I’m Daniel Berntsson. Here are historical data about me relevant to this blog.

As a teenager around 1996 I got my first non mainstream opinion. A friend introduced me to Peter Singer’s formulation of animal rights. It was an eye opener that my own society, and not just all other societies in history and in the world, could be atrociously wrong about very significant moral issues. And that it, and I, also committed major atrocities as a result.

I gradually shifted my diet to a no-sentient-animals very close to vegan one and have been keeping to it ever since.

The evils of copyright and patents was my second cause, from around the same time, inspired by the writings of Richard Stallman. Neither me nor the companies I have been involved in running have ever released non open source code or filed a patent.

After moving to Linköping to study I got involved in the local organization Linköping’s Animal Rights Activists and Animal Rights Sweden for many years.

I started generalizing my views into classical liberalism and became a member of the parliamentary Liberal People’s Party. Ideological purity grew and morphed into minarchistic libertarianism and a switch to the tiny Classical Liberal Party. Then it grew even further into anarchistic libertarianism and joining the libertarian activist organization the Freedom Front.

After finishing my studies and moving back to my hometown Gothenburg i worked in the refugee aid organization No One is Illegal for a while until being told by an influential person in the organization that he did not welcome libertarians.

Then the Pirate Party was formed and as a long time copyright and patent enemy I enthusiastically joined the cause.

This was the time when governments first started reacting against the threat posed to the status quo by the internet. A slew of hostile legislation came forth. One such law was the Swedish mass surveillance FRA law. Instead of combating this and other laws through the political system, which was clearly failing, my friend Fredrik Strömberg and I started Mullvad to fight it by technological means instead. We wanted to combine activism with building a successful business and have them strengthen each other in symbiosis.

Since then we have been using Mullvad to counteract censorship and mass surveillance by making and supporting technology but also by waging political campaigns against legislation using advertising, lobbying and debate.

After giving the Direct Democrats a brief chance I gave up on political parties for a long time.

Since obtaining the economic means to do so I have been donating to various causes such as open science, legal aid for victims of the state, local politics and AI safety. (AI safety is by far the most important issue there is, deciding the fate of not only the human species but the universe. Listen to Eliezer Yudkowsky. He has been right about this for over 20 years.)