Gotten rid of nearly every US digital service I have. Physical stuff I will still probably roll with my Apple devices until they wear out since they’re relatively new, but almost all the data and apps are basically European and/or open source services. Work related stuff remains the challenge. Next phone will be HMD.
Support your local breweries and buy their sodas and not coca cola <3 I do this and ngl Oettinger cola-mix and Riegele Spezi are amazing
Or just stop taking surgary junks
Some people want them. Dont live on just water like me. So better them drinking local things
I mean, there’s way more selection than just water that is still healthy.
I think the point is, go even further and stop. Of course they want it, those who buy it. Once I stopped drinking sugar drinks, they started tasting really bad when I tried them once in a while. Started preferring natural juices instead. Love my juices. Still sugary, but less processed.
Trouble with that in the UK is Coca-cola is the only soft drink really that hasn’t bowed to the sugar tax and changed their recipe to be full of artificial sweeteners.
I absolutely can’t stand the taste of these sweeteners and some even make me feel kinda of bad after drinking them.
Idk if it has even spread to England but when I lived in Scotland I only ever bought Irn-Bru
Guess you found a market hole :)
This is the time for the Italian MoleCola to shine!
Apfel Schorle is much better than a Coke anyway
If you want to be that way: tap water is way better
Literally the only thing I miss about living in a Germanic country lmao
Absolutely nothing else? :O
Wdym? We have Apfelschorle
That’s my point, I don’t live in a Germanic country anymore and Apfelschorle (Rhabarbershorle too) is the only thing I miss
Ooooh. I understood it that you are in a germanic country and miss these things lol
soda is disgusting
Not just northern europe. In all of europe!
Oh yes. I’m a developer and I’ve stopped using DigitalOcean and switched to Hetzner.
I know that my country - The Netherlands imports a lot from the US, so i am trying not to. Ditched all my Meta accounts, closed Amazon account/prime and Kindle, moved away from Google to several other services, stopped several streaming services and when we buy products from the supermarket actively check wheter products are from the US, and replace them with local/EU/Canadian products.
From Canada, I’ve done the same as you, but I’m struggling to de Google. Any suggestions?
- Protonmail (i know it gets a lot of backfire on lemmy) and tutamail for mail
- Proton drive for google drive
- for travel i use TomoTom Go (amigo is free)
- Duckduckgo and librewolf as browsers
- Qwant and Ecosia as search engines
good luck, and don’t flame me for using Proton lol
Won’t flame you for using proton. I’m concerned personally because of the CEOs stance, but it’s not worse than Google, and is probably at least a bit better
I don’t find it important what the CEO might or might not believe (and he does not seem to be connected to anything MAGA). If the business and servers are located in the EU I feel much better than if it’s held by Google or Microsoft.
Besides, officially, Andy Yen is a strong supporter of data privacy and outspoken regarding the need for a stronger European tech sector, even going as far as calling Europe “and colony of USA” because of our dependence on US tech.
I found this an interesting read on it: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
GrapheneOS, CalyxOs or LineageOs as an alternative to just using android.
F-droid and Aurora store for almost all android apps, Obtainium if you can find your way around git forges.
Tuta mail, Posteo and other alternatives for Gmail.
Firefox and Thunderbird as replacement for Chrome and Gmail app
Duckduckgo/Ecosia(uses Microsoft’s Bing), Kagi(good but paid), SearX(free but you can run into limits quickly), Marginalia(nonpaid websites only) :- all are replacements for Google search, also learn to use search bangs to quickly take advantages of different search engine
i don’t use almost all of Google’s other products but a search would pop up other alternatives. Don’t forget to use Google Takeout if you have an account with them.
Goodluck!
I appreciate it thanks! I’ve been using DDG and fire fox for a while. I’ll have to look up this Google takeout. Thanks again for the tips!
Google take out worked for me to export all my google foto’s so i can save them somewhere else! I was using firefox as well, but moving now towards Librefox, duckduckgo browsers. I also like Vivaldi but not sure how good it is on the privacy meters :)
Awesome I love the visuals!
And so: Hello Lemmy! Here I am! Left ‘socials’ like reddit, dropped hotmail and google accounts … i’ts not much but it’s start
Welcome - just did the same myself or still in the transition of it. Soaking up so much information about how to take data / information in my own hands again.
Welcome!
Welcome! :D
Welcome, new one!
the biggest US exports are its software products. Until the time we have a way to avoid Google, Reddit, Meta, Microsoft, ChatGPT etc, we aren’t boycotting anything meaningful.
This is a useful collection of European software products
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. With changing our grocery and household purchases, cancelling Amazon and Netflix, and looking for alternatives to U.S. products, we are all doing the best we can, and I do believe it will make a difference.
Is there a non US search engine that queries English sites?
I’m on a now almost full boycott personally but my new Danish employer provides their employees with the newest iPhone (only phone you can choose… I tried to get another), American laptops, and uses Microsoft for everything including cloud. It’s the companies that need to start thinking and adapting. I aaked them “you know that all of our data is held by Trump-led USA, right?” And they just say “yea, but it is what it is”.
Have already replaced basically all US software products for personal use. Unfortunately work related stuff can’t be boycotted yet, but hopefully we can see an improvement there too ASAP. Hardware still from Apple, but will once it becomes time to replace it I will definitely switch to a HMD phone.
Migrating cloud servers to European hosters. Give EU money to improve/build a linux desktop. Use that desktop in government, schools, universities… (instead of Windows). Fork Firefox. Host fediverse services and use them where the governments use Twitter / TikTok / Insta.
Harder: Mandate for mobile phones with a user installable OS (Cyanogen etc.) Force tech companies to provide total transparency about data usage. Cancel any safe harbor agreements.
In the end, everything the Open Source crowd wished for.
Btw, I’d have no issues with American / Russian / China hosted open source stuff when we can review what it does. Ah, ok, a “european code review agency” might be a thing.
Ditch GitHub start using codeberg.
Plenty of office alternatives, outlook is easily replaced (didn’t know outlook had banner ads until recently, what a shithole)
If you prefer vscode try codium, some plugins may be missing but so is lots of ms bloat. Kate is a stellar alternative too!
Yep, I know that for myself. But I can’t switch away from github as that is where the huge company I work for has its stuff - and it needs convincing the enterprises, not the individuals.
Personally I just have my own repos which I can move anywhere in an eyeblink. But it takes political power to. move governments, departments and companies.
For example I have no way to ditch Teams or Outlook, because that’s the accounts my employer set up. I can’t ditch my RSA hardware token, because that’s what my. employer’s customer uses. I can’t ditch. my work phone as only Samsung and Apple are vetted.
That’s something that needs to change on a pan-europrean level.
Kick them out of Ramstein.
Here’s to hoping this happens
As always: the power of the working class resides in work. Organize your workplace. It doesn’t matter whether you stop buying cola, real impact will come if your workplace stops buying the overpriced 100k€ machine imported from the US tech sector. THAT’S where you really hurt them. Consumer expenditure is a minuscule amount of relevant key US exports.
Organize your workplace, join a union and create a local branch. Join an existing revolutionary socialist party. Create mutual aid networks in your neighbourhoods.
Here’s to hoping trump tariff war makes those stupid American pick-up trucks a lot more expensive to buy in EU. I hope the douchebags that bought them before have to pay way higher prices for parts now.
Not to mention Tesla.
Fuck us up, y’all!
Sincerely,
Ashamed American
In solidarity with you, brother.
– Likewise, an ashamed American.Will do traitors <3 Get an earthquake from all the ww2 vets and former presidents spinning in their graves from whats going on with you <3
Another terrible situation like Brexit - where the voices of many reasonable people are ignored. Feel free to come to Europe any time
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In what way exactly is the current administration better?
What exactly does the US produce that is imported into the EU? Consumer market, of course, where one person has choice in the matter.
tech
Europe produces that themselfs and has potential to build the few things it doesnt build right now
Guns
Europe produces its own
That’s like saying you import cars because they’re big in American culture.
The differences are similar. American ones are large, vainglorious, and for purposes the user will never encounter.
European ones are precision engineered to the function required.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAKO
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beretta
Beretta is French and Glock is Austrian.
Can we collectively decide not to respect American intellectual property laws to really hit the tech sector where it hurts? We don’t get that many physical goods over here but most of our software is American owned. I advocate for not paying American tech companies anymore.
We need our own tech stack, that is at least verifyable. It’s due time to kick out the American tech giants from government projects etc.
With America possibly becoming the new Russia it is just not safe to rely on Microsoft, Apple, Aws etc.
We need an Europan open source stack.
What kind of stack are you thinking of?
If we start ignoring the laws, we are no better than Trump and his
clownsclan. Go for the alternatives instead. Also, If you keep using the US software they still get all anvertisement and telemetry which is more valuable to them than the software itself anyway.If we start ignoring the laws, we are no better than Trump
“Fascism is when piracy”. What a take
intellectual property laws are idiotic laws.
You’re entitled to that opinion, and feel free to suggest a change of law, but for now … it’s still the law. And obeying only the laws that suits your goals is very much Trump/MAGA style. Let’s not get down to their level.
EU regulations that can be triggered in response to tariffs include an option to make that completely legal
Edit because I’m getting asked for a source: EU Anti Coercion Instrument that got passed in 2021 and came into effect in December 2023: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ%3AL_202302675
Specifically Annex I, paragraph 7:
ANNEX I
Union response measures pursuant to Article 8
[…]
- The imposition of restrictions on the protection of intellectual property rights or their commercial exploitation, in relation to rightholders that are nationals of the third country concerned, which may amount, as necessary, to the non-performance of applicable international obligations with respect to trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights.
This applies to copyright and patents, but not trademarks as far as I know.
That would be amazing! It would actually have some teeth
This sounds really interesting, do you have a link or anything I could look for in a quick search to learn more?
Search for Anti-Coercion Instrument, the one that came into effect in December 2023
Piracy!
If you want to learn how to do successful boycott campaigns, you should look for the BDS Movement, that has worked to spread awareness to boycott companies affiliated with the illegal Israeli occupation and genocide against Palestinians.
And no surprise, you will find many US companies in there. Also it should come as no surprise, that the US wants to outlaw even talking about boycotts in many states, as well as corrupt European politicians like in Germany attacking the notion of boycotting companies involved with brutal crimes against humanity.
We need to join efforts in reducing the economic power of Imperialism, whichever shape it takes.
Awesome. I hadn’t heard of this.
Quick look at their website shows they’ve actually achieved some pretty great things.
This is a great example. You can’t just stop buying everything. Boycotting specific companies with specific demands is the way.
Sodastream? What did they do?
Sodastream have a nasty habit of looking for a vulnerable, oppressed population, building a factory on illegally stolen land, hiring a few of the locals for peanuts and then screaming that they are “helping” them.
Did it to the Palestinians in the West Bank and when that failed relocated it in land confiscated from the Bedouins. It’s in an artificial forced resettlement area where Bedouins have been forced to live in an Israeli-constructed town and industrial park.
It is an Israeli company that used to operate a plant in illegally occupied territory in the Westbank as well as mistreating Palestinian workers. It moved to a factory in the Negev desert inside the 1967 borders. The new factory however is part of displacing Palestinian Bedouins that live in the Negev. Also the mistreatment of Palestinian workers continued.
Ultimately of course all Israeli companies also pay corporate taxes which finance the Israeli executive such as Army, Police forces and Intelligence.
https://bdsmovement.net/news/“sodastream-still-subject-boycott”
https://www.cjpme.org/fs_244Removed by mod
Sodastream used to have a factory in the West Bank where they employed hundreds of Palestinians. Because of boycott pressure, they moved and hundreds of Palestinian workers lost their jobs.
BDS only cares about hurting Israel, no matter the consequences to Palestinians.
Looks like they had some facilities on palestinian land.
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It’s an Israel-based company https://www.cjpme.org/fs_244
