democracy). Where as a right-leaning or left-leaning or a centrist party in a democracy is often more accepting and open towards other non-extremist ideologies as long as it isn't at loggerhead with the core values of a party. (But when even such parties show a lack of tolerance to others, it is often a sign of a democracy in trouble - https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/93862/does-demo... ).
By far not. In Germany for example, you can just fill out an application form, and in practice, they'll just google you to make sure you're not a known extremist - and that's it. Additionally, according to §7 PartG [1], a party's organizational structure must provide a way for every member to have an influence over where the party goes.
In some countries like the Netherlands however, there is e.g. the far right PVV [2] whose only registered member is Geert Wilders. Something like that would run completely counter towards the idea behind German political parties.
Why exactly the fuck did Tor partner with a VPN company? Of course something bad was going to happen. The incentives at play could not be more at odds.
Because they have a very strong track record of good performance, reliability, and defense of privacy. VPN businesses largely sell trust and Mullvad has earned a lot of it
I think this is a good rule of thumb: "If a company invests so much money in advertising over the long term and promotes its products so aggressively, the product must be subpar."
Mullvad spends a lot on irl marketing. VPN providers are essentially just about trust as they provide essentially the same service, so marketing is hugely important.
Mullvad and IVPN both don't do affiliate links. Proton is the only VPN that I can recommend that does use affiliate link marketing. They also do a lot of sponsorships. Proton really is a great company with great products.
The Tor statement doesn't mention the actual donation or party. Daniel Berntsson the co-owner of Mullvad, donated approximately US$500,000 to the far-right Örebro Party in Sweden. It's an ethno-nationalist party that is pushing for "remigration". From Wikipedia: "Remigration is a far-right concept referring to the ethnic cleansing via mass deportation of non-white minority populations, especially immigrants and sometimes including native-born citizens, to their place of racial ancestry."
> It's a shame that refusing to consort with fascists is conflated with "being political".
It's because they are a political party, and he was donating to it. There's no better definition of being punished for a political opinion than being punished to donating to a legitimate party.
And their not "fascists", it's a Swedish nationalist party.
Naming everything you don't like as "fascist" is a quick way to have your opinion dismissed as crazy.
The Swedish party in question seems to hold a position on immigrants that is fascist due to their hostility towards immigrants. While holding a fascist opinion is allowed free speech in a democratic society. Speech that incites violence or hatred is not - generally. And TOR as well as most other civil and decent human beings have every right and perhaps obligation to opine that fascists suck and can f-off.
They are not fascists, they are somewhere between “right-socialists” and left-populists, seemingly very close to Titoism. There is a substantial difference. Fascism calls for fusion of corporations and state and I haven’t seen that from them. They have called for socialization of energy, but that’s common among many left parties.
I am sick to death of the overapplication of the word “fascism”. It doesn’t mean “bad thing”. Distinct words are needed for distinct concepts, otherwise all political discourse ends up like here in America where you have “liberals” who are not actually liberal and “conservatives” who don’t want to conserve anything.
Edit: edited to reflect that they are probably a lot closer to Tito than Hoxha or Juche, after thinking about it.
The annoyance is that your personal judgement of "bad" is being wrapped up in emotional escalating language which equivocates, "I dont like this policy on immigration" with the history of genocide and total war in europe.
> Fascism calls for fusion of corporations and state
Ironically, most people screaming online and at demonstrations about "fascism" explicitly support this. Outside of socialized health care and university education, it's impossible to detect any traditional left-wing politics among them - deviate an inch from those two things and they instantly revert to a sort of common ignorant libertarianism.
They don't understand that socialized health care and university educations (both of which I support) are easily incorporated into a fascist state, or that Mussolini became prominent and famous as the head of Italian socialism, and saw fascism as a more efficient and powerful way to provide the things that he wanted. They can't be central to your anti-fascism.
But, in fact, all of their anti-fascism is those two things, and additionally somehow unlimited immigration (a capitalist dream.) The only even vaguely left-wing related ways to support this are 1) that communists didn't believe in nation-states, they believed in world communism, and 2) that warmongering imperialists attacked immigrants' countries of origin, so their populations are simply "chickens coming home to roost," aka "blowback."
The first is them pretending to be communists when they're social safety net liberals which falls apart pretty quickly, and the second basically paints immigrants as a punishment as the West deserves. It's no wonder that they default to liberal elite capitalist defenses of immigration - "who will pick our fruit and clean our toilets?" "I love their food, their native dances, their beautiful clothes, and their magical mysterious spirituality," "they're so much more beautiful and interesting than boring white people." At least then immigrants aren't painted as some sort of venereal disease you get from fucking other countries over.
The real reason is that they're following the anti-Wall rhetoric that was cynically aimed at Trump in 2016 by the Democrats (and the Koch brothers) in a massive colossally expensive media campaign, and mistaking that for left-wing politics.
There's a hidden strength in this from the "birthright citizenship" in the US which combined with the extreme pro-immigration stance that the Democrats had to take to differentiate from Trump. A bunch of immigrant children and citizen children of illegal immigrant parents started pretending to be left-wing when they were really mostly single-issue (themselves), and it also worked because they were often low-middle income (safety net, again themselves.) The joy that upper-middle class whites who got worthless liberal arts degrees in word salad experienced when they could attend meetings (and have sex) with this population is mostly responsible for the rise of this dimwitted activism that gets blamed on the left. It was the logical continuation of the orgy of self-love they fell into after congratulating themselves for voting for a black (but absolutely nothing to do with anything that the US did to black people) president twice. A black president of immigrant descent who made "DREAMers" an issue.
There's a similar feature in Europe with refugees, and additionally in both places because there are simply a lot of foreign elites in European universities who love to be seen as the victim rather than the oppressors that they are seen as where they come from. Europe also doesn't have the history with local black people to feel guilty about, so their guilt is mostly around colonies - and these people are from former colonies. Europeans should feel guilty about the gypsies, Holocaust and all, but they don't; they still hate them. Hell, the US left-liberal transferred their guilt about black people and natives to immigrants, who are cast as strivers and saints with big happy families to differentiate them from the abandoned and ghettoized ex-slaves who get to hear about how immigrants built America.
When every power structure in the world started adopting this stupid language, the former left were doomed. Why wouldn't they be? The beliefs of the actual, traditional left had officially been deemed "fascist" and replaced with a cobbled-together set of lifestyle beliefs and xenophilia that bankers had no problem with.
The person I'm refering to (which is not you) clearly has a biased view of what he considers leftism, purely based on skewed USA politics and propaganda without theory. In his wall of text, every single anti-fascist is "left-libtard who doesn't know class war". If you want to talk about the communism and it's link to autoritarism : fine. About the history of fascist leaders stealing socialists ideas to get in power and never implement them : fine. But this is just mashed potatoes of brain matter.
From reading his past posts, I’m pretty sure he and I would fall under the same general “post-left” umbrella. His (and my) problem is not with “the left” or left theory in general, only with the idiots who have appropriated the label and abandoned the key goal of economic justice that sits at the core of left theory. They are the running dogs of the “capitalism” they claim to oppose.
I’m not even a Marxist (my preference lies somewhere near Georgist left-libertarianism), but increasingly I find myself required to dig into Marxist theory to slap down the nonsense coming from what remains of the putative, fully captured-by-propaganda and brainrotted left. Of the heirs of the old left, only doctrinaire MLs seem to have any solid grounding in the actual requirements of governing, while the radical left have all absorbed the New Left (crypto-Trotskyite) approach of “permanent revolution,” although they don’t even realize what this theory is or what it leads to. (In case you weren’t aware, the theory merely reinforces imperialism, leading to domination by transnational capital.)
Lenin was completely right about left deviationism.
It’s literally one of the key defining features that separate it from other forms of totalitarianism. That you don’t seem to know this speaks poorly to your understanding of the concept.
It certainly isn’t the only feature and nobody claimed that.
It's one of the multiple still debated feature of fascism. And you said : "They are not fascists [...] Fascism calls for fusion of corporations and state and I haven’t seen that from them."
Both Italian Fascism and National Socialist Germany, the two prima facie examples, exhibited this. Nobody’s debating it except those who want to inappropriately extend the concept to cover other ideologies they don’t like, as a way of associating them with the worst regimes in history for propaganda purposes.
It's not the "calls for fusion of corporations and state" you mentioned above that these people are the most famous for, and what you seem worried about others being associated with; but their ideology and the associated actions. It's no wonder modern forms of a similar ideology draw comparisons to its most famous proponents in recent history.
The association happens by way of that similarity. That's what they're getting called out for.
Opening up a discussion about technical differences in economic policy is completely beside the point, unless you want to distract from the rest of the rotten elephant in the room.
It's not about names, it's about using names as a shorthand for what these people said to motivate and justify their horrific deeds.
They were not the first, or last, but, as you say, among the worst. They serve as an excellent model of what can happen when you put people like that in control of a modern, organized and industrialized state.
And as such, I find it entirely appropriate to invoke their handle as a shorthand for modern ducks quacking a similar tune.
I assume you’re referencing the Holocaust. Unfortunately, genocide and mass killings are not all that uncommon, and there’s been a number of examples coming from wildly different ideologies over the years. (And besides, there’s only one region of the world where civilian mass killings are regularly taking place at the moment, and it’s not the US.)
If you believe historical accounts of the Holodomor, the Soviets perpetuated an even worse genocide. Yet we don’t call the baddies “Stalinists,” because it would be obviously absurd. I’m saying that it’s just as absurd to call them fascists, and the only reason that most people don’t understand this is widespread historical and political illiteracy.
>The Swedish party in question seems to hold a position on immigrants that is fascist due to their hostility towards immigrants.
Advocating for controlling borders and opposing immigration is a legitimate political position, whether you agree with it or not. Those who describe everything they disagree with as 'fascism' are not credible people.
Not giving my money so that it flows to an antiimmigrant party, having myself been an immigrant, is rather different from punishing.
Only rich tech bros have this absurd situation where they are "punished" by a political opinion, because only they can meaningfully sway "one person, one vote" with their money.
Are we talking about the political opinion of toilet cleaners who don't have the money to donate, or the energy, or the podcasts to express it? No. That's not an opinion that can be punished, it's just a non-event for many here.
So let me not shed a tear for the political opinions of the Mullvad boss.
Maybe the co-founder of Mullvad sees the potential profit in the increasing popularity of the party because it would make Mullvad increasingly a necessity.
Every single country on earth participates in remigration, it is not ethnic cleansing by any stretch, given the amount of white people being deported from the US, Europe and other places all the time.
Europe has this absurdist political compass that calls any anti-immigration party "far-right", even when their official party platform is center-left or far-left in every single other respect (like Örebro's current platform of substantial expansions of social welfare program funding). Same is true in France, where you have a party with far-left socialist economics and anti-immigration sentiment that is bucketed as "far-right".
Almost no European countries, and almost no countries in general for that matter, allow people visiting a country, or illegally being in that country, to give birth there and have that child automatically become a citizen.
In Sweden, a child born in Sweden to a visitor or illegal immigrant is NOT automatically a citizen.
You know where else that statement is true? Denmark, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Greece. Practically the entire world, actually.
All the aforementioned countries REQUIRE legal status of the parents before the child gets citizenship status, even when born there.
So when the administration 'attacks' birthright citizenship, they are proposing to bring the US in line with the majority of the world and the entirety of Europe.
Incredible - that would make me an illegal immigrant because my parents had me while they were here on student visas and we wouldn't have been able to build the lives we had for the past 40+ years! What a compassionate and humane system, how refreshing.
The level of naked ethnosupremacism embedded in European ideals and their constant barking at how the US is actually the most racist country is so very funny to me. If you rebuild the ship of fools plank by plank will it still dash itself against the reef?
Not taking a stand on either side, but your parent is correct. This isn't a European thing - but true in most countries.
And yes, things like race are a primary reason (for good or bad).
And yes, as my Spanish friend keeps pointing out: While the US has a large homicide rate, they can't beat the Europeans when it comes to pogroms, mass killings, etc every so many decades. Europe will be, well, Europe.
It wasn't "legal status". It was "subject to laws of the country" (i.e, excluding diplomats).
If the very constitution of the country classifies tourists as "not subject to the law of the US", that's some The Purge level popcorn. All visitors and illegal aliens would have had diplomatic immunity.
The US can amend the constitution. It has not. SCOTUS has no legal right to do it unilaterally.
I'm confused. Can you point me to the specific policy of this party, or other mainstream "far-right" parties who have a remigration policy that specifically excludes the deportation of white people who were not born there?
ICE has deported thousands of white people under the current administration, for instance. Their removal operations are indiscriminate, not racial. Several white people (some from Canada, some from the UK, some from Ireland) have made headline news after getting picked up by ICE ERO.
You're confused that I accurately described the origins and meaning of the term "remigration"? It is not merely closing borders and deporting immigrants without legal permission to be there. Calling for remigration absolutely is calling for ethnic cleansing. They're not shy about it, except when trying to convince non-racists that it's actually completely reasonable, and will only happen to criminals, the "worst of the worst", and those who haven't assimilated.
The rest is a large pile of missing the point, and bringing up things I did not say.
I did not say any one was doing it. I said people were calling for it.
For the leaders of the Örebro Party in particular, Wikipedia suffices:
> In a podcast segment about second generation immigrants involved in organised crime Allard stated "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish. They have not been interested in becoming Swedish."
(I am aware that Sweden is _Jus sanguinis_; it is entirely possible that second generation immigrants don't have citizenship; that merely makes it legal. And he does not explicitly make even that limiting argument.)
Note too that ethnicity is narrower than skin color; the lumping together of all European-extraction is a contingent feature of history, and is weaker than you might think. Kicking out non-Swedes would ethnic-cleansing, and would be even if the people being kicked out were white.
Nor does also deporting people for non-ethnic reasons make the rest of a remigration program not ethnic-cleansing. It's not the goal, but it's no big loss to these nationalists, because they're authoritarian race-collectivists willing to cause harm to get those people out.
> Calling for remigration absolutely is calling for ethnic cleansing
Again, I ask for a specific remigration policy that excludes the remigration of white people in the country illegally. This is the prerequisite that would make it a policy based on ethnicity-based deportation.
If it's indiscriminate, it is indiscriminate and therefore not based on ethnic background. Seems to me their explicit policies, both written and in practice, are indiscriminate.
Yes, it should absolutely disqualify the OP.
Even if the RN wasn't called explicitly as I cannot find any French far-right labelled party with a socialist economics. None.
The main one is RN, François Asselineau is maybe the more "lefty compatible" far-right candidate, and he is clearly "right" labelled, not a lefty.
Well sure but have you considered that Der Stürmer's list of Jewish criminals shows a very disturbing pattern of behaviour by a certain ethnic group? Much to ponder.
"One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism.
If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge — that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism."
Nope, the Swedish version of AfD is a lot more successful and is already well integrated into the political system (it’s the 3rd largest party in the parliament ).
> While Tor defends free speech, not all speech is equally compatible with our mission.
It's sad to see the backslide. In the olden days free speech absolutists would defend all speech short of fires in the cinema. Nowadays it has to be compatible with their brand of political correctness else they will tar and brush you or stay conspicuously silent.
You see the same backsliding in the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other non profits. They are a lot more neoliberal now than liberal. Interests over values.
Free speech absolutists can still have opinions, criticize others, and choose who to associate with. They're not advocating for censorship or legal penalties for speech.
Yep. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." and similar such sentiments.
One can publicly declare a speaker to be a wrongheaded pig that all decent people should ignore, but that's a wholly different thing from ensuring that said pig is unable to utter its wrongheaded ideas in public.
But the question is, if the speaker of vile speech is being persecuted by the powers that be, will said brave "free speech absolutist" NGOs step up or will they be conspicuously absent?
> ...if the speaker of vile speech is being persecuted by the powers that be...
What specifically is being done to persecute this hypothetical pig you refer to? As always, the details matter.
In regards to the Tor Project's public statement that is TFA, they've chosen to stop advertising with Mullvad [0] because they strongly disagree with specific political positions that a Mullvad co-founder has publicly endorsed. They're not backing out of working on the Mullvad Browser because they figure that stopping that work -and losing the new feature testbed and (presumably) the money they get from it- would hurt more people than the implicit endorsement that some folks will see by continuing to work with Mullvad.
[0] ...this is referred to as "proactive co-branding" and "joint promotional activity"...
I interpreted this as just a clumsy rewording of the old quote, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Free speech advocates support the right of everyone to set up a stall in the marketplace of ideas, but don't have to support every idea that sets up a stall.
A publisher of gay erotica might support free speech, and find themselves alongside revolutionary communists, hitler-heiling nazis and radical islamists distributing bomb-making manuals - but the groups aren't allies or friends outside of that.
> In the olden days free speech absolutists would defend all speech short of fires in the cinema.
And ever since the tiki torch holding Nazis in Charlottesville shouting "Jews will not replace us", they've seen where that inevitably leads. If there is no setting acceptable borders, a place will degenerate fast and furiously - that's why you see, for example, even notoriously ultra-libertarian places like 4chan force off all the brony stuff into /mlp [1].
Free speech means freedom from governmental repression, not freedom from being ostracized by society.
> While Tor defends free speech, not all speech is equally compatible with our mission.
If Tor hems and haws about political speech, they 100% lose any rhetorical cover against (fallacious but politically compelling) arguments like "so you're OK with CP, but you draw the line at Swedes being against African immigration?" (which is the political issue in question re. Mullvad)
If we look at the origins and funding of the Tor network, it's pretty clear that CSAM is not the priority, although it is a priority. But mostly it's about preventing terror groups like ISIS from freely organizing massacres in France, Germany and maybe even the United States.
Tor funding has nothing to do with any of those things. It’s about providing a secure and hidden way for intelligence assets to communicate. Likely for espionage, and for covert communications with external assets, as these areas are where it would be most needed.
Given the history of ISIS, it’s likely that we had people teaching them how to use it at some point.
It's a false equivalence. If I design a censorship-resistant network, it doesn't imply that I endorse everything flowing through that network. And just because I'm in favor of free speech doesn't mean I can't criticize the speech of others as a private citizen or organization.
A. Is Tor openly accepting donations from child porn networks?
B. This isn't "Swedes being against African immigration", this is a party asking to renege on the citizenship of part of the population. "Remigration" isn't stopping immigration, it's looking at people's ancestry to strip them of their actual, present citizenship.
There's really no end to this game of altruism olympics people seem to want to play.
It may very well be that one group continuing to do business with another group is still more beneficial to their mission than cutting all ties, even if they disagree with the positions/actions of the other group. FOSS projects lately are tearing each other apart based on who is politically "better" than the rest in their eyes. The level of hypocritical hate coming from groups that claim to be tolerant is truly wild.
And we see this in geopolitics constantly as well. Remember that almost nobody cuts off contact with an entire country in perpetuity, and for good reason. Try to think of game theory and how well tit-for-tat actually works out in most aspects of society... I think cutting off all contact usually isn't the smartest solution in most situations.
Who are we to say what's morally "right" enough in every situation, especially given all kinds of other information we are not privy to? We don't know what we don't know, yet people act like they have all the answers and that only their opinion can be the right one... even in this (and every) thread we see this play out over and over with people getting royally butthurt over simple misunderstandings of subjective terminology.
There's an endless amount of scenarios we could argue...
- Why does anyone still negotiate with person/company/country XYZ after everything they've done?
- Where does one draw the line and who gets to say where that is?
- Why do people insist on calling things "fascist" that are more of a misunderstanding or difference in opinion vs much more serious authoritarian actions or aspirations?
- Why are so many people who otherwise seem quite smart, have such narrow-minded black-and-white opinions with zero interest in the possibility that they might be misinformed? How does that make any scientific sense?
Why can't we just be nicer to one another and realize that true intelligence requires both humility and empathy? When we don't take the time to try to truly understand each other's intentions, that leads to people not talking. And when people stop talking, that's when the fighting (in any sense of the word) starts.
Listen, I've been enough time on this Earth to know what is behind immigrant demonization, and it's not a particularly dark instinct. It's a well orchestrated distraction maneuver to have the lower classes find somebody to blame that is not the brutal increase in accomodation prices, that leads, de facto, to wage-slavery for big chunks of the population.
So no misunderstanding, millionaires gotta have the poor white Swedes blame the poor brown Swedes. True intelligence requires analysis of the power relations. The Mullvad boss can do without my money, and possibly I can spare my empathy for the next immigrant that will be beaten, burned or sent back to a war-torn country or a climate-change disaster zone.
> It's a well orchestrated distraction maneuver to have the lower classes find somebody to blame that is not the brutal increase in accomodation prices, that leads, de facto, to wage-slavery for big chunks of the population.
/rolleyes
Listen, I've been enough time on this Earth to know what is behind migrant acceptance, and it's not a particularly dark instinct. It's a well orchestrated distraction maneuver to have the lower classes accept the brutal increase in indentured servitude that leads, de facto, to wage-slavery for big chunks of the population.
See how much companies like Uber benefit from it for example
lol, see how easy it is to confidently push a narrative as truth?
Nobody cares. I’m so tired of people pushing this slop on us. I don’t care what meaningless controversy you’ve manufactured this month. There are so many real problems that need solving, we don’t need more redditisms.
> While Tor defends free speech, not all speech is equally compatible with our mission. We strongly oppose rhetoric that threatens other human rights and freedoms.
I disagree with this. Free speech is in essence, absolute. As soon as you start making allowances and exceptions the entire subject is moot.
The only threshold should be calls for violence or murder. AFAIK the Mullvad founder hasn't crossed this line.
I disagree with that too. Tor shouldn't choose sides in political debates.
Did all Tor developers, users and exit-node administrators get a vote in this? Or is it a small minority who decides this course?
Free speech also includes speech you may not agree with and just because you accept someone's (or some company's) donations doesn't mean you're "associated" with them.
> Members of the Tor community have asked us to explain how continued collaboration with Mullvad fits with the Tor Project's human rights mission.
> Our decision followed a thorough due diligence process that involved extensive discussions with community members, staff, and the board, a staff survey, and detailed financial analysis and scenario planning.
Tor is not a democracy and doesn't purport to be. The article outlines the due diligence they have already done, and they're writing this as notice to their community, in response to questions from it.
Projects should only be political in their own field. For example, the FSF should be political in copyright and patent matters, but not military or entitlement spending matters.
Actually "projects" are never political. But the people behind those projects we love and support, can care ffor lots more of political, social, or whatever form of issues or topics.
So they can be political in more things and actually when they make an honest public statement we should be happy since we know clearly what's their standing on important issues of today. I think that should be important to all of us.
I have no issue with the people behind projects speaking politically on whatever they want, if they do so with their own personal voice. My issue is specifically with them doing so with the voice of the project.
In this case, Tor is only being political in their own field. History has shown time and time again how the right to privacy is incompatible with political movements that attack the rights and freedoms of groups of citizens.
The best way to fulfill their mission is to advocate for protecting all rights.
* Leverage the full intelligence capabilities of the state to detect and identify individuals involved in or associated with organized crime.
* Law enforcement authorities have the right to employ wiretapping, surveillance, extensive undercover operations, and preventive detention in cases involving an individual flagged as active within or around [organized crime].
* proactively blacklist and red-flag criminals, preventing them and their relatives from committing crimes altogether, restricting their ability to contact other criminals, access their assets and transfer/receive money (and a bunch of other things)
Does this seem compatible woth TOR and it's values?
(hilauriously the same party, as they're populists, are completely against Chat Control)
As long as they're not mandating backdoors or weaknesses in things, banning end-to-end encryption, or anything like that, to make wiretapping and surveillance easier, I think it's compatible.
I would counter that it’s (or at least should be) a mission driven project.
That mission might be political - but the politics follow from the mission not the other way around.
The mission I’d personally like out of a product that fits Tor’s space is: the ability to unconditionally communicate securely and privately over the public Internet.
Saying that mission is inherently political, sure, you’re going to exclude people who disagree with the mission. That’s kinda the point.
But saying that the narrow politics of that mission means the organization should be broadened to take additional political stances that would exclude people who otherwise would participate in advancing the mission?
The way you raise a point about missions being the basis to politics and then provide the immediate counterpoint someone would make to show that this mission ("everyone should be able to communicate securely and privately") is caused by a political opinion, is strange.
> But saying that the narrow politics of that mission means the organization should be broadened to take additional political stances that would exclude people who otherwise would participate in advancing the mission?
They're not really excluding anyone. If you read the blogpost, they're not even stopping their technological partnership. They are just stopping co-branding themselves to avoid being seen as directly associated with Mullvad. That doesn't exclude anyone. Co-branding is a position of added trust on top of the baseline of being aligned with anyone who shares your views, isn't it expected that an organization might be pickier if it has to sign under another organization's brand?
> Tor shouldn't choose sides in political debates.
> Did all Tor developers, users and exit-node administrators get a vote in this? Or is it a small minority who decides this course?
This is addressed in the announcement.
> Free speech also includes speech you may not agree with and just because you accept someone's (or some company's) donations doesn't mean you're "associated" with them.
Tor didn't stop taking the donations nor did they stop cooperating with Mullvad on development.
What they did is pause "joint promotional activity" and review the language of what they had published about Mullvad to avoid implying an endorsement or alignment of values.
What problem do you have with that? This seems like precisely the avoidance of side taking that you are advocating.
Actually, at this day and age, I think not just Tor but all projects and public companies should choose sides and be vocal about it.
When big players don't choose sides, it doesn't mean they actually dont support a side, it means we don't know or they wanna hide it.
So my point is we might not agree with Tor at this, but I know, I guess to a reasonable degree, now what Tor stands for, and that is rare today.
Also lets not forget that, at least for many people, Tor is a heavy mission driven project. So what it chooses matters to people that worry about big issues of our generation.
Freedom of speech does not equate to freedom from all consequences, like disapproval and discontinuation of business relationships. If, for example, you advocate for the legalization of making CSAM, expect to be made a social pariah.
> The only threshold should be calls for violence or murder.
There are other universal exceptions which I'm guessing you are forgetting:
* Slander
* Fraud
* Treason (actual treason - e.g., passing info
to the enemy in a war for survival)
What about disinformation that causes serious harm? What if I tell people that snickerdoodles prevent shellfish allergies, and they try it and some die?
Unfortunately, real life always has grey areas; no simple algorithm can address it.
"disinformation" is problematic if it presupposes an arbiter of truth. We've seen time and again that people and organizations in such positions will abuse them rather than uphold their principles.
At the end of the day, you either engage with the speech and argue against the idea, or you appeal to authority and hope it is worthy of your trust. Personally, I'm a little too jaded for that.
That's not reality: Every court case has to decide on truth. That's why we have laws, court procedure (including rules of evidence), and judges and juries. Juries specifically are tasked with deciding the facts of the case. Fraud and slander depend on determinations of truth.
It's not always simple; it's not always perfect; but practically we do it all the time as a matter of course. Everyone makes decisions like that every day; every authority makes those decisions - managers at work, politicians in hearings; the public does it listening to political messages, parents do it listening to teenagers explaining where they were all night ...
Free speech is about government making certain forms of speech illegal. Criticism of people/ideas and freedom of association are themselves acts of free speech.
The principles of free speech can be held by individuals and organizations, even thought they don't have as much power as the government.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" doesn't necessarily need to be scoped to just "... from government interference".
Case in point: legal or not, people cancelling speeches and people, shutting down legal speech, do NOT stand for freedom of speech. In fact, I've often heard them say "I don't particularly care about freedom of speech", verbatim,
I agree that some forms of cancellation are illiberal and anti-free speech. But a lot of the time, what gets called "canceling" or "shutting down" are themselves forms of free speech and freedom of association. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that everyone is entitled to being taken seriously, or having their opinions broadcast in private venues and publications, or being immune from criticism, mockery, protest, or social ostracization. A lot of people who call themselves free speech absolutists think that none of this should be allowed and that all ideas deserve an equal hearing.
I would prefer that people phrase it like you did now, instead of the, at best, distracting way you did before.
It's tiring to see people make the case that because the government was not involved, that it's by definition completely unrelated to free speech. Like, you clearly know that's not the case, from this follow up.
Of course the right to free speech does not extend to compelled speech, as you say.
ACLU defended the Nazis because they support free speech. But "free speech" of course doesn't compel them to. But clearly if they had chosen not to, they'd show they care less about free speech than they say.
Like the ACLU of today, who have said that they'll only defend speech they agree with, or something to than effect. Well, morally, do you actually have that value anymore?
You're right, I probably could have been clearer and more nuanced in my wording. In the context of the comment I was responding to, I was pushing back against a claim of "free speech absolutism" which I don't really see as free speech absolutism at all. I see GGP's attitude more as a form of anti-criticism or what I would call "neutrality fundamentalism". I was probably a bit reactive because I consider myself a free speech absolutist, but in the sense of being against all government censorship, not necessarily private entities exercising their right to criticize or associate with whoever they want.
>Case in point: legal or not, people cancelling speeches and people, shutting down legal speech, do NOT stand for freedom of speech.
Except that heckling and shouting down a speaker is speech too. And thus your argument is incoherent: do you want to restrict speech that impedes other's freedom of speech? If no, then the hecklers must be given free rein; if yes, then the case can be made to restrict racists' freedom of speech as they try to restrict some other people's freedoms, including the latter's freedom of speech.
Preventing speech is free speech? How orwellean. What if the government shouts down unfavourable speech, like with water cannons? Is water cannons and teargas speech?
How about industrial megaphones?
Your free speech only extends so far as it doesn't prevent, prior restraint, someone else's free speech.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What you just said is the antithesis to free speech.
No. If the goal of your so called speech is to physically stop someone else's right to free speech, then you are just a thug and don't actually hold this value.
And like I said, many people who do this prevention of free speech admin it explicitly in so many words. They do not care about free speech.
You didn't actually address the comment you replied to. Is heckling a speaker free speech or not? Does it protect the speaker's free speech if the heckler is dragged out? Or does it violate the heckler's rights? Or both?
> "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It's a great slogan and a terrific ideal. But actually think it through, in real world situations, and you end up with so many edge cases.
I think I clearly did. When the intent and result is not to critique, condemn, refute, or heckle, or even be heard at all, but to put prior restraint by preventing speech or others, then that's literally the opposite of free speech.
Whether done by the government or by an angry mob is a legal difference, but not a principled or moral difference.
You can't be in favour of free speech and also prior speech restraint, "as long as it's not by the government". And as I've said, to be fair to many of those who do it, they admit that they don't care about free speech. And it's true. Their actions are consistent with their claim.
Both heckler and speaker have free speech rights. The speaker did not come there to prevent the heckler's speech. But if the heckler did come to prevent the rights of the speaker, then they are not merely heckling.
That is a fundamental difference.
Your bullhorn preventing not just the speaker from speaking, but the listeners from being able to reject the speaker's message, is just, well, against freedom of speech and freedom in general.
> But actually think it through, in real world situations, and you end up with so many edge cases.
Am I'm sad that people will give up their values for inconveniences. Then they're not your values, just your hobbies, at best.
You may as well be against torture, "except when it's a bad guy".
Edit: or what do you think of this: You can report this comment to HN, hoping that it gets deleted. Would you claim that this is you exercising free speech, or fighting free speech? I would say it'd clearly be the latter. That is, if you did it not because you found my comment against HN policies, but because you disagree and therefore wish that my argument never be heard by anyone?
What would be Orwellian is a university ordering its students "we will invite speaker A to come talk to you on the big stage, and you have to sit there and listen".
In this a university with armed guards pushing people into the room at the threat of, what? What's the scenario you're imagining?
You presumably also think that it'd be free speech to deny your math class hearing the math professor by non-stop screaming?
Nobody is going to stop my free speech about how integrals are not real because infinities don't exist or something. But that's not the same as giving me the right to shut down all speech about it but mine. So yes, I will be taken out of the classroom specifically set up to hear about integrals, for that.
Can religious people prevent your whole school from learning about evolution? That would literally fall under, in your words, a university ordering its students "we will invite speaker A to come talk to you on the big stage, and you have to sit there and listen". Not forced at gunpoint, but at grade-point.
Would it be free speech to give literally everyone a heckler's veto?
Your point is moot. If speech is entirely absolute until violence is threatened, some of the most destructive crimes in modern society would become entirely legal.
Even under U.S. law, free speech has well-defined limits.
>The only threshold should be calls for violence or murder.
Not very absolute though, and why are calls for violence somehow different from other icky things like sharing AI-generated nude images or selling people dangerous weapons?
I respect the moxie of the free speech absolutists and I'm glad there are some of them in the world. I personally tend to think things are a bit more complex than that, but if you're going to be an absolutist, then be an absolutist and allow all speech, including calls for violence.
Ah yeah, like Voltaire said "I have no opinion about what you've said, that would mean I'm against free speech, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
You say 'absolute' and then the very next sentence you add a qualifier, and the qualifier isn't all that far distant from the ones you say you disagree with.
Put 'violence and murder' next to 'threatening human rights and freedoms' and the former is not a great distance from the later. (having said that, the latter probably has a lot of 'definition argument' within it).
I am not saying the content of the speech is morally equal, but Tor's explicit mission is to make people anonymous and protect speech. The moment you start inspecting it, Tor's mission is negated.
Of course, Tor's partnerships are different than the content distributed through it's network, but I still find it a bit ironic.
They're not talking about inspecting or controlling speech on the network, they're talking about speech outside their network and how it relates to them and their relationship with Mullvad.
In Sweden, we have a meme that goes something like "It doesn't matter if it's untrue, it's still outrageous".
Essentially, you are complaining about something that is simply not the case. As you yourself said, this isn't Tor preventing free speech. This is Tor evaluating their commercial partnerships based on their values and whether or not they are compatible with the speech of their partners. So, it has nothing to do with Tor's stance on or facilitation of free speech. Therefore, there is nothing to be outraged about.
"While Tor defends free speech, not all speech is equally compatible with our mission. We strongly oppose rhetoric that threatens other human rights and freedoms."
The paradox of tolerance: if one wishes to live in a tolerant society, then one should be tolerant of all speech and actions except those that are themselves intolerant.
Neat idea, but as usual, the real world is more complex than any one idea.
It’s not double think. Free speech is about defending other people’s right to speak, not what they say. It opposes the Örebro Party’s / Mullvad cofounder’s opinions, not their right to say them. The network Tor created is literally a place where speech is incredibly hard to censor. Choosing what degree to work with another company is not about the right to free speech.
Recently, I've started noticing that I'm not able to browse any commercial websites using Tor. Most of them have started outright blocking it. Under the pretence of blocking bots, I suspect this is an attempt at mandatory surveillance.
I suspect that Tor has also been used a lot for IP obfuscation to support scraping, and what you’re seeing might be an anti-scraping measure.
Mullvad (IME, when I used to use it) was halfway unusable for e.g. Reddit because (I understand) so many of their exit nodes were blocked for similar reasons.
Some people here are defending Mullvad's political position. But the point is that a project devoted to free speech as such shouldn't be associated with a political, ideological group that favors one set of publicly presented ideas and strongly condemns another set.
The danger is that if the Tor network gets very dependent on Mullvad, then Mullvad might pressure it to make the network censor ideas it doesn't like.
> The danger is that if the Tor network gets very dependent on Mullvad, then Mullvad might pressure it to make the network censor ideas it doesn't like.
glances over at their supporters page [0]... I mean, that's not literally impossible.
While it is true that Mullvad supports at "Shallot Onion" -and has since mid 2023- [1] and "Shallot Onion" is Tor Project's highest support tier, we don't know how much Mullvad is paying. Six years ago, the smallest amount one could donate to get into that tier was 100k USD [2]. In contrast, just one of their eleven (or twelve, depending on how you count the two listed US State Department entities) supporters provided 500k USD per year in 2022->2024, and "committed" to providing 750k USD per year in 2025->2027... until -one assumes- DOGE canceled that grant in its "efficiency" sweeps.
FUTO is another of the eleven-ish entities on that page. While FUTO doesn't seem to mention how much it granted to the Tor Project, their grants page [3] claims that they've granted five million USD to twenty entities in their "Legendary Grants" -er- program, for an average of 250k USD per entity.
There's a lot that we don't know about the details of the financial situation of the Tor Project... but while it's possible that they become captured by Mullvad's money, it seems unlikely to me.
[0] <https://www.torproject.org/about/supporters/>
[1] <https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/3/3/mullvad-becomes-highest...>
[2] <https://archive.torproject.org/websites/lists.torproject.org...>
[3] <https://futo.tech/grants>
> we don't know how much Mullvad is paying.
Yes we do; it's listed on Tor's IRS Form 990. $306,225 in 2025.
https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2025/208/096/2025-20809...
Oh, rad! I had forgotten that that information would appear on publicly-accessible tax documents. Thanks for digging that up. How did you locate it? Punch in something like "Tor Project 990 2025" into a search engine, or were you already aware of this GuideStar organization?
I see that the 1.5 million USD State Department grant is listed on that return. I do hope that they weren't obligated to return that. The Award History section here [0] suggests that they were, but I don't know much at all about how these sorts of grants work.
Anyway. This is where Tor Project seems to officially publish their tax documents [1], but I can only find docs up to 2023->2024...
Notable is that in 2023->2024 (the year prior to the document you link to) Mullvad's funding was 1.4 million USD, whereas in 2024->2025, Mullvad's funding was 306 thousand USD. In that year, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency provided nearly twice the funding that Mullvad did! Perhaps Mullvad donated a enormously large amount of money in 2025->2026, but, yeah, the numbers don't support the "the Tor Project will start censoring because Mullvad is paying them so much" story.
Again, thanks for digging up that tax return.
[0] <https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_2534285_049#award...>
[1] <https://www.torproject.org/about/reports/>
> How did you locate it? Punch in something like "Tor Project 990 2025" into a search engine, or were you already aware of this GuideStar organization?
I searched "tor 990", found the same [1] you did with stale data, and knew from past experience I could find the latest on GuideStar. 990s are really useful when doing due diligence on non-profits before making donations. In an ideal world, they'd be easy to find directly on irs.gov, but, alas.
> Some people here are defending Mullvad's political position.
It is not Mullvad's political position. It is the political position of one of its co-founders, using his own money. The other co-founder openly disagrees with that position.
Personally, I feel _much_ better about relying on a company whose two co-CEOs have diametrically opposed political stance, than I would about a company with a singular one.
> It is not Mullvad's political position. It is the political position of one of its co-founders, using his own money.
And where do you think "his own money" comes from? Mullvad.
Content aside, is there anything or anyone forcing Foss projects to pick up this voice?
I understand that TOR is big and professional and all, but why does this read like a press statement of every tech corp under the sun? Do we have to talk like this?
if you don't, some will say "you are not treating this seriously, it's not a joke, humans life's are at stake and you can't even bother writing a professional response"
Yes, but, does that someone matter? Do they still have leverage to be of any concern?
Because.. looking at the whole.. uh.. stuff going on in US politics, I'm kinda doubtful. There are a lot of real and big problems going on right now that far outweigh choice of specific tone and words I'd say.
I mean. Their choice and all, but it comes with the trade-off of being massively alienating, and I'd argue that the cost benefit calculation of that might have to be redone, taking the current state of the world into account.
If that "somebody" is some manner of congresscritter, then yes.
Yeah but that government body is currently doing this sanctioning the ICC thing and also thinking about public execution livestreams, so.. uh.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50021066
So.. idk? I think they might not care that much? In fact, they might like the people the Tor project is (rightfully (if done genuinely)) (pretending to) distance themselves from.
the existence of this blog post is proof that it matters for them, people/orgs receive emails accusing them every day, and most of the time they dont bother answering
No, it just shows they will kowtow, not that there will be any consequences if they don’t.
How does someone sensibly come to such a wild conclusion?
> some will say
And whatever you do to please these "some", they will never be satisfied and just jump on to the next hate bandwagon the moment you give in to their demands. You never benefit from listening to these online activists, who already hate you and already don't use your product. Even more so when it's a non-profit product.
They clearly just need the funding, which is few and far between on tools like this and they aren’t in a position to be able to take a moral stance. Can’t say I blame them too much other than the co-branding idea.
Tor itself was invented by the US Naval Research Lab and still today is funded >50% by the US Department of Defense.
I thought DOGE took care of that.
I am like bleeding heart anti-military anti-war anti prison industrial complex and military industrial complex
I have exception for Tor (and pretty much only Tor) because of the nature of what an anonymity network is and how it functions it requires everyone to use it independent of gov, background, country etc - and the security of adversary sometimes contributes to secuirty of self - so for instance - if they have vested interest in maintaining anonymity of undercover assets in the gulf or something, it helps human rights activists also, etc
To me it's like one of those universal things - I believe humanity with the power to read and write without exception and to chose who to communicate with, independent of considerations of who is watching / reading etc is a great good. And humans will be human.
So yes some peoples backgrounds mean that is them communicating to do shady shit based in greed, or hatred etc. but it's also simultaneously the ability of person who knows about shady shit to get information to others to prevent etc.
Is Tor able to nullify the great firewall of China?
If not, that means that Tor can be crippled by any authoritarian government, and thus making sure authoritarian parties don't get into power is important.
https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-table.html
Tor has always been so slow I could never actually use it for anything. Are there people who can?
Geez, all the bad elements of Hacker News are coming out in this thread huh.
Yeah, completely insane "free speech" absolutist who are also completely fine with punishing people who supposedly don't share "western values" by taking away their citizenship and expelling them.
"The Tor Project’s mission is to advance human rights and freedoms." - I might be completely barking up the wrong tree here, but I thought the TOR mission was to allow spies to access the network and hide among all the other non-spy users.
It was and still is funded mostly by the US Naval Research Laboratory. And considering most of the nodes are hosted on American cloud infra, if those companies share with the US Govt in real-time what is connecting in and out then the entire chain can be figured out much of the time without any kind of timing attacks. The regular person using it doesn't get as much of the privacy benefits, but the charade is making it seem like they do.
I know lots of people really believe in TOR - fair play to them. I just know it in my bones it's not as it seems.
Meh, and yet anyone can run a relay or onion service in a few clicks.
It's the best tool regular people have for privacy without a doubt.
>The regular person using it doesn't get as much of the privacy benefits, but the charade is making it seem like they do.
Just false.
If your model is simply to avoid corporate surveillance and tracking its a fantastic defense.
If your trying to go up against nation states, it never claimed to protect you from that.
'Meh, and yet anyone can run a relay or onion service in a few clicks.' - of course.
'Just false.'
It depends where you are from. The US constitution is supposed to prevent spying on American citizens, but anyone outside of the USA is fair game. Most of the global population is not in the USA (like me).
'If your model is simply to avoid corporate surveillance and tracking its a fantastic defense.' - I host an onion service exactly for that reason, not for my own privacy but to let customers have that with us if they want.
'If your trying to go up against nation states, it never claimed to protect you from that.' - I disagree, it will protect an American spy a treat.
> I thought the TOR mission was to allow spies to access the network and hide among all the other non-spy users.
Both things can be true... the original need for the network necessitated the mission of the foundation itself... you can't have a global network that only spies use, or you're not blending in, so you have to make it about a public good that many civilians will also use.
Other systems like I2P, SimpleX, Tribler, Datura etc. take additional steps to mitigate such kinds of Sybil attacks that people talk about against Tor, and new methods are being worked on all the time.
Splitting up your traffic across multiple nodes/circuits/etc. as well as persistent dummy/decoy traffic are some methods I've seen discussed recently.
> if those companies share with the US Govt in real-time
IMO This is a colossal "if" and not something we can realistically determine besides saying "we know it happens sometimes, but certainly not all or even most of the time."
Everyone's threat model is different, and hiding from state-level actors is generally 1. much too complicated to succeed at, and 2. you're probably not that special in the first place that you'd actually be targeted. The privacy community is bursting at the seams with all manner of tinfoil-hat wearers and wild conspiracy theorists that think some dark boogeyman is out to get them.
I'd also like to see a source that proves "most of the nodes are hosted on American cloud infra."
I'd also like to see a source that proves "most of the nodes are hosted on American cloud infra."
I will make a correction. What I should have said is that out of the top 10 networks hosting relays or exit nodes, that close to half have an American presence and that the vast majority 80-90% of relays and exit nodes are spread out within 14 eyes countries - you can see it yourself when you look at the network. When was the last time you looked at where it was connected to and did not see a flag within either 5 eyes, 9 eyes or 14 eyes countries? While that maybe isn't the proof you want, it sure is a meaty coincidence and another reason on top of who funds it and what its purpose is for.
How secure is SimpleX? I saw a lot of tinfoil hat people on Reddit claiming that it's the next coming of Signal.
Well, it's definitely not like Signal. The idea of it is to give better metadata privacy. It should be similar content privacy to any other good messenger like Signal.
The developer said he stopped writing code many months ago (IIRC). Idk if this means much but something to think about.
They're getting their third audit right now by Trail of Bits. Maybe it's already done and they're fixing the issues.
The developer keeps getting in arguments with this guy, maqp. Well I suppose maqp is getting in arguments with him. At first I was kind of on the SimpleX dev's side, because maqp came off as angry while he argued and at the same time I didn't really understand the discussion.
But maqp's main critique boils down to the fact that SimpleX's goal and marketing is anonymity, by removing user profiles, removing even random identifiers, but they don't implement Tor by default, so your IP address is an identifier.
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/simplex-workflow/40646
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/how-come-no-anonymous-me...
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/2026-instant-messenger-t...
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/simplex-vs-cwtch-who-is-...
From what I recall, talking to one of the Tor founders about this, Tor was created with overseas US military personnel in mind. E.g. A soldier’s location could be compromised through foreign ISPs if they accessed sites like .mil domains directly. Tor was a way of preventing this problem. There were other use cases but this one stood out for me and it was one of the initial ones considered.
Pretty on point with what I'm saying. I remember when Tor first launched and it was definitely framed at the time as for human rights. I absolutely believed all of that for years.
You yourself spoke with the founder about this?
The development of onion routing funded by the NRL had a bunch of use cases including the one I mentioned. By the time Tor (The Onion Router) launched, and definitely by the time the Tor Project came along, more general use cases and human rights were a significant part of it.
I did have the chance to attend a talk by one of the cofounders and have a conversation with him afterwards. This was at a math conference a little over a decade ago.
That's a lot of allegations.
> the TOR mission was to allow spies to access the network and hide among all the other non-spy users
Tor is pretty clear about what their mission is, it's at the bottom of the Tor Project homepage https://www.torproject.org: "To advance human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding."
Claiming anything else is useless conspiracy thinking without evidence.
> It was and still is funded mostly by the US Naval Research Laboratory
The original idea came from the US Naval Research Laboratory, yes (as a way to mask the origin of messages to hide the command boat in a fleet), but the funding statement is patently false. In 2024, the majority of their government funding ($2.1M out of $2.5) came from the U.S. State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, with the rest of the government money coming from even more innocuous sources. You can find this information on p41 of their IRS form: https://www.torproject.org/static/findoc/2023-2024-TheTorPro... also accessible from their Reports page at https://www.torproject.org/about/reports/
They also clarified that in this more readable post: https://forum.torproject.org/t/transparency-openness-and-our...
Certainly, you can speculate about the motivations of the U.S. State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and whether that's a front for more undercover objectives, but that front lines up pretty well with the US's (former?) foreign policy of undermining (unfriendly) dictatorial regimes, and Occam's Razor applies.
Ultimately though, the tools that Tor provides can absolutely be abused by bad actors, and ever since Silk Road, I've become convinced that the Tor network is overrun by a wretched hive of scum and villainy, where those morally defensible activities are utterly outnumbered by the criminal ones.
"Claiming anything else is useless conspiracy thinking without evidence."
Using the word "conspiracy" in this conversation about TOR is wild to me.
In a post-Snowden world, it surprises me how anyone wouldn't give reasonable doubt to the THE most interesting and juicy tool linked to the US military post-2001. The tool that people think hides what they are doing and hides who they are.
If there's one thing I know, it's that the US would never in a million years leave a data source untapped or a new NIST crypto standard untampered. Their fingers are in every pie.
LOL!
That’s rich coming from an organisation with strong ties to the US ‘intelligence’ community.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-secret-history-of-tor...
Ooof I don't want these two to break up.
Mullvad browser is my favorite browser, and it's tor browser minus connection to tor.
> Recent concerns about a political donation by a Mullvad co-founder have raised questions about the Tor Project's funding relationship with the company.
It's kind of obnoxious that they assume everyone already knows the details of whatever controversy this is, and don't even provide a link to any explanation.
So what's the controversy?
Mullvad co-founder donated money to a Swedish political party that wants to limit African immigration to Sweden
The most controversial aspect is plans to deport immigrants deemed insufficiently assimilated/productive, even if they have acquired citizenship, I think your description understates that a little.
Markus Allards and Örebropartiets biggest problem isn't the anti immigrant rhetoric but their anti democratic one. The party itself is closed and self selected. They have made it explicit that they want to dismantle the Swedish administration model and allow direct political control over the government agencies. They have frequently acted disruptive in meetings and directed online harassment towards fellow politicians.
I've read about them... What they believe is just so far out, and crazy, I don't even know how to describe it. Those people have a terminal shortage of marbles, straight out crackpot politics.
That generally suggests a lack of empathy on your part. If there are an organised group of people who you don't agree with it should generally be easy enough to state what ideas they believe, why it is wrong and some plausible explanation for why people believe what they do despite being wrong (that goes beyond "well they're just inexplicably stupid").
I can call flat-earther, perpetual motion machine makers, moon landing truther, etc. stupid, and I don't believe I need to explain myself. And there are for sure organised large groups of people of those.
Sure. But the beliefs are easy enough to describe. Eg, the flat earthers believe the earth is flat. And it's obvious why that isn't the case because even with a good telescope I can see stars but not mountains in foreign countries. Case pretty much closed, earth can't be flat.
And that probably isn't exactly correct but it is a big chunk of the way there. It isn't "what they believe is just so far out, and crazy, I don't even know how to describe it". It's easy to describe.
> allow direct political control over the government agencies
Why would this be far fetched? Many civilized countries, including the U.S., have similar policies.
It is widely viewed as obviously corrupt, including in the U.S. What other 'civilized' countries do it?
Hows that working out for the US?
It got us Trump elected when Harris was annointed the successor to Biden's failed campaign, so I imagine that is answer enough.
Not liking the current president is not the same as the system has failed.
Masked men are in the streets shooting people. I'd say the system has failed.
Yeah, masked secret police with federal immunity.
Abducting and killing people in the streets, immigrants and US citizens alike.
Yeah, but the system has failed.
The system has not failed just because someone you dislike get elected.
That’s the part about having a mature attitude towards democracy.
> mature attitude towards democracy.
It’s a bit silly to expect ordinary citizens to have a near infinitely more mature attitude towards democracy than their elected representatives though? It’s not like anybody could have ever expected until relatively recently that one of the (objectively) most immature public figures in the country would somehow end up its president
Easy, three examples of where the US system has failed in the last two years:
1. Congressional authority for federal spending. The current administration has withheld or redirected spending that lawmakers had already approved.
2. Independence of the Department of Justice. A number of examples where the current administration has pressured DoJ representatives to pursue obviously ridiculous and un-pursuable charges against political 'enemies'.
3. Almost anything that DOGE did. Choose your example from the grab bag.
And the bonus round of breaching constitutional norms such as birthright citizenship and outright defiance of court orders.
The system hasn't failed because someone I dislike got elected, the system failed because the system is not constraining the current administration from their overt system-contravening actions.
I'm very sorry, and I'd rather it wasn't the case, but the system has failed.
1. The President has ultimate authority over the executive and how money is spent. And the President is not forced to spend money on “fraud, waste and abuse”. That’s in the Constitution and legal code.
2. The President has authority over placing judges, as per the Constitution. Every President puts judges they want in, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
3. See point #1
You seem to think the system failed because you don’t understand the powers the Executive has
You better not be someone who ever talks about caring about the Constitution.
You seem to think the system hasn't failed because you don't understand the powers that are intended to keep the executive in check.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the U.S. federal administration is in a super healthy state right now. The Swedish administration model has its roots in the seventeenth century and is thus older than the Swedish democracy. It has generally worked well, Swedish authorities are trusted in a high degree in general and the authorities can work independently and professionally without too much direct meddling from the government.
The democracy in the U.S. is in a far healthier state than most European nations where there aren't any caps on the tenure of government leaders.
Hungary's Orban had been in power for 16 years and if he'd won the election it would've been impossible to ever remove him.
It’s trivial to remove a prime minister from power, while it’s near impossible to get rid of an US president before the end of their term
Didn't look that way in Hungary. Or Turkiye.
Trump will be gone in two years. And even he can be removed if Congress wills it.
Europe came tantalizingly close to an authoritarian regime with Orban.
Well Erdogan has been the president of Turkey since 2014. Actually these days its pretty much a presidential republic just like the US.
And yes Orban is an exception, the average tenure of a prime minister in parliamentary democracies is considerably shorter than that of US presidents.
So unelected people determine how the government is run? How is that democratic?
Not sure how you got to that determination from reading that comment. Perhaps you should educate yourself on the subject matter before making such statements.
I am Swedish and understand the relationship between our government and the various agencies. Elected people make laws to direct the agencies, and the agencies implement said directives.
I have educated myself and having agencies who make their own independent decision about implementation would be less democratic than one under the control of those elected by the people.
Hence, I understand a severe reaction to any country heading in the same direction.
Isn't having elected representatives control government agencies more democratic?
No, the same way it isn't more democratic if all branches of government all tie the same party line.
Modern democracy is based on the separation of powers and, in the vast majority of countries, a constitution or charter(s) that can't be overturned by a simple majority vote. For example, a party can't suspend Habeas Corpus on a whim, even if said party won the presidency, the Congress and the Senate.
But just ask the Supreme Court who carved an exception for the FED and not other government agencies...
Yes, it is. This is for the same reason that deciding all things by plebiscite is a full or direct democracy, yet also a stupid thing. Your error comes from doing what many people now do, which is treating democracy as "good things", and more democracy is when we have more good things, and it as an inherent good. It's not.
There are a lot of different ways to measure democracy but most of the established ones (my own selection based on a quick glance at the “Democracy Ranking” Wikipedia page) ranks Sweden as more democratic than the U.S. so I guess more direct government control and more directly elected officials doesn’t necessarily translate to more democratic system of government.
> ranks Sweden as more democratic than the U.S.
That sounds like an awefully low bar, especially with the current administration, e.g. it currently score as 64th in the freedom of press index [0].
[0]: https://rsf.org/en/country/united-states
I think that's completely disconnected from the word Democracy. Democracy is a form of government where political power is vested in the people of a state. As opposed to a Monopoly or Oligarchy. "More democratic" is not necessarily "more good". If 99% of people vote to arrest a specific person because they don't like what he said. That would be the most democratic system but it would be a terrible system.
I think the people making those "established measures" are just measuring what they think makes a good government and then calling that Democracy.
> The party itself is closed and self selected.
Isn't that how all parties work? If you accept ideological opponents of a party in then the party will just collapse. There has to be a process to make sure that new members of the party agree with its core principles before they join. Which is to say, the party has to be closed and self-select members.
If a party just lets any person join then there isn't any point to the party.
Sure, political parties are meant to be ideological groupings of people. In a democracy, if you treat the political spectrum of ideologies as ranging between the extreme left- and the extreme right- you find that extremist ideologies are unfortunately more limiting and non-accepting of the "others" (either because they are scornful towards democratic values or believe only in a subset of it, i.e. majoritarian democracy). Where as a right-leaning or left-leaning or a centrist party in a democracy is often more accepting and open towards other non-extremist ideologies as long as it isn't at loggerhead with the core values of a party. (But when even such parties show a lack of tolerance to others, it is often a sign of a democracy in trouble - https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/93862/does-demo... ).
> Isn't that how all parties work?
By far not. In Germany for example, you can just fill out an application form, and in practice, they'll just google you to make sure you're not a known extremist - and that's it. Additionally, according to §7 PartG [1], a party's organizational structure must provide a way for every member to have an influence over where the party goes.
In some countries like the Netherlands however, there is e.g. the far right PVV [2] whose only registered member is Geert Wilders. Something like that would run completely counter towards the idea behind German political parties.
[1] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/partg/BJNR007730967.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Freedom
You would be crazy to wish the opposite, and worse, to force it on people who never asked for it in the first place.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717469
Why exactly the fuck did Tor partner with a VPN company? Of course something bad was going to happen. The incentives at play could not be more at odds.
Why is Mullvad making so much money and other VPN providers are seemingly not?
Are they? I can only imagine MordVpn makes a lot of money
I think Mullvad is likely the biggest of privacy VPNs but those consortiums likely make a lot.
https://kumu.io/Windscribe/vpn-relationships
Because they have a very strong track record of good performance, reliability, and defense of privacy. VPN businesses largely sell trust and Mullvad has earned a lot of it
If anyone recommends VPN, it is usually the one. Others have greater chance to be scam or selling your data.
Does that include Proton's VPN?
It is also very controversial
Yes.
I think this is a good rule of thumb: "If a company invests so much money in advertising over the long term and promotes its products so aggressively, the product must be subpar."
Is Mullvad spending a lot on marketing, or is Proton?
Proton VPN. They inverst very much in youtube sponsoring and every other twitch streamer is partnering as well.
Mullvad spends a lot on irl marketing. VPN providers are essentially just about trust as they provide essentially the same service, so marketing is hugely important.
Mullvad and IVPN both don't do affiliate links. Proton is the only VPN that I can recommend that does use affiliate link marketing. They also do a lot of sponsorships. Proton really is a great company with great products.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
They have a product good enough that they don't need a huge advertising budget that involves every channel on YouTube
They're really the original "trustworthy" VPN that people that know about them will recommend. It's very straightforward.
IVPN is very similar kind of focus and branding, same with Obscura.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/
The ones I can recommend that aren't on this list are Obscura and Nym.
(Carl from Obscura here)
Thanks for the shout-out Cider! :)
Hey Carl!
(A bit of a tangent) Ever been a bitcoin core contributor before? I have seen your tag on in the commit log before..
The Tor statement doesn't mention the actual donation or party. Daniel Berntsson the co-owner of Mullvad, donated approximately US$500,000 to the far-right Örebro Party in Sweden. It's an ethno-nationalist party that is pushing for "remigration". From Wikipedia: "Remigration is a far-right concept referring to the ethnic cleansing via mass deportation of non-white minority populations, especially immigrants and sometimes including native-born citizens, to their place of racial ancestry."
>Daniel Berntsson the co-owner of Mullvad, donated approximately US$500,000 to the far-right Örebro Party in Sweden
Thank you for naming the party donated to.
It's a shame that refusing to consort with fascists is conflated with "being political".
One of the reasons I left so called "civil" society is that for lack of a better phrasing I often found the tent to be too big.
> It's a shame that refusing to consort with fascists is conflated with "being political".
It's because they are a political party, and he was donating to it. There's no better definition of being punished for a political opinion than being punished to donating to a legitimate party.
And their not "fascists", it's a Swedish nationalist party. Naming everything you don't like as "fascist" is a quick way to have your opinion dismissed as crazy.
How is he being "punished"?
The Swedish party in question seems to hold a position on immigrants that is fascist due to their hostility towards immigrants. While holding a fascist opinion is allowed free speech in a democratic society. Speech that incites violence or hatred is not - generally. And TOR as well as most other civil and decent human beings have every right and perhaps obligation to opine that fascists suck and can f-off.
They are not fascists, they are somewhere between “right-socialists” and left-populists, seemingly very close to Titoism. There is a substantial difference. Fascism calls for fusion of corporations and state and I haven’t seen that from them. They have called for socialization of energy, but that’s common among many left parties.
I am sick to death of the overapplication of the word “fascism”. It doesn’t mean “bad thing”. Distinct words are needed for distinct concepts, otherwise all political discourse ends up like here in America where you have “liberals” who are not actually liberal and “conservatives” who don’t want to conserve anything.
Edit: edited to reflect that they are probably a lot closer to Tito than Hoxha or Juche, after thinking about it.
>I am sick to death of the overapplication of the word “fascism”. It doesn’t mean “bad thing”.
So you admit they are a "bad thing", but you are annoyed I used the wrong word?
The annoyance is that your personal judgement of "bad" is being wrapped up in emotional escalating language which equivocates, "I dont like this policy on immigration" with the history of genocide and total war in europe.
This is a petty gotcha, that's not what that sentence means.
> Fascism calls for fusion of corporations and state
Ironically, most people screaming online and at demonstrations about "fascism" explicitly support this. Outside of socialized health care and university education, it's impossible to detect any traditional left-wing politics among them - deviate an inch from those two things and they instantly revert to a sort of common ignorant libertarianism.
They don't understand that socialized health care and university educations (both of which I support) are easily incorporated into a fascist state, or that Mussolini became prominent and famous as the head of Italian socialism, and saw fascism as a more efficient and powerful way to provide the things that he wanted. They can't be central to your anti-fascism.
But, in fact, all of their anti-fascism is those two things, and additionally somehow unlimited immigration (a capitalist dream.) The only even vaguely left-wing related ways to support this are 1) that communists didn't believe in nation-states, they believed in world communism, and 2) that warmongering imperialists attacked immigrants' countries of origin, so their populations are simply "chickens coming home to roost," aka "blowback."
The first is them pretending to be communists when they're social safety net liberals which falls apart pretty quickly, and the second basically paints immigrants as a punishment as the West deserves. It's no wonder that they default to liberal elite capitalist defenses of immigration - "who will pick our fruit and clean our toilets?" "I love their food, their native dances, their beautiful clothes, and their magical mysterious spirituality," "they're so much more beautiful and interesting than boring white people." At least then immigrants aren't painted as some sort of venereal disease you get from fucking other countries over.
The real reason is that they're following the anti-Wall rhetoric that was cynically aimed at Trump in 2016 by the Democrats (and the Koch brothers) in a massive colossally expensive media campaign, and mistaking that for left-wing politics.
There's a hidden strength in this from the "birthright citizenship" in the US which combined with the extreme pro-immigration stance that the Democrats had to take to differentiate from Trump. A bunch of immigrant children and citizen children of illegal immigrant parents started pretending to be left-wing when they were really mostly single-issue (themselves), and it also worked because they were often low-middle income (safety net, again themselves.) The joy that upper-middle class whites who got worthless liberal arts degrees in word salad experienced when they could attend meetings (and have sex) with this population is mostly responsible for the rise of this dimwitted activism that gets blamed on the left. It was the logical continuation of the orgy of self-love they fell into after congratulating themselves for voting for a black (but absolutely nothing to do with anything that the US did to black people) president twice. A black president of immigrant descent who made "DREAMers" an issue.
There's a similar feature in Europe with refugees, and additionally in both places because there are simply a lot of foreign elites in European universities who love to be seen as the victim rather than the oppressors that they are seen as where they come from. Europe also doesn't have the history with local black people to feel guilty about, so their guilt is mostly around colonies - and these people are from former colonies. Europeans should feel guilty about the gypsies, Holocaust and all, but they don't; they still hate them. Hell, the US left-liberal transferred their guilt about black people and natives to immigrants, who are cast as strivers and saints with big happy families to differentiate them from the abandoned and ghettoized ex-slaves who get to hear about how immigrants built America.
When every power structure in the world started adopting this stupid language, the former left were doomed. Why wouldn't they be? The beliefs of the actual, traditional left had officially been deemed "fascist" and replaced with a cobbled-together set of lifestyle beliefs and xenophilia that bankers had no problem with.
Fully agree. Thanks for clarifying.
Who is that ? The personification of the Dunning-Kruger effect ?
Most people don’t describe themselves that way, but you do you
The person I'm refering to (which is not you) clearly has a biased view of what he considers leftism, purely based on skewed USA politics and propaganda without theory. In his wall of text, every single anti-fascist is "left-libtard who doesn't know class war". If you want to talk about the communism and it's link to autoritarism : fine. About the history of fascist leaders stealing socialists ideas to get in power and never implement them : fine. But this is just mashed potatoes of brain matter.
From reading his past posts, I’m pretty sure he and I would fall under the same general “post-left” umbrella. His (and my) problem is not with “the left” or left theory in general, only with the idiots who have appropriated the label and abandoned the key goal of economic justice that sits at the core of left theory. They are the running dogs of the “capitalism” they claim to oppose.
I’m not even a Marxist (my preference lies somewhere near Georgist left-libertarianism), but increasingly I find myself required to dig into Marxist theory to slap down the nonsense coming from what remains of the putative, fully captured-by-propaganda and brainrotted left. Of the heirs of the old left, only doctrinaire MLs seem to have any solid grounding in the actual requirements of governing, while the radical left have all absorbed the New Left (crypto-Trotskyite) approach of “permanent revolution,” although they don’t even realize what this theory is or what it leads to. (In case you weren’t aware, the theory merely reinforces imperialism, leading to domination by transnational capital.)
Lenin was completely right about left deviationism.
My man made up his own definition of what defines fascism with a single feature and rolled with it.
It’s literally one of the key defining features that separate it from other forms of totalitarianism. That you don’t seem to know this speaks poorly to your understanding of the concept.
It certainly isn’t the only feature and nobody claimed that.
It's one of the multiple still debated feature of fascism. And you said : "They are not fascists [...] Fascism calls for fusion of corporations and state and I haven’t seen that from them."
Both Italian Fascism and National Socialist Germany, the two prima facie examples, exhibited this. Nobody’s debating it except those who want to inappropriately extend the concept to cover other ideologies they don’t like, as a way of associating them with the worst regimes in history for propaganda purposes.
It's not the "calls for fusion of corporations and state" you mentioned above that these people are the most famous for, and what you seem worried about others being associated with; but their ideology and the associated actions. It's no wonder modern forms of a similar ideology draw comparisons to its most famous proponents in recent history.
The association happens by way of that similarity. That's what they're getting called out for.
Opening up a discussion about technical differences in economic policy is completely beside the point, unless you want to distract from the rest of the rotten elephant in the room.
It's not about names, it's about using names as a shorthand for what these people said to motivate and justify their horrific deeds.
They were not the first, or last, but, as you say, among the worst. They serve as an excellent model of what can happen when you put people like that in control of a modern, organized and industrialized state.
And as such, I find it entirely appropriate to invoke their handle as a shorthand for modern ducks quacking a similar tune.
I assume you’re referencing the Holocaust. Unfortunately, genocide and mass killings are not all that uncommon, and there’s been a number of examples coming from wildly different ideologies over the years. (And besides, there’s only one region of the world where civilian mass killings are regularly taking place at the moment, and it’s not the US.)
If you believe historical accounts of the Holodomor, the Soviets perpetuated an even worse genocide. Yet we don’t call the baddies “Stalinists,” because it would be obviously absurd. I’m saying that it’s just as absurd to call them fascists, and the only reason that most people don’t understand this is widespread historical and political illiteracy.
>The Swedish party in question seems to hold a position on immigrants that is fascist due to their hostility towards immigrants.
Advocating for controlling borders and opposing immigration is a legitimate political position, whether you agree with it or not. Those who describe everything they disagree with as 'fascism' are not credible people.
You're transforming "remigration" into "controlling borders" and "opposing immigration".
But I agree the F word frequently doesn't advance political discussion.
> There's no better definition of being punished for a political opinion than being punished to donating to a legitimate party.
Maybe being punished for some political opinions isn't a bad thing, if your political opinion is "some people don't deserve human rights" :-)
Is it a human right to live in Sweden?
If it was your home for [almost] all of your first 18 years of life, I would say yes.
Not giving my money so that it flows to an antiimmigrant party, having myself been an immigrant, is rather different from punishing.
Only rich tech bros have this absurd situation where they are "punished" by a political opinion, because only they can meaningfully sway "one person, one vote" with their money.
Are we talking about the political opinion of toilet cleaners who don't have the money to donate, or the energy, or the podcasts to express it? No. That's not an opinion that can be punished, it's just a non-event for many here.
So let me not shed a tear for the political opinions of the Mullvad boss.
Örebro Party is also pro-surveillance.
That seems pretty significant. Could you provide some more detail or evidence?
Maybe the co-founder of Mullvad sees the potential profit in the increasing popularity of the party because it would make Mullvad increasingly a necessity.
Every single country on earth participates in remigration, it is not ethnic cleansing by any stretch, given the amount of white people being deported from the US, Europe and other places all the time.
Europe has this absurdist political compass that calls any anti-immigration party "far-right", even when their official party platform is center-left or far-left in every single other respect (like Örebro's current platform of substantial expansions of social welfare program funding). Same is true in France, where you have a party with far-left socialist economics and anti-immigration sentiment that is bucketed as "far-right".
The US is not close to doing anything similar to what that party is calling for (e.g. advocating for deporting those born in Sweden).
We're closer than most people would like - https://theconversation.com/after-supreme-court-setback-trum... - see also https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/569 and https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/9633...
That said, it isn't something nearly as drastic or categorical as these far-right, ultranationalist EU parties.
Almost no European countries, and almost no countries in general for that matter, allow people visiting a country, or illegally being in that country, to give birth there and have that child automatically become a citizen.
In Sweden, a child born in Sweden to a visitor or illegal immigrant is NOT automatically a citizen.
You know where else that statement is true? Denmark, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Greece. Practically the entire world, actually.
All the aforementioned countries REQUIRE legal status of the parents before the child gets citizenship status, even when born there.
So when the administration 'attacks' birthright citizenship, they are proposing to bring the US in line with the majority of the world and the entirety of Europe.
Incredible - that would make me an illegal immigrant because my parents had me while they were here on student visas and we wouldn't have been able to build the lives we had for the past 40+ years! What a compassionate and humane system, how refreshing.
The level of naked ethnosupremacism embedded in European ideals and their constant barking at how the US is actually the most racist country is so very funny to me. If you rebuild the ship of fools plank by plank will it still dash itself against the reef?
Not taking a stand on either side, but your parent is correct. This isn't a European thing - but true in most countries.
And yes, things like race are a primary reason (for good or bad).
And yes, as my Spanish friend keeps pointing out: While the US has a large homicide rate, they can't beat the Europeans when it comes to pogroms, mass killings, etc every so many decades. Europe will be, well, Europe.
It wasn't "legal status". It was "subject to laws of the country" (i.e, excluding diplomats).
If the very constitution of the country classifies tourists as "not subject to the law of the US", that's some The Purge level popcorn. All visitors and illegal aliens would have had diplomatic immunity.
The US can amend the constitution. It has not. SCOTUS has no legal right to do it unilaterally.
I made no argument to the constitutionality of birthrate citizenship, my argument was around global and European norms on the issue.
Every country does deportation. "Remigration" is a neo-Nazi term that is explicitly a call for removal not by immigration status, but by ethnicity.
We know what ethnic-cleansing looks like, and the horrors it both requires to do and eventually causes.
"Government goodies, but just for people like us" is very much compatible with far-right governance.
I'm confused. Can you point me to the specific policy of this party, or other mainstream "far-right" parties who have a remigration policy that specifically excludes the deportation of white people who were not born there?
ICE has deported thousands of white people under the current administration, for instance. Their removal operations are indiscriminate, not racial. Several white people (some from Canada, some from the UK, some from Ireland) have made headline news after getting picked up by ICE ERO.
You're confused that I accurately described the origins and meaning of the term "remigration"? It is not merely closing borders and deporting immigrants without legal permission to be there. Calling for remigration absolutely is calling for ethnic cleansing. They're not shy about it, except when trying to convince non-racists that it's actually completely reasonable, and will only happen to criminals, the "worst of the worst", and those who haven't assimilated.
The rest is a large pile of missing the point, and bringing up things I did not say. I did not say any one was doing it. I said people were calling for it.
For the leaders of the Örebro Party in particular, Wikipedia suffices: > In a podcast segment about second generation immigrants involved in organised crime Allard stated "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish. They have not been interested in becoming Swedish."
(I am aware that Sweden is _Jus sanguinis_; it is entirely possible that second generation immigrants don't have citizenship; that merely makes it legal. And he does not explicitly make even that limiting argument.)
Note too that ethnicity is narrower than skin color; the lumping together of all European-extraction is a contingent feature of history, and is weaker than you might think. Kicking out non-Swedes would ethnic-cleansing, and would be even if the people being kicked out were white.
Nor does also deporting people for non-ethnic reasons make the rest of a remigration program not ethnic-cleansing. It's not the goal, but it's no big loss to these nationalists, because they're authoritarian race-collectivists willing to cause harm to get those people out.
> Calling for remigration absolutely is calling for ethnic cleansing
Again, I ask for a specific remigration policy that excludes the remigration of white people in the country illegally. This is the prerequisite that would make it a policy based on ethnicity-based deportation.
If it's indiscriminate, it is indiscriminate and therefore not based on ethnic background. Seems to me their explicit policies, both written and in practice, are indiscriminate.
Saying the FN/RN has "far-left socialist economics" disqualify you from this discussion.
Yes, it should absolutely disqualify the OP. Even if the RN wasn't called explicitly as I cannot find any French far-right labelled party with a socialist economics. None.
The main one is RN, François Asselineau is maybe the more "lefty compatible" far-right candidate, and he is clearly "right" labelled, not a lefty.
National Rally has socialist economics. They explicitly support a dramatically expanded welfare state, for instance.
It's ok, everything Wikipedia doesn't like it calls a "far-right conspiracy theory"
Like the issue of the grooming gangs in the UK
remind me which race makes up 81% of prisoners convicted of a sexual offence in the UK?
remind me what the home office said about which ethnicity “group-based child sexual exploitation offenders” are most commonly?
I think you need to have overall population shares in the denominator.
Hard to find numbers, but for England and Wales:
As of June 2025, there were 1,731 foreign sex offenders in prison, making up 10.6% of all prisoners convicted of sexual offences.
one can't establish a relationship between ethnicity and criminality anyway. The determinant variables are socio-economic.
Cool, now do per-capita
Ah, so you're ok with grooming as long as it doesn't go past a certain per capita limit.
No, it's you that's ok with it when it's done by a group that is always the victim and "does no wrong" in your head
Well sure but have you considered that Der Stürmer's list of Jewish criminals shows a very disturbing pattern of behaviour by a certain ethnic group? Much to ponder.
technically there is only one specie/race, so 100% are homo sapiens sapiens.
Despite your implication how is Oreboro Party far-right, wikipedia actually states they are:
characterized as left-wing, right-wing, populist, nationalist, and conservative
and:
Ideology: Populism, Swedish nationalism, Left-conservatism, Anti-corruption, Anti-establishment, Anti-immigration
Political position: Syncretic
So basically everyone can (dis)like it for some reason...
They are quite honestly schizophrenic...
syncretism is, consult Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism, the defining feature of far-right ideology (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...)
"One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism.
If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge — that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism."
Are they, if I can say, the Swedish version of AfD (of Germany)?
I would say the Swedish Democrats are the AfD of Sweden, and Örebropartiet is the more extreme variant, but otherwise of the same ilk.
Nope, the Swedish version of AfD is a lot more successful and is already well integrated into the political system (it’s the 3rd largest party in the parliament ).
Not far right but far left. Tankie Stalin type of far left.
> While Tor defends free speech, not all speech is equally compatible with our mission.
It's sad to see the backslide. In the olden days free speech absolutists would defend all speech short of fires in the cinema. Nowadays it has to be compatible with their brand of political correctness else they will tar and brush you or stay conspicuously silent.
You see the same backsliding in the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other non profits. They are a lot more neoliberal now than liberal. Interests over values.
Free speech absolutists can still have opinions, criticize others, and choose who to associate with. They're not advocating for censorship or legal penalties for speech.
Yep. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." and similar such sentiments.
One can publicly declare a speaker to be a wrongheaded pig that all decent people should ignore, but that's a wholly different thing from ensuring that said pig is unable to utter its wrongheaded ideas in public.
But the question is, if the speaker of vile speech is being persecuted by the powers that be, will said brave "free speech absolutist" NGOs step up or will they be conspicuously absent?
> ...if the speaker of vile speech is being persecuted by the powers that be...
What specifically is being done to persecute this hypothetical pig you refer to? As always, the details matter.
In regards to the Tor Project's public statement that is TFA, they've chosen to stop advertising with Mullvad [0] because they strongly disagree with specific political positions that a Mullvad co-founder has publicly endorsed. They're not backing out of working on the Mullvad Browser because they figure that stopping that work -and losing the new feature testbed and (presumably) the money they get from it- would hurt more people than the implicit endorsement that some folks will see by continuing to work with Mullvad.
[0] ...this is referred to as "proactive co-branding" and "joint promotional activity"...
I interpreted this as just a clumsy rewording of the old quote, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Free speech advocates support the right of everyone to set up a stall in the marketplace of ideas, but don't have to support every idea that sets up a stall.
A publisher of gay erotica might support free speech, and find themselves alongside revolutionary communists, hitler-heiling nazis and radical islamists distributing bomb-making manuals - but the groups aren't allies or friends outside of that.
Well, their defence now is probably contingent on a donation first.
> In the olden days free speech absolutists would defend all speech short of fires in the cinema.
And ever since the tiki torch holding Nazis in Charlottesville shouting "Jews will not replace us", they've seen where that inevitably leads. If there is no setting acceptable borders, a place will degenerate fast and furiously - that's why you see, for example, even notoriously ultra-libertarian places like 4chan force off all the brony stuff into /mlp [1].
Free speech means freedom from governmental repression, not freedom from being ostracized by society.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//mlp/
> While Tor defends free speech, not all speech is equally compatible with our mission.
If Tor hems and haws about political speech, they 100% lose any rhetorical cover against (fallacious but politically compelling) arguments like "so you're OK with CP, but you draw the line at Swedes being against African immigration?" (which is the political issue in question re. Mullvad)
If we look at the origins and funding of the Tor network, it's pretty clear that CSAM is not the priority, although it is a priority. But mostly it's about preventing terror groups like ISIS from freely organizing massacres in France, Germany and maybe even the United States.
Tor funding has nothing to do with any of those things. It’s about providing a secure and hidden way for intelligence assets to communicate. Likely for espionage, and for covert communications with external assets, as these areas are where it would be most needed.
Given the history of ISIS, it’s likely that we had people teaching them how to use it at some point.
It's a false equivalence. If I design a censorship-resistant network, it doesn't imply that I endorse everything flowing through that network. And just because I'm in favor of free speech doesn't mean I can't criticize the speech of others as a private citizen or organization.
Surely this depends on the channel you are using to communicate those endorsements and criticisms.
A. Is Tor openly accepting donations from child porn networks?
B. This isn't "Swedes being against African immigration", this is a party asking to renege on the citizenship of part of the population. "Remigration" isn't stopping immigration, it's looking at people's ancestry to strip them of their actual, present citizenship.
There's really no end to this game of altruism olympics people seem to want to play.
It may very well be that one group continuing to do business with another group is still more beneficial to their mission than cutting all ties, even if they disagree with the positions/actions of the other group. FOSS projects lately are tearing each other apart based on who is politically "better" than the rest in their eyes. The level of hypocritical hate coming from groups that claim to be tolerant is truly wild.
And we see this in geopolitics constantly as well. Remember that almost nobody cuts off contact with an entire country in perpetuity, and for good reason. Try to think of game theory and how well tit-for-tat actually works out in most aspects of society... I think cutting off all contact usually isn't the smartest solution in most situations.
Who are we to say what's morally "right" enough in every situation, especially given all kinds of other information we are not privy to? We don't know what we don't know, yet people act like they have all the answers and that only their opinion can be the right one... even in this (and every) thread we see this play out over and over with people getting royally butthurt over simple misunderstandings of subjective terminology.
There's an endless amount of scenarios we could argue...
- Why does anyone still negotiate with person/company/country XYZ after everything they've done?
- Where does one draw the line and who gets to say where that is?
- Why do people insist on calling things "fascist" that are more of a misunderstanding or difference in opinion vs much more serious authoritarian actions or aspirations?
- Why are so many people who otherwise seem quite smart, have such narrow-minded black-and-white opinions with zero interest in the possibility that they might be misinformed? How does that make any scientific sense?
Why can't we just be nicer to one another and realize that true intelligence requires both humility and empathy? When we don't take the time to try to truly understand each other's intentions, that leads to people not talking. And when people stop talking, that's when the fighting (in any sense of the word) starts.
Listen, I've been enough time on this Earth to know what is behind immigrant demonization, and it's not a particularly dark instinct. It's a well orchestrated distraction maneuver to have the lower classes find somebody to blame that is not the brutal increase in accomodation prices, that leads, de facto, to wage-slavery for big chunks of the population.
So no misunderstanding, millionaires gotta have the poor white Swedes blame the poor brown Swedes. True intelligence requires analysis of the power relations. The Mullvad boss can do without my money, and possibly I can spare my empathy for the next immigrant that will be beaten, burned or sent back to a war-torn country or a climate-change disaster zone.
That's a weird take for Sweden, a famously equal and famously rich country.
Ask a rich swede what they think about gypseys
> It's a well orchestrated distraction maneuver to have the lower classes find somebody to blame that is not the brutal increase in accomodation prices, that leads, de facto, to wage-slavery for big chunks of the population.
/rolleyes
Listen, I've been enough time on this Earth to know what is behind migrant acceptance, and it's not a particularly dark instinct. It's a well orchestrated distraction maneuver to have the lower classes accept the brutal increase in indentured servitude that leads, de facto, to wage-slavery for big chunks of the population.
See how much companies like Uber benefit from it for example
lol, see how easy it is to confidently push a narrative as truth?
So your logic is to... Blame the migrants?
expected virtue signaling but at least they aren't stupid enough cut relationships completely.
Nobody cares. I’m so tired of people pushing this slop on us. I don’t care what meaningless controversy you’ve manufactured this month. There are so many real problems that need solving, we don’t need more redditisms.
Stating the obvious here, but you failing to care is not the same as nobody caring.
As the article says, they're responding to queries from their community. This post is for the people that do care.
Like literally everything else on the internet.
> While Tor defends free speech, not all speech is equally compatible with our mission. We strongly oppose rhetoric that threatens other human rights and freedoms.
I disagree with this. Free speech is in essence, absolute. As soon as you start making allowances and exceptions the entire subject is moot.
The only threshold should be calls for violence or murder. AFAIK the Mullvad founder hasn't crossed this line.
Tor isn't saying 'This speech should not be allowed', they're saying 'This speech is speech we disagree with, and don't want associated with TOR'.
I disagree with that too. Tor shouldn't choose sides in political debates.
Did all Tor developers, users and exit-node administrators get a vote in this? Or is it a small minority who decides this course?
Free speech also includes speech you may not agree with and just because you accept someone's (or some company's) donations doesn't mean you're "associated" with them.
Free speech includes disagreeing with things people say.. Surely in your absolute model they should also be allowed to do this?
From the article:
> Members of the Tor community have asked us to explain how continued collaboration with Mullvad fits with the Tor Project's human rights mission.
> Our decision followed a thorough due diligence process that involved extensive discussions with community members, staff, and the board, a staff survey, and detailed financial analysis and scenario planning.
Tor is not a democracy and doesn't purport to be. The article outlines the due diligence they have already done, and they're writing this as notice to their community, in response to questions from it.
>Tor shouldn't choose sides in political debates.
Privacy, surveillance, and censorship are political debates. According to your logic, Tor shouldn't choose sides on those either.
I don't understand this view. Tor is inherently a political project.
Projects should only be political in their own field. For example, the FSF should be political in copyright and patent matters, but not military or entitlement spending matters.
Ah yes, the "shut up and dribble" philosophy.
Actually "projects" are never political. But the people behind those projects we love and support, can care ffor lots more of political, social, or whatever form of issues or topics.
So they can be political in more things and actually when they make an honest public statement we should be happy since we know clearly what's their standing on important issues of today. I think that should be important to all of us.
I have no issue with the people behind projects speaking politically on whatever they want, if they do so with their own personal voice. My issue is specifically with them doing so with the voice of the project.
In this case, Tor is only being political in their own field. History has shown time and time again how the right to privacy is incompatible with political movements that attack the rights and freedoms of groups of citizens.
The best way to fulfill their mission is to advocate for protecting all rights.
The Party that the Mullvad CEO donated to, and which Tor objects to, has this in their party program (https://web.archive.org/web/20260914062240/https://www.orebr...):
* Focus on more public surveillance
* Leverage the full intelligence capabilities of the state to detect and identify individuals involved in or associated with organized crime.
* Law enforcement authorities have the right to employ wiretapping, surveillance, extensive undercover operations, and preventive detention in cases involving an individual flagged as active within or around [organized crime].
* proactively blacklist and red-flag criminals, preventing them and their relatives from committing crimes altogether, restricting their ability to contact other criminals, access their assets and transfer/receive money (and a bunch of other things)
Does this seem compatible woth TOR and it's values?
(hilauriously the same party, as they're populists, are completely against Chat Control)
As long as they're not mandating backdoors or weaknesses in things, banning end-to-end encryption, or anything like that, to make wiretapping and surveillance easier, I think it's compatible.
I would counter that it’s (or at least should be) a mission driven project.
That mission might be political - but the politics follow from the mission not the other way around.
The mission I’d personally like out of a product that fits Tor’s space is: the ability to unconditionally communicate securely and privately over the public Internet.
Saying that mission is inherently political, sure, you’re going to exclude people who disagree with the mission. That’s kinda the point.
But saying that the narrow politics of that mission means the organization should be broadened to take additional political stances that would exclude people who otherwise would participate in advancing the mission?
I don’t know how that follows.
The way you raise a point about missions being the basis to politics and then provide the immediate counterpoint someone would make to show that this mission ("everyone should be able to communicate securely and privately") is caused by a political opinion, is strange.
> But saying that the narrow politics of that mission means the organization should be broadened to take additional political stances that would exclude people who otherwise would participate in advancing the mission?
They're not really excluding anyone. If you read the blogpost, they're not even stopping their technological partnership. They are just stopping co-branding themselves to avoid being seen as directly associated with Mullvad. That doesn't exclude anyone. Co-branding is a position of added trust on top of the baseline of being aligned with anyone who shares your views, isn't it expected that an organization might be pickier if it has to sign under another organization's brand?
> Tor shouldn't choose sides in political debates.
> Did all Tor developers, users and exit-node administrators get a vote in this? Or is it a small minority who decides this course?
This is addressed in the announcement.
> Free speech also includes speech you may not agree with and just because you accept someone's (or some company's) donations doesn't mean you're "associated" with them.
Tor didn't stop taking the donations nor did they stop cooperating with Mullvad on development.
What they did is pause "joint promotional activity" and review the language of what they had published about Mullvad to avoid implying an endorsement or alignment of values.
What problem do you have with that? This seems like precisely the avoidance of side taking that you are advocating.
Software is politics. From the licenses you support to communities you engage with and how they are governed is all political.
Developers are not machines. They are human as well and can have stances. That’s natural.
This is esp. true for Tor. They are providing privacy services to begin with.
Actually, at this day and age, I think not just Tor but all projects and public companies should choose sides and be vocal about it.
When big players don't choose sides, it doesn't mean they actually dont support a side, it means we don't know or they wanna hide it.
So my point is we might not agree with Tor at this, but I know, I guess to a reasonable degree, now what Tor stands for, and that is rare today.
Also lets not forget that, at least for many people, Tor is a heavy mission driven project. So what it chooses matters to people that worry about big issues of our generation.
TOR shouldn’t get involved here other than denouncing it if they disagree. Not sure if that’s what you mean.
The thing is: freedom of speech (Like all other freedoms), is a two-way street.
You're free to say whatever messed up stuff you want to me, and I'm free to tell you to "Go F*CK Yourself"
People just forget consequences for your actions exist lol, hilarious to see and kinda sad
You surely recognized that your second paragraph directly contradicts your first as you wrote this?
Freedom of speech does not equate to freedom from all consequences, like disapproval and discontinuation of business relationships. If, for example, you advocate for the legalization of making CSAM, expect to be made a social pariah.
> The only threshold should be calls for violence or murder.
There are other universal exceptions which I'm guessing you are forgetting:
What about disinformation that causes serious harm? What if I tell people that snickerdoodles prevent shellfish allergies, and they try it and some die?
Unfortunately, real life always has grey areas; no simple algorithm can address it.
"disinformation" is problematic if it presupposes an arbiter of truth. We've seen time and again that people and organizations in such positions will abuse them rather than uphold their principles.
At the end of the day, you either engage with the speech and argue against the idea, or you appeal to authority and hope it is worthy of your trust. Personally, I'm a little too jaded for that.
That's not reality: Every court case has to decide on truth. That's why we have laws, court procedure (including rules of evidence), and judges and juries. Juries specifically are tasked with deciding the facts of the case. Fraud and slander depend on determinations of truth.
It's not always simple; it's not always perfect; but practically we do it all the time as a matter of course. Everyone makes decisions like that every day; every authority makes those decisions - managers at work, politicians in hearings; the public does it listening to political messages, parents do it listening to teenagers explaining where they were all night ...
Free speech is about government making certain forms of speech illegal. Criticism of people/ideas and freedom of association are themselves acts of free speech.
No, free speech laws are.
The principles of free speech can be held by individuals and organizations, even thought they don't have as much power as the government.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" doesn't necessarily need to be scoped to just "... from government interference".
Case in point: legal or not, people cancelling speeches and people, shutting down legal speech, do NOT stand for freedom of speech. In fact, I've often heard them say "I don't particularly care about freedom of speech", verbatim,
I agree that some forms of cancellation are illiberal and anti-free speech. But a lot of the time, what gets called "canceling" or "shutting down" are themselves forms of free speech and freedom of association. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that everyone is entitled to being taken seriously, or having their opinions broadcast in private venues and publications, or being immune from criticism, mockery, protest, or social ostracization. A lot of people who call themselves free speech absolutists think that none of this should be allowed and that all ideas deserve an equal hearing.
I would prefer that people phrase it like you did now, instead of the, at best, distracting way you did before.
It's tiring to see people make the case that because the government was not involved, that it's by definition completely unrelated to free speech. Like, you clearly know that's not the case, from this follow up.
Of course the right to free speech does not extend to compelled speech, as you say.
ACLU defended the Nazis because they support free speech. But "free speech" of course doesn't compel them to. But clearly if they had chosen not to, they'd show they care less about free speech than they say.
Like the ACLU of today, who have said that they'll only defend speech they agree with, or something to than effect. Well, morally, do you actually have that value anymore?
You're right, I probably could have been clearer and more nuanced in my wording. In the context of the comment I was responding to, I was pushing back against a claim of "free speech absolutism" which I don't really see as free speech absolutism at all. I see GGP's attitude more as a form of anti-criticism or what I would call "neutrality fundamentalism". I was probably a bit reactive because I consider myself a free speech absolutist, but in the sense of being against all government censorship, not necessarily private entities exercising their right to criticize or associate with whoever they want.
>Case in point: legal or not, people cancelling speeches and people, shutting down legal speech, do NOT stand for freedom of speech.
Except that heckling and shouting down a speaker is speech too. And thus your argument is incoherent: do you want to restrict speech that impedes other's freedom of speech? If no, then the hecklers must be given free rein; if yes, then the case can be made to restrict racists' freedom of speech as they try to restrict some other people's freedoms, including the latter's freedom of speech.
Preventing speech is free speech? How orwellean. What if the government shouts down unfavourable speech, like with water cannons? Is water cannons and teargas speech?
How about industrial megaphones?
Your free speech only extends so far as it doesn't prevent, prior restraint, someone else's free speech.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What you just said is the antithesis to free speech.
No. If the goal of your so called speech is to physically stop someone else's right to free speech, then you are just a thug and don't actually hold this value.
And like I said, many people who do this prevention of free speech admin it explicitly in so many words. They do not care about free speech.
You didn't actually address the comment you replied to. Is heckling a speaker free speech or not? Does it protect the speaker's free speech if the heckler is dragged out? Or does it violate the heckler's rights? Or both?
> "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It's a great slogan and a terrific ideal. But actually think it through, in real world situations, and you end up with so many edge cases.
I think I clearly did. When the intent and result is not to critique, condemn, refute, or heckle, or even be heard at all, but to put prior restraint by preventing speech or others, then that's literally the opposite of free speech.
Whether done by the government or by an angry mob is a legal difference, but not a principled or moral difference.
You can't be in favour of free speech and also prior speech restraint, "as long as it's not by the government". And as I've said, to be fair to many of those who do it, they admit that they don't care about free speech. And it's true. Their actions are consistent with their claim.
Both heckler and speaker have free speech rights. The speaker did not come there to prevent the heckler's speech. But if the heckler did come to prevent the rights of the speaker, then they are not merely heckling.
That is a fundamental difference.
Your bullhorn preventing not just the speaker from speaking, but the listeners from being able to reject the speaker's message, is just, well, against freedom of speech and freedom in general.
> But actually think it through, in real world situations, and you end up with so many edge cases.
Am I'm sad that people will give up their values for inconveniences. Then they're not your values, just your hobbies, at best.
You may as well be against torture, "except when it's a bad guy".
Edit: or what do you think of this: You can report this comment to HN, hoping that it gets deleted. Would you claim that this is you exercising free speech, or fighting free speech? I would say it'd clearly be the latter. That is, if you did it not because you found my comment against HN policies, but because you disagree and therefore wish that my argument never be heard by anyone?
What would be Orwellian is a university ordering its students "we will invite speaker A to come talk to you on the big stage, and you have to sit there and listen".
In this a university with armed guards pushing people into the room at the threat of, what? What's the scenario you're imagining?
You presumably also think that it'd be free speech to deny your math class hearing the math professor by non-stop screaming?
Nobody is going to stop my free speech about how integrals are not real because infinities don't exist or something. But that's not the same as giving me the right to shut down all speech about it but mine. So yes, I will be taken out of the classroom specifically set up to hear about integrals, for that.
Can religious people prevent your whole school from learning about evolution? That would literally fall under, in your words, a university ordering its students "we will invite speaker A to come talk to you on the big stage, and you have to sit there and listen". Not forced at gunpoint, but at grade-point.
Would it be free speech to give literally everyone a heckler's veto?
I really think you need to refine your question.
> Free speech is in essence, absolute.
Your point is moot. If speech is entirely absolute until violence is threatened, some of the most destructive crimes in modern society would become entirely legal.
Even under U.S. law, free speech has well-defined limits.
>The only threshold should be calls for violence or murder.
Not very absolute though, and why are calls for violence somehow different from other icky things like sharing AI-generated nude images or selling people dangerous weapons?
I respect the moxie of the free speech absolutists and I'm glad there are some of them in the world. I personally tend to think things are a bit more complex than that, but if you're going to be an absolutist, then be an absolutist and allow all speech, including calls for violence.
Ah yeah, like Voltaire said "I have no opinion about what you've said, that would mean I'm against free speech, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
> I disagree with this.
you disagree with freedom of association?
You say 'absolute' and then the very next sentence you add a qualifier, and the qualifier isn't all that far distant from the ones you say you disagree with.
Put 'violence and murder' next to 'threatening human rights and freedoms' and the former is not a great distance from the later. (having said that, the latter probably has a lot of 'definition argument' within it).
Put "violence and murder" next to "limited immigration" sounds okayish though?
Absolute are mostly wrong, as a rule of thumb.
Insults should not be allowed. But then, the free speech is threatened. What do you do?
Posting a message asking people to set fire to someone’s house, also not ok.
Where do _you_ set the limit?
All speech is equal, but some speech is more equal than others.
If all speech were truly equal, calling for the death of all black people is speech that is equal to calling Israel’s action in Gaza a genocide.
It’s not equal. It’s more equal.
I am not saying the content of the speech is morally equal, but Tor's explicit mission is to make people anonymous and protect speech. The moment you start inspecting it, Tor's mission is negated.
Of course, Tor's partnerships are different than the content distributed through it's network, but I still find it a bit ironic.
> We are not terminating the relationship but are setting clear boundaries on our relationship with Mullvad
> We strongly oppose rhetoric that threatens other human rights and freedoms.
They're not talking about inspecting or controlling speech on the network, they're talking about speech outside their network and how it relates to them and their relationship with Mullvad.
In Sweden, we have a meme that goes something like "It doesn't matter if it's untrue, it's still outrageous".
Essentially, you are complaining about something that is simply not the case. As you yourself said, this isn't Tor preventing free speech. This is Tor evaluating their commercial partnerships based on their values and whether or not they are compatible with the speech of their partners. So, it has nothing to do with Tor's stance on or facilitation of free speech. Therefore, there is nothing to be outraged about.
Not sure what this is supposed to say; free speech != equal speech.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm
You can learn a lot by reading books.
Sure, I know the reference, but "equal speech" is not a thing the Tor Project claims to defend so adapting it makes no sense.
"While Tor defends free speech, not all speech is equally compatible with our mission. We strongly oppose rhetoric that threatens other human rights and freedoms."
Double think.
No it is not. This is literally classical liberalism, as espoused by Voltaire.
It's the reverse of what Voltaire said.
No, it's not.
They disagree with Mullvad, but are fine with Mullvad saying that.
> but are fine with Mullvad saying that.
but are fine with Mullvad having the right to say that.
The paradox of tolerance: if one wishes to live in a tolerant society, then one should be tolerant of all speech and actions except those that are themselves intolerant.
Neat idea, but as usual, the real world is more complex than any one idea.
It’s not double think. Free speech is about defending other people’s right to speak, not what they say. It opposes the Örebro Party’s / Mullvad cofounder’s opinions, not their right to say them. The network Tor created is literally a place where speech is incredibly hard to censor. Choosing what degree to work with another company is not about the right to free speech.
Free Speech != I have to agree with you.
They value freedom of speech as much as freedom of association. Nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, but that sweet DoD money is no problem.
This response tells me you don’t even have Singlethink.
Hope the far-left authors of this blog post get culturally enriched by a gang of knife-wielding arab gang-rapists.
Recently, I've started noticing that I'm not able to browse any commercial websites using Tor. Most of them have started outright blocking it. Under the pretence of blocking bots, I suspect this is an attempt at mandatory surveillance.
I suspect that Tor has also been used a lot for IP obfuscation to support scraping, and what you’re seeing might be an anti-scraping measure.
Mullvad (IME, when I used to use it) was halfway unusable for e.g. Reddit because (I understand) so many of their exit nodes were blocked for similar reasons.