I’ve begun my journey to reduce my reliance on US tech, so it’s time for an update on how it’s all going! No surprise, some services are far more easy to replace than others. Email and streaming are low-hanging fruit; maps and messaging can be more difficult. But we should still make the effort.
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I've seen David, but there are several companies from France that work very hard to replace their us reliance. They also have fully encrypted multi-party messaging for those that might be interested.
Thanks for the inspo Paris! It was hard on a sentimental level to give up my firstnamelastname@gmail.com, but I’m glad I did! It’s so nice to have privacy and not to be served ads in my inbox.
you could try Kagi for search. It's American, and paid, but at least it's not Google - and it's really good.
I wouldn't recommend Kagi. They're all-in on AI and the group that runs it is pretty sketchy: d-shoot.net/kagi.html
I'm aware of that page and to be honest, I don't see anything I can't live with. But I'm also not completely opposed to AI, as long as I'm offered the possibility to not use it.
People should make informed decisions about tech, of course. So... Did you know that the Trump regime is using AI to help disappear innocent people? www.meritalk.com/articles/ice... Did you know that Israel is using AI in their genocide of the Palestinians? www.theguardian.com/world/2024/a...
There is also Organic Maps and Mojeek, although the later isn't really practical.
Mojeek is terrible, unfortunately.
Agreed. I personally use Brave Search, which is independent. But US-based, for-profit. Although we can't expect a search-engine by a non-profit, just too costly.
Be sure to check out european-alternatives.eu
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I’ve found prioritizing open source projects to be a good option if avoiding American tech is too complex.
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Even if you can only reduce your reliance on American tech by 1/4 or 1/3 in the short term that is still significant if the bulk of people and companies in Canada, NZ, the EU etc do it. It sends a blunt message and should encourage non-US tech that a desire exists for more alternative services.
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Have you checked out Cryptpad for online productivity/collaboration yet? Good safety bonus options like self-destroying files, the official instance is hosted in France on OVH.
I haven’t, but I should!
I don't worry about US tech per se so much as I do the big corporate players, which tend to be US. I would never use the Nazi-supporting Substack, for example, but Micro.blog is harmless enough, and they've now got hosting options in Germany.
Why? There's no reason to disconnect from any tech service that doesn't consider data about you as it's product. But hey, other than that, enjoy less protection outside the US data sphere.
The EU is very robust imo. Much more than USA.
Agreed. However, we can be talking about different things here. Certain American tech products respect your privacy and those are the ones you should use. With other American tech companies data about the users is their real product. Don’t use those. A blanket boycott of American tech is silly.
Depends on who you’re asking. I’m a Canadian and the rhetoric of making us the 51st has made me try to stop relying on anything from America. I can see you thinking that if you’re American. But not everyone will share your sentiment.
We will shut that bullshit down. Please have patience while we tend to our issues. We’re not completely fucked. Yet.
Less protection from what? The US data sphere has almost zero privacy rights for individuals
No, but certain tech companies respect your rights and protect your data. Those are the ones to patronize.
For many of us outside America who have robust legal privacy protections it makes more sense to patronise companies properly governed by those laws. Also it makes sense for the rest of the world to actively reduce US dominance in tech for broader reasons
Why not just choose the best product for you needs that protects your privacy? No need to create an anti US tech platform unless you’re some kind of op. Are you some kind of anti American op?
I never trust corporations to do more for me than they’re legally required to in the long term, and the US is a place where they’re legally required to do v little for individual citizens. Also these days many of us are just sick of having to manoeuvre around American madness in general 🤷♀️
So anti American. Our politics suck right now but that’s temporary. We are still the leader in tech. What companies do you expect to fill the void if you boycott multinational American tech?
Did you read the thread we’re in?
American looks at the vast not-American world: “Are you some kind of anti American op?”
I’ve visited over 100 countries and lived outside the USA. Your nonsense doesn’t fly.
I’ll take that as a no, then.
Take it however you like, it means nothing to me.
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European tech companies are often much more vigorous in promoting themselves as protecting your data, to provide a reason to switch and because of different values.
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Coming back to this to suggest #ellipsus for collaborative writing. It's been making a splash in the writing community and they are dedicated to not using AI. Based out of Europe. I really like it so far. Good Google docs replacement.
Thanks for this! I'm making a deadline to convert by the end of the month, so this is helpful to know roadblocks.
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Maps is where I got stuck as well. But I imagine it's hard to defeat a monopoly at gathering accurate info on the whole damn world.
Have you tried leaflet?
Apparently there will be a Canadian social media network called Gander coming soon
How layered does this go, out of cusiosity? For example, Todoist is hosted on AWS.
Yeah, I wrote about this in my initial post. I’m doing my best, but being an absolute purist just isn’t possible. I’d prefer services not hosted on US clouds, like Proton, but that won’t always be feasible.
Whoops! Sorry, I must have missed that. You're right though, its a difficult one to overcome. I've accepted the fact so long as data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Thanks for writing this article. I like learning from others on their journey to diversifying their personal tech stack.
I’ve actually reached out to some companies to see if they’ve considered migrating. 1Password (Canadian) said they’re not.
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icab mobile is a browser i use on my ipad w/great functionality & privacy features. from germany. 🇩🇪
With the rising temps in North America this week, we really need to build more of those "data centers" that suck up massive amounts of power that will help us solve the problem of power outages. www.thestar.com/news/ontario...
Thanks for your work Paris !
Gmail was probably the easiest for me to replace, given I did it years ago, and finding a good suite of services is also really helpful, which Proton provides. Browsers and hosting services will also be pretty easy to replace in most countries. Vivaldi is great! www.disconnect.blog/p/getting-of...
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Proton mail in itself is a decent service. The trouble is it so often gets flagged as spam. Gmail is just so genericised as the norm these days even a Hotmail address raises eyebrows. Not a healthy situation.
my experience is that used to be the case with protonmail, but changed in the past two years. i rarely run into that issue anymore, which usually used to happen with ms/outlook and seems to have been resolved.
I own my domain and explored not hosting email with Google, but I'm extremely reliant on Google Docs because all my colleagues use it and we collaborate on everything. Very hard to extricate myself.
I still have a Google account, just not Gmail
yeah, this is where I think I may be headed. But at the moment, I don't have a gmail account, further complicating things.
Productivity software and streaming may be slightly more difficult, but even then, I don’t think they’re a big lift. Deezer has most music you’d want, and there are often solid local video streaming services. (I haven’t had Netflix since the password crackdown.) www.disconnect.blog/p/getting-of...
One thing I did struggle with was a replacement for Google Maps. When I was at home, something like Here WeGo or TomTom Go were mostly fine, but when I went abroad, I had to go back to Google because I was less familiar with the surroundings. www.disconnect.blog/p/getting-of...
For the maps you could also try mapy.cz / mapy.com [CZ] or @cartes.app [FR] I liked mapy a lot, but the recent change in their pricing model has forced me to start looking for other options (biggest problem for me is not being able to download more maps offline)
The Live View on Google maps is a giant leap forward for navigating on foot. Especially on small, winding European streets. It's cut the number of u-turns easily by 90%.
i live in south america, and greatly prefer waze over google maps
waze is owned by google and israeli
Ugh!!!! Disconnecting from American tech is pretty difficult. As your last episode host mentioned. Not a lot of countries taking the issue seriously to decouple themselves from American tech that is now American arms manufacturers too.
Yeah, one of the best things Google still bothers to maintain is their database of businesses in Maps. Every other database ranges from sort-of-usable to awful.
Social media, messaging, and search are proving most difficult. US companies dominate social media, and messaging services like WhatsApp are infrastructure in parts of the world. While alternative search exists, they often still rely on Bing and Google. www.disconnect.blog/p/getting-of...
the fact that so many countries allowed Whatsapp to become an essential service and effectively a monopoly telecom is such a huge problem for sovereignty and national security in so many countries, where many people and businesses no longer even have phone numbers, email or websites—just Whatsapp!
i do wonder if the introduction of ads to whatsapp starts to increase pressure to change that. we’ll see!
I’m still determined to reduce my reliance on US tech, but the challenges have only confirmed how important efforts at digital sovereignty are right now — to ensure attempts to build alternatives have the funding and support to make a meaningful difference. www.disconnect.blog/p/getting-of...
Hi Paris - is there any US tech / tools that you would consider ethical, striving for the objectives you are looking for, and consider supporting if it wasn't built American?
signal is probably the most obvious one that i knew i wasn’t giving up from the beginning because, while i don't 100% agree with the organization’s politics, i find it trustworthy and not pursuing the SV model
I mean Spotify is from Sweden but yeah Deezer is great
Yeah but Spotify sucks for other reasons, and has a pretty significant US footprint.
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P.S.: Genuine Q: what is the benefit of moving away from iCloud, Apple's Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Safari etc, if you keep using Apple devices / MacOS, especially if you enable Advanced Data Protection (which prevents Apple from accessing the data). Or is the plan to ditch the devices afterwards?
I was going to ask about Waze, but "...formerly FreeMap Israel, is a subsidiary company of Google that provides satellite navigation software on smartphones and other computers that support the Global Positioning System (GPS)"