Eh, it seems like a pretty niche thing. If you still want that behavior, surely you could set up a VPS and forward your own ports, no? With Bitlaunch, you can even disassociate it from yourself if you want.
Folks are asking "Why post this here?" I get the question but I think I also get the OP, as a New Yorker who was surprised to see this ad IRL.
Most of our subway ads are for VC-funded Internet darlings (think: mattresses-by-mail, kitschy underwear, online therapy) or for some aspiring blockbuster movie from an Internet giant.
Until I saw this ad, I had never in my life seen a subway ad for a company I actually used, let alone respected.
Seeing this ad in the wild broke my brain. I have advocated for online privacy for over a decade. I have spent so much energy pushing people to use Signal. But I had never before imagined that "online privacy" was a concept that could find an audience in mass marketing.
I don't know if Mullvad will take off. But I know that seeing these ads moved me. I felt like maybe, MAYBE, our movement is breaking through.
I saw this on the LA lines as well and it made me very uneasy and concerned.
I went down this road with NordVPN back in the day. There ads popping up everywhere was the beginning of a massive decline in services and questionable privacy practices.
Also Ubuntu and many other open source companies...
I'm love Mullvad, and hope very much this isn't the beginning of the end of one of the few trustworthy VPN's!
I hate ads on the outside of windows. And they give the little pinholes, like that’s supposed to be enough. The world becomes a blur. Out the window is the least anxious place to look on public transport, but they put ads all over the windows, and give us this pinhole grid crap like it makes up for it.
Yes, the wraps are a total bummer for sightseeing!
They are very common in LA though, as not only a means of $$$'s in revenue, but as a cooling measure.
The busses and above ground rail with these wraps are much cooler and easier to AC in the summer
Agreed. There's a slight relief here, though: I believe this is the Times Square shuttle train, which only runs back and forth over a few stations and never goes outside. So at least you're not on this train for long and never missing a view
When companies start to focus too much on growth usually they start to lose sight of their values and greed begins to take over. That said I just checked their ad policy and while they do physical ads, it's still a pretty reasonable policy.
They still won't be showing up on random YouTubers videos like Nord
They've actually ran adverts at the border of sweden telling politicians and alike that were going there to vote on IIRC ChatControl to vote against it
Mullvad is probably the best example of using ads for something good
