Are you still relying on digital services from the US? Well, most likely you are, because just a few months ago, this was absolutely normal and a completely sane choice to make.

In 2025, however, nothing is sane anymore, and knowing that erratic billionaires have power over your data or are directly getting involved in political processes is more than worrying. For me, it’s terrifying.

Unless you want to support these people, you should consider at least not throwing your money at them anymore. From my point of view, there are two dimensions to the problem: private usage and business.

In this text, I’ll only focus on my own private digital life and what I did so far to get rid of US tech companies

The World We Live in – 2025 edition

Yes, it’s getting political, and I wish it wasn’t necessary. It is important, however, to understand that digital services can be used as a lever to exert political pressure. Not even mentioning the taxes that could be introduced in literally any industry at any given moment, but would you, in 2025, doubt that, for example, AWS could be forced to at least temporarily limit or even disable certain services in Europe?

If you don’t, it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft already shut down email services of people who are considered as enemies of the aforementioned billionaires. And they admitted, in a hearing, that they can’t guarantee the security of EU data. In other words, there is no such thing as the sovereign European cloud.

Monopolies are a problem. Just relying on a handful of services comes with high risks. What if they fail? Recently in Germany, PayPal had a hiccup and caused massive problems. Now just imagine PayPal being unavailable in Europe for a longer or indefinite period.

Even if those services are not weaponized, you surely can’t deny that their owners and leaders are ridiculously rich. This comes with its own, full bag of interesting problems. Spoiler: Billionaires are a threat to democracy. Who would have thought? And they now openly show how corrupt they are. The fact that they lost the fear of public opinion should worry you.

So, if you don’t want to support those people or those who tolerate and applaud them, it’s time to look for alternatives.

Freedom always has a price

Admittedly, it’s not easy to get rid of some services. They are excellent. Not surprisingly, considering the billions of dollars that went into their development. However, there are cool projects like https://european-alternatives.eu/ that help you find, well, alternatives.

You sometimes have to pay, but remember – if it’s for free, you are the product. Or your data is. Mostly your data. You don’t want to feed it into AI? Then consider what services you use. Let’s get rid of the “everything is for free on the internet” mentality.

Another noteworthy website is https://www.goeuropean.org, which is not limited to digital services but covers all kinds of products, like Cola.

It surely is a journey. Nothing that comes easy, or fast, or for free. Besides the political dimension, there is also an interesting aspect about digital services, which I’m sure you also experienced – the so-called enshittification. In a nutshell, this term, coined by Cory Doctorow, describes the phenomenon that services (not only digital ones) have to become worse – mostly because of greed. Whoops, humans, do you feel caught out?

Current state

Here’s what I’ve achieved so far.

Data storage

I already used Nextcloud as a Dropbox file-sync alternative for many years, keeping my most important files synced across at least two devices, so it’s also part of my backup strategy.

But it actually offers so much more: Notes, RSS Feeds, Mails, Calendar, Todo lists, Contacts … Admittedly, it looks a bit old-school; the UI is not that polished, but hey – it’s ok. Open-Source, free, and not controlled by the Tech Bros. You’ll find more examples of it below.

And since it uses open standards, like WebDAV, it easily integrates into your OS.

As a side note, Nextcloud also recently achieved the Blauer Engel, a label for sustainable software.

After running it on a shared hoster for some years, I recently decided to go with managed Nextcloud hosting. It works flawlessly, is reasonably fast, and no maintenance work is needed from my side.

Social Media

Ok, I’m bad at social media. Or maybe just not that interested in it. I use Mastodon sporadically, and I like it. My problem is not Mastodon, but social media in general.

I deleted my Twitter and Facebook accounts long ago. Especially Meta is rotten to its core (one of the many examples: Meta supports “romantic relationships” with children for their chatbots. It’s so utterly disgusting that anyone who uses their services or even works there still today should be ashamed.

The only other social network I use is LinkedIn, since it’s supposed to be a business network. I don’t see an alternative for it yet. But I do also see the enshittification here, so it’s just a matter of time.

In general, I’m diving more into the Fediverse recently. The Fediverse is the decentralized social network that includes Mastodon and other services and is powered by the ActivityPub protocol. Besides Mastodon, which is a microblogging service and similar to Twitter, there are more services like Pixelfed, which are some sort of Instagram.

Task management

Since I worked in a company a few years ago where Asana was used for literally everything, I stuck with it. It’s a great service, and the free account offers a lot. But actually, I just used it as Todo list, and for that, Nextcloud Tasks does the job quite well. It nicely integrates with some Linux distros like Ubuntu (or, erm, macOS / iOS…). It surely is no replacement for fancy project management tools, though.

Notes

Also here – Nextcloud! Nextcloud Notes offers a reliable service for keeping your notes, with tagging, etc. The notes are stored as clean text files in your Nextcloud instance, so there is no vendor lock-in effect. Mobile and desktop apps are available, too, through QOwnNotes.

Yeah, it does look a bit clunky. But that’s ok for me. There is a Web Clipper browser extension, too. Joplin, however, could also be a nice alternative, since it doesn’t come with a vendor lock-in. I haven’t tried it yet, though.

Backups

I have my private AWS account but mostly use it for backing up important private data, like photos and videos. Of course, the service is great, but I switched to Strato HiDrive, which is S3 compatible and thus integrates nicely with my backup workflow. A bit more expensive, but knowing I don’t finance billionaires who take over half of Venice for their wedding is fully worth it.

Online shopping

Speaking about Amazon, I used it a lot. Of course, with Prime. I stopped it immediately when I heard that Jeff Bezos forced the Washington Post editorial team not to publish an article because he wanted to support (or, let’s say, “not offend”) Trump.

There are enough alternatives to buy online. Or just buy less stuff. At least less cheap trash from China. Seriously, we all have enough of that crap.

Streaming and TV

In Germany, public broadcast offers some good series, documentaries, and movies as well (e.g., ARD, ZDF, Arte). The apps work with my Amazon Fire Stick. And, as a German citizen, I already pay for it anyway. Surely, you won’t get the latest hype, but I don’t care. Admittedly, I still got my Netflix, though – compromises are necessary when you have a family.

Payment

I don’t want to support people like Peter Thiel, so I stopped using PayPal as well …. mostly. Sometimes I can’t get around it, but it gets better. Wero, an European alternative, is in the making. So far, it only offers money transfer between private people, but online payment is being worked on.

Messaging

Switching to Signal and Threema here. Also not that great, but all is better than Meta. It’s challenging to get rid of WhatsApp, though, since many people use it for, e.g., organizing sports courses and such. Working on it, at least reducing the usage quite a lot.

Shared hosting

I hosted my blog and some other, smaller projects, on HostEurope. Bad service (not even SSL with Let’s Encrypt!) high prices, but, you know, migrating stuff takes some time, and I was lazy. Until HostEurope announced to switch their email service to Microsoft 365. Haha, no way, dudes. That was the final push I needed. I now migrated to a small German hoster called Manitu, which has good prices and services and runs on green energy, too.

Games

Switching from Steam over to gog.com. I’m not playing that many games anyway. The benefit here is you actually OWN the game, not just a license to play it. You can even download and archive them. Nice. For Linux, I use the Heroic Games Launcher.

E-Books

For years I’ve already been wondering why people are using Kindle (sure, the hardware is great), where everything is regulated with DRM and, similar to Steam for games, you don’t own the books you paid for. I use the Tolino, which is supported by some bigger German bookstores. But since it is completely open, you can simply upload your ebooks, e.g., in EPUB or PDF format.

Operating System

My desktop PC (yes, I still have that) operates on Ubuntu. I ditched Windows years ago, and I feel so much better since then. The hardware requirements for Windows 11 are ridiculous and turn perfectly fine working machines into electronic waste. It’s an OPERATING SYSTEM, we just want to use it to run software on it, dammit.

AI

Artificial intelligence seems to be ruled by the US. The problem: these companies don’t care about privacy, about copyrights, or about the ecological impact of their massive server farms. But let’s not forget the European alternatives, like Mistral AI. I especially like GreenPT, which is hosted in the EU and cares about the environmental impact of their services. It’s fully paid now, i.e., no free plan, but again, there is a price to everything, and that’s ok. Functionality-wise, it is a bit behind the big players, though.

Search Engines

I’m using Ecosia, which is planting trees for your searches, and DuckDuckGo. I know, I know, they use Google and/or Microsoft Bing, but at least you’re not throwing your data at these companies.

The struggle goes on

Although I’m pleased with where I am right now, I still have a few struggles:

Smartphone & Laptop

I’m stuck with Apple. I am not sure how to get out of this right now, as I don’t want to buy a new phone yet. Let’s see in a few years what alternatives there are. The MacBook hardware is great, but I would really like to switch to Linux here too. So maybe it will be a Framework laptop and a Fairphone the next time.

GitHub

As a software developer, I of course have my GitHub account. But since M$ took it over, there is some bad taste to it. I recently came across Codeberg.org and want to give it a try someday.

YouTube

The Fediverse alternative is PeerTube, but although, for example, the German Heise Verlag is using it, there is hardly any good content on it – yet.

LinkedIn: owned by M$ too, oh my…

For what it’s worth

So, was it worth it.

I’d say, Definitely. Digital sovereignty is a must in this rapidly changing world. I’m not anti American at all, and it actually breaks my heart to see this great country going down the drain. However. It is a wake-up call that the centralization of wealth and power is always a threat for societies.

The President of the USA started threatening Europe to not treat US services “unfair” through digital taxes or regulations. By now, everybody should know what “fairness” really means: follow our rules, or suffer.

However, Europe has enacted these regulations, like the Digital Services Act, to protect its own markets, its own citizens, and also our democracy. Trump is openly fighting against it.

It also proves that open source is becoming more important than ever. I think that Europe should start supporting OSS financially rather than subsidizing, e.g., fossil fuels. Software like Nextcloud or the Fediverse could be used by many countries without privacy or political concerns.

Why are we still spending money on Big Tech? Let’s move on!