reliance on US goods and services
Years ago, I thought about how doable it is to migrate away from US goods and services. I felt annoyed that most of what I used was from there; I don’t want one country to be a tech monopoly, both hardware, software and other online services. I think I like supporting things that are more local to me, if possible, or none of the big powers. In terms of US services, I don’t live there, so I can’t influence what trajectory it takes and what the current gov does. What if they cut us off, what if I don’t support the country itself, what if their regulations or lack thereof negatively affect this service I rely on; what if I am concerned about US national security concerns infringing on my rights as an EU citizen in terms of privacy1?
I think it’s difficult. Not impossible, but it really depends on your needs. People making a living online are reliant on US services, people looking for entertainment via streaming or games as well. Hardware is hard to come by with this restriction, especially if you’d want to avoid China as well. A lot of services not from the US use US services, like AWS or Microsoft Azure.
I guess the best way to limit reliance on US services is not being on social media. That already cuts out a ton. I don’t know if choosing a federation instance in another country would be enough, I don’t personally use any of it.
My website hoster is from Ukraine, Bearblog is from South Africa and hosted in the Netherlands. Spotify is Swedish, Obsidian is Canadian. Proton is Swiss.
I consider Linux distros and FOSS to be a collaborative international effort and less tied to specific countries’ interests and pockets.
But I still use Steam, Feedly, Discord, Apple and Porkbun directly, for example - all from US. I watch YouTube without an account and I use other people’s Netflix, Disney+ and Crunchyroll. Signal is a bit of a gray area, but still from there. So even without social media, or not having an account, or without directly paying, it’s a lot.
I truly wish Europe would rise up to become more of a tech powerhouse with viable alternatives to US products. Just to diversify the options people have, foster competition and give you the ability to choose for whatever reason you like, but also because it’s clear we have little effect on political values over there and cannot enforce the GDPR effectively. European services would align closest to my values.
These thoughts went on the back burner for a while, but today they bubbled up again. Maybe some day, I will make a list of big US companies and non-US alternatives to migrate to, just for fun.
Published 06 Nov, 2024, edited 7Â months, 2Â weeks ago
There are reasons why Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield failed, and the current agreement is severely lacking.↩