Tech Morality is Hard
I try to do my best with my technology stack, by ensuring it meets my own morals and standards for life.
I do this via a combination of informed choices; supporting independent developers; self-hosting. A combination of these help me feel I am doing the right thing.
What is the Right thing?
That is the million-dollar question. For me, I want to be as sure as I can that my tech stack is not exploiting people; is fair to the community; delivers and lives by standards I can identify with.
Changes I've made
As an example, I obviously dropped X like a hot potato, when it was taken over by the egotist Musk. His vision, standards, and personality are vile. Clearly, I base his personality on what I read; I have never met the man
That started my quest for more moral tech. Since then I've dropped Telegram; I refuse to read anything on substack; I've removed myself from Google's machine; I've migrated all my data storage into Europe from the USA; the list goes on.
And now Mullvad
The latest target in the Tech community is Mullvad. They are a popular VPN provider, promoting "Privacy for the people". Their voice can be somewhat assertive in the support of VPN, for wich the get some kudos.
However, in the last few days it has come to light that Daniel Berntsson, one of mullvad's owners, has donated millions to the Örebro political party -- a controversial Swedish group known for using highly aggressive spin and racism.
Mullvads official response to this story is:
Mullvad is a political company fighting for free speech, free information and privacy, with two equal co-founders, co-owners and co-CEOs who fundamentally disagree on many issues. Daniel's donation to a political party is private and not part of Mullvad's mission. We protect the right to express and access views we disagree with. We welcome anyone sharing these core values, whatever their other opinions.
Their argument is that he is using his own money, earned via Mullvad, to support a group of his personal choice.
While this is true, it does not sit well with me. I now know that my VPN subscription is ultimately being turned into something toxic, and very much against my own morals.
And now?
I have a six month subscription with Mullvad VPN, which expires in about 4 weeks. I will not be renewing.
It does open up a bit of a can of worms! My search engine of choice is Kagi. It's a brilliant search engine. No fuss; no tracking; no adverts; very focused results.
Kagi uses a number of sources for its results, including Yandex to a small degree. Yandex is a Russian search engine, offering some unique data sets (apparently). While I am not exposed directly to Yandex, it may be that some of my searches receive data via them.
I had looked into this a few months ago; some people suggested that Yandex had in fact moved out of Russia and was therefore not a Russian business. I couldn't find much to back this claim up.
Do I now kill my Kagi subscription too? As a backup, and potential move, I am currently testing Uruky
How far do we go?
Questions for me:
- Should I only try to safeguard my own standards based on the companies policy?
- Surely I can not be expected to understand how shareholders/owners then use their income from the company to promote evil.
I can only do so much. However, when I discover new information I can not ignore the facts.