It's time to boycott U.S. digital services! Here's a chart to help you do so:
It's time to boycott U.S. digital services! Here's a chart to help you do so:
94 comments
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Deezer is owned by a Russian oligarch close to Putin AFAIK. That would disqualify it from this list in my opinion
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Just learned about this from this other post if someone wants more details:
https://lemmy.world/post/33642043
Shame, more competition with Spotify would be a good thing.
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Wtf, first time I heard this
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Isn't it fun to look into companies and suddenly realize they're all shit!?
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I switched from Dropbox to Nextcloud, saved a bunch of money and couldn't be happier. It's fantastic open source software. I don't understand why it's rarely listed in these guides.
Under my Nextcloud provider (Murena - not the cheapest, but they develop my phone OS so I figured I can support them) I also have OnlyOffice running on the cloud, which is great for co-authoring. And I also get e-mail there of course, though I mostly use e-mail from my web-hosting provider. I think Nextcloud also has video conferencing.
For search I use Qwant for now. I like that they're slowly developing their own index, yet they are less puritan than Mojeek so the results are a bit more reliable. Haven't heard of Karma before.
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Spotify: actually a Swedish company, but one of the worst companies out there. I hate Apple but at least they are paying artists better. Spotify actively supports scammers (with AI music and phone farms) and breaks the law by promoting artists connected to their stakeholders.
Deezer is owned by a Russian oligarch who funds the US republican party.
Don't know about the rest. But as far as I know there are no music streaming services with a moral compass.
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Psst, you might like resonate
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We are currently pausing new signups in order to work on our system.
Sad face... I'll keep an eye on it, thanks!
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Is Spotify owned in large part by US média companies nowadays ?
Edit: I guess Jamendo is a streaming service in a way. And also I think Tidal was supposed to be pro artist or whatever. It's American though I think.
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But they are not USA, we have a war to win!
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Avoid infomaniak. Company is anti anonimity, CEO said only criminals want it. As a result they are supporting the anti encryption laws coming to Switzerland.
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Ew.
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generally a good idea to get off of streaming and cloud services for things you can do locally
better security, better for the environment
all the worst companies want you streaming and using cloud services with them, just don't
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How is e.g. streaming from a Jelyfin server better for the environment than e.g. from Netflix? Genuine question? Like, to use Jellyfin you still have to download an entire movie or episode from somewhere, and you're more likely to download things you don't end up watching. The only benefit is if you rewatch episodes or movies, but that's pretty rare and having enough hard-drive space for all of that is probably worse than just streaming it from a centralised location.
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Plus Netflix, et al benefit from economies of scale that would probably make their streaming better than you just downloading.
Especially if they still put CDN caches in ISPs…
That said I still self-host tvs and movies as much as possible
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Be careful, Tuta does not support IMAP/POP3, and you'll have to use their own client.
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Wow, thanks for mentioning this, I'm seriously looking at moving away from gmail, and Tuta was my frontrunner. Sad that they aren't more upfront about this... I see Proton is kind of the same to some extent, but then they have a local bridge application which translates their protocol to IMAP/SMTP. Does anyone have experience with that?
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I don't know about that but swiss privacy law is about to get so terrible that I wouldn't switch to it unless they rebase.
Every mail service has a drawback
Posteo can't do custom domains
Mailbox.org has non-anonymous registration + tracking
Proton is based in Switzerland with horrible incoming privacy laws
Nubo is a startup and unproven security-wise
Tuta doesn't allow 3rd party clients
Startmail has no calendar
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I have a ProtonVPN subscription, but I think you need to pay for the more expensive tiers, cause the tier I have (VPN Plus 4$/month) gives me complementary mail, but I can't use the mail bridge as it's not paid. I think you need the Proton Mail or Proton Unlimited plan to be able to use mail bridge. Proton Unlimited gives you everything (VPN, Mail, Calendar, Drive, Pass, and Wallet). Basically if you just want mail bridge, buy Mail pass, but if you want Mail and more, buy unlimited.
Mailbox.org is what I use, it supports POP3/IMAP (I use it via Thunderbird) and is very cheap, the light package is about 1€ a month for 2GB, 3 aliases (I use anonaddy for free aliases instead), and apparently video conferencing. The Standard package is 2.5€/month with a yearly payment, more storage and gives you cloud storage, online office, custom domain aliases, and uses OpenTalk for conferences.
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Don't use proton if you want to use the normal protocols. I made the error and have just finished getting away a few months ago my recommendation is mailbox.org, really happy with that one.
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I've been using Proton Bridge for over a year and it works really well - lets me use Thunderbird and my phone's native mail app wihout issues, just remember to keep the bridge app running on your computer.
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This is an ad made by infomaniak to promote their products. OP, are you affiliated with them?
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Weird how the chart just prioritizes other corporations and only shows true open-source or self-hosted solutions when there are no non-US options realistically. Hmm.
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What are the missing open-source alternatives ? I dont think there is anything like a open-source Netflix for example.?
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Arr suite.
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Not sure recommending Swiss services is a particularly great idea from a privacy perspective right now.
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They should be avoided if you care about privacy.
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Spotify is Swedish? Why is it listed next to American companies?
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"Yes, but...."
- Listed on the New York Stock Exchange via a holding company in Luxembourg that issues American depositary receipts. (Who knows what percentage of its 'shares'/ADRs are held by U.S. investors?)
- Paid Joe Rogan US$100 million for his alt-right podcast.
- Donated $150,000 to President Donald Trump's 2025 inauguration ceremony, as well as hosted an inauguration-related brunch.
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yes but spotify is also europes only afaik unicorn and that needed some serious cash (many people forget but i was hearing how streaming doesn’t work and spotify hasn’t been profitable ever for like 15 years!! right up until last year and now it’s a big evil megacorp, how quickly the story can change) europe doesn’t have its unified market setup yet so america is where you have to go
this isn’t a failure of spotify, it’s a failure of the EU which tbf is something they’ve working on
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/capital-markets-union-explained/
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it's controlled by americans.
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The Lemmy icon is not very descriptive for those who do not know Lemmy.
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That's what I was just thinking. People would have no idea where to start. Maybe searching for "mouse icon social network"?
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Disagree with Video Streaming, pirate it instead.
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Thanks mate! Posted on mastodon too
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Drime is also an alternative to Google Drive
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Search -> Qwant.com
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Is it good though?
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i get great results with it. ymmv
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Thank you, strangely omnipresent being.
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Mistral's Le Chat search is much better than what's listed here.
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@Sunshine I propose to change it: "it's time to utilize digital services you can control"
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Bandcamp Friday is in two days. Bandcamp (although maybe Tencent or Epic owned) waves their revenue share.
https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays
Bandcamp Fridays will continue in 2025 on the following dates:
August 1 September 5th October 3rd December 5thBandcamp uses Pacific time to determine when its Friday so always check this site before you do.
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If people would watch more Arte and Mubi the world would be a much better place, regardless of (or, in addition to) the changes money flows and personal data usage.
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You should also add Proton Lumo which is O/S and has an app. Also add Proton to Email.
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I'm trying out Filen to replace OneDrive, but it appears to be completely unusable. When mounted as a network drive it takes 10+ seconds to navigate through each folder, and opening files (for example a 90kb Excel file) takes upwards of 3 minutes. Closing Excel then also takes another minute because it has to communicate with the drive to tell it to close the temporary one and all that. Using the desktop app instead of mounting isn't a viable option because it doesn't let you open things directly, you have to download and save a file, use it, then manually reupload it again.
Is this just how it is? I've found other people with the same issues but can't seem to see any solutions. People have also reported that it's unreliable for backups because uploads/downloads sometimes just stop quietly in the background without telling you. Is this all user error? Are these programs vetted at all before being pushed or is not being US-based literally the only thing that matters regardless of any other factors?
I'll try out Nextcloud and Drime because they've been recommended in the comments here.
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Lol at recommending deezer, the company owned by a Russian oligarch with ties to the Kremlin who donates to the republican party
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why is search considered hard to switch on the chart?
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Search is easy but has high impact.
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wtf my brain switched the description of vertical and horizontal i read it again and now it looks right
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By all means avoid the most egregious, but aren't basically all online services hosted on AWS/Azure/GCP anyways?
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Nope. Your feddit is not. The EU cloud services are listed here (and others) are not. Tuta is not.
I don't think any of the alternatives listed here use AWS/Azure/GCP. I did not check the search engines, music streaming, mubi.com, and Collabora.
The only thing I found is that OnlyOffice allows to connect to GCP and AWS (you need to enable it on your own): https://helpcenter.onlyoffice.com/workspace/administration/control-panel-storage.aspx
And Mistral is available on AWS, Azure, GCP, but that's because it is an "open-source" LLM ¯(ツ)_/¯
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That's actually amazing, thank you for the insight.
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About Mistral:
Critically, Mistral Compute aims to provide a competitive edge to entire industries and countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the entire Southern Hemisphere that have been waiting for an alternative to US or China-based cloud and AI providers. This applies equally to the global entities of US or Chinese companies that want to serve international customers, particularly in Europe, with AI that is operating and running regionally.
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WTF, why is Pixelfed on this list? smh.
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You can run european instances with Pixelfed.
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That was my understanding, too. Also Pixelfed was/ is my escape from IG.
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Yeah, but it still a broken piece of software that should not be recommended as long as its development team keeps not fixing long-standing bugs.
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Isn't the founder Canadian ? Also it's a bit silly applying borders to free software
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A lot of these just don't work as an replacement.
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For example?
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The socials live from everyone being on them. Mail providers established a pseudo monopoly by distrusting unknown senders. Arte does not produce entertainment but edutainment. Office is dictated by your workplace. Twitch is barely viable as is for niche things like MTG. People gotta eat. You must use the search engine that enables you to be your most productive self in a work environment.(Desk jobs only, I guess, but I ain't got a real job where I don't know whether I see my home again when leaving for work)
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I know why you're getting downvoted.
But sorry people, Spotify is streets ahead of the others (IMO) as there is a far better choice of music. For me anyway, YMMV but I've given up with the others.
Same with video streaming - you cannot deny that the quality (technical and production, if not content) of Apple TV surpasses the others. I gave up with Foundation and Silo (plots) but the quality was superb. For All Mankind is probably the best thing ever on TV after The Expanse.
iCloud is just so polished and seamless. I gave up with Proton Drive as it was just too clunky and flaky. And that's after being a paid up Protoneer since almost day one. I still use Protonmail, Pass and VPN. Am just on a lower paid tier than I was before. Plus Vivaldi uses Proton for VPN.
I'm all for buying European where possible, (German bier, French and Italian wine, CachyOS or Mint) but am not going to wear a hair shirt and accept second or third rate performance because the internet says 'America Bad!'
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am not going to wear a hair shirt
For anybody like me who was entirely confused by that sentence:
A hair shirt is a coarse garment intended to be worn next to the skin, keeping the wearer in a state of discomfort and constant awareness of the shirt's presence. Such garments were traditionally worn by some Christian religious orders, along with individuals who felt penitent about certain actions or their lifestyles. Their use is fairly limited in the modern era, but the term is often used metaphorically, which is why someone might refer to "wearing a hair shirt" when they perform some other act of self-imposed penitence.
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I switched to Qobuz and I like it much more than I liked Spotify. Only real complaint is having to use their web client in Linux.
I don't stream, but I'm thinking of learning how to use torrents. More ethical than Apple or Amazon.
I had to fix some iCloud stuff for an ex, it was an absolute nightmare to deal with. I guess mileage varies. I couldn't be happier with Nextcloud.
That said, I'm happy there are people who don't want to sacrifice comfort on here. That's a really good sign.
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I generally don't like joining sites that require more than a username, password, and possibly an email.
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94 comments