So why is it when an individual high up in the company, someone with decision power and who directly benefits from sales, does something that hurts the public perception, suddenly you’re asking us to just ignore it?

This is where its clear you you aren’t actually listening to what im saying. I didnt say it should be ignored. My point is that i think people are learning and sharing the wrong solution, The solution isnt to use your name associated bank account to pay a different VPN provider, its to avoid giving ANY vpn provider information that could link you to the account, and verify that they don’t keep logs. You can do this with LOTS of different vpn providers by looking at their transparency reports and how they respond to court orders, but very few people actually do that, they’d rather just be perforamtive and say “im voting with my wallet” which is lazy and does nothing to improve the situation for anyone.

This same sort of thing happens anytime a VPN company (like proton) responds to a legal court order, everyone was all “How could they do this to us!?!?” and not “Why would an activist pay using a credit card?, maybe we should teach people how payment systems work so they can avoid this in the future” I think we should focus more on the latter, preventative education, so that less people can be targeted or exposed in general.

I see this as a teachable moment, I’m not trying to get people to ignore the underlying issue, I just think it should be part of a more complete re-evaluation of how we all use and pay for VPN providers.

When i say its astroturfing, i don’t mean against mullvad alone, I think there is a coordinated effort going on to instill division and mistrust among vpn users and providers. I think the goal is to amplify negative publicity for any VPN provider they can, its becoming a trend now.