Mastodawn

I think we should stop looking for geographic/political bound services. The internet was designed to be used without that.

We have email servers all over the world, and various email clients that can make use of it. There is no owner of the email service, no country the host of the email service, no one who has power over the email service. Email is nor “American” nor “European”.

The danger we are now facing is that we will get “European services”, owned by Europeans, yet again locking you in, this time in a European scheme. Europe is not the holy grail however, they have grifters, nationalists, ultra rights, Trump-wannabee’s too. We will just swap one problem for another.

The keyword here is decentralized. That is what we should be looking for. Not American, not European, but truly decentralized. Nobody in ultimate power, nobody who can make it politically lean to one side or the other, nobody who can pull the plug, or sell it to a billionaire. This is how the internet was intended, and how many of the initial services (email, name servers) were designed. This path was abandoned when big tech wanted to commercialize services, but it doesn’t have to be like this.

For most services, if not all, decentralized alternatives exists.

Good starting points to learn more about this can be, among others, found here: https://redecentralize.org/

Redecentralize.org

@FransVeldman the hard part is all the non-cloud software, because that is never "decentralized".

Also, in my work I am bound to a ton of American apps like Photoshop and Davinci Resolve which requires a significant skill level.

It has taken me three years just to learn Davinci Resolve — switching is not always just a choice, but a considerable investment.

What do you mean with “non cloud software”? I host a lot of decentralized services which have nothing to do with a cloud. They just run on a VPS, which can be anywhere in the world. Currently, I have my services hosted in Iceland, because I like their privacy policies, but I can just plant them in any other country if I wish to.

Photoshop? Have you tried Gimp? Many professionals who abandoned Microsoft and have chosen for Linux claim that Gimp can do everything Photoshop can do, often even better.

@FransVeldman all I meant was, a regular old school installed app is not hosted. It comes from a company and is installed on your device, so obviously, there is no decentralized aspect of it.

But the learning is the main problem. I know quite many people who hate Apple, yet use their products because learning something new is a considerable investment.

I think, with all respect, that you have to educate yourself on this subject. An app is usually just a client, for some other service that runs somewhere on the internet.

Ok, not a calculator-app, because that one can run without any outside support.

But most apps, they use some kind of host. If that host can be anywhere in the world, then it is fine. However, if it is bound to a specific host, like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, you are locked in by some vendor, with a host that is placed in a country that might not so pleasant to do business with.

An email-app however, is usually not restricted to one host. You can tell it which email-provider you want to use, and that can be anywhere in the world. Don’t like gmail? Then use another provider, or ultimately, host an email server yourself.

The same applies to the messenger app Matrix. It is not restricted to one host. There are hundreds of hosts. I self-host a Matrix instance in Iceland, and just like with e-mail, it will communicate fine with any other instance where my message partner has chosen to subscribe to.

Anyway, I urge you, do not advocate “European services” because that is just moving the problem from one place to another. To really solve the problem, we have just to go back to how the internet was intended, and only promote decentralized services that can be anywhere on the world (you pick one you like), with an open standard, so there can be multiple clients using the very same service.

I self host my email server. I use Thunderbird on my laptop to access it, and K-9 mail on my GrapheneOS phone. I’m not bound to just one provider, nor to just one client app.

atanasoff Jan 28

@FransVeldman @randahl while your approach is good, and I myself self-host stuff at home, regular people wants convince and promoting EU tech is the way to go. Internet from the past is not coming back, and Europe needs its own tech champions.

It is not “from the past”, it is alive and kicking and the most important elements from internet are working according to the core principles. Like email, name servers, etc.

Nobody “owns” the name servers (which is a very, very good thing).

The only reason to not follow this decentral principle is to dominate some market. And this is not “what regular people want” but what some TechBro’s want. Can you explain to me what the advantage is that with WhatsApp you can’t choose another app? Why you can’t choose a European based server?

The Europe Tech Champions can do it right from the beginning, and just allow whatever they design, to be used with configurable providers, not just the one they own themselves. And they can make the protocols open, so that third parties can develop their own apps for it.

Think about what will happen if we don’t go this way. In which country should they set up the server? Hungary? What if we kick that country out of the EU? Ok, another one? France? What if they get an ultra right nationalist government which suddenly mandates that all services running on “their” servers should be in French language?

Really, a decentralized design is the only way to go, the only way to make it future proof. Nobody should own it, nobody should be able to force their own rules on it.

Khleedril Jan 28

@randahl @FransVeldman

``switching is not always just a choice, but a considerable investment''

But it will be worth it.

@FransVeldman @randahl immediate goal is to get rid of US services since most of the EU is reliant on them, gives them money and they have all the data and thus enormous leverage. It's also a symbolic act. That said, I'd always prefer paying domestic providers. You're saying decentralized, but that's not universal not applicable to many services. I.e. how would my email server be decentralized?

I disagree. People are reluctant to migrate to other services. You have to do it right the first time. You can go straight to decentralized services, you don’t have to first go to “European” services instead, that would be just a detour.

Yes, being decentralized is applicable to ALL services. And yes, email is decentralized. You are not locked in to, say, gmail. You can just use any other email provider you wish, without loosing your contacts, functionality, etc. You can also use another app, again, without loosing your contacts. This is what decentralization is about.

With Whatsapp, there is just only one instance, you can’t choose another one. There is also only one app, you can’t use any other app to access your messages. If you want to use another messenger (like Signal) you loose your contacts, unless they also migrate to that other platform. Whatsapp is NOT decentral. But email is, you can change provider while your buddies stay on their usual provider and you can still send emails to them. You can dump Outlook and use Thunderbird instead, without anyone noticing. See the difference?

@FransVeldman @randahl hold on, please ELI5 how can my e-mail *service* be decentralized. I'm listening.

Have you ever set up an email server?

I did.

For larger organizations, it is common to have a pool of email servers, backup servers, etc. The MX-records in the DNS have provisions for that. There is no restriction on where the various elements of the email servers are located, if you want your 2nd mail server to be on the other side of the world compared to the first one, you can do that.

But this is not really what is meant with decentralization. Decentralization is the concept that you can choose a provider of your liking. A server that is owned by someone else, resides in a different part of the world, etc.

Whatsapp would be decentral if, when you set up the account, it offers you a selection of providers (owned by others) to choose from, and allow other parties to create Whatsapp clients to interact with all of them.

And yes, this can be done, Matrix is a good (but not the only) example of a decentralized messenger. I host an instance myself, and with my instance I can send and receive instant messages from other people who have subscribed to another provider. I use “Element” as app, but there are a dozen other apps to choose from.

There are lists with decentralized alternatives for virtually all services, I trust you are able to type things like “WhatsApp decentralized alternative” in your favourite internet search engine.

@FransVeldman @randahl You are missing a big point. EU is relying on US services. Not like e-mail client, but like e-mail server. And unless we switch to domestic *servers*, US has all the data and is free to do with it whatever it wants. Switching e-mail client doesn't help very much when you use a problematic server, does it?

I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t use a US email server. I don’t use gmail. There are many alternatives. And most bigger companies have their own in house email servers as well, and are free to use servers wherever they choose (and often have these in house too).

What you are talking about (I think) is the fact that governments are lazy and have outsourced their IT to US companies, because that was cheaper than to have their own IT department. And yes, that needs to change.

But in this thread, we were talking about alternatives to US based services for the public. And whether it is a good idea to invent a European Facebook, etc. And this is where I oppose against.

@FransVeldman @randahl Not just governments, corps and individuals as well. And it's not like they will happily host their servers for plenty of reasons. Thus they/we need EU based alternatives, because of GPDR if not for anything else. As peer Facebook sample, there are already decentralized alternatives and they doesn't need to be created.

TheDyslexicKitchenwitch Jan 28

@FransVeldman i feel like we should have THIS sort of technical discussion more in public, but it doesn't happen much. It is frustrating because the RoI would be immediate. The other thing that would also work into this direction (correct me if I'm wrong) would be getting rid of the anti circumvention laws. But there really is a communicative gap between ppl who know & regular users (which entails most of the cohort of elected representatives) & that's kicking us in our collective butt atm imho

aysc Jan 28

@mihamarkic Saying it's a "symbolic act" is blatantly eurocentric and exactly the problem.

@aysc it's what now? You're saying that giving money and data to an enemy plus giving it an enormous leverage is actually good for us?

aysc Jan 28

@mihamarkic And Europe isn't an enemy either? Not anywhere?

@aysc Wat? We at least have a big deal of GDPR and consider privacy and protection seriously. Can you guarantee the same if we have data on US corps' servers? Or anywhere outside EU?

aysc Jan 29

@mihamarkic So you are eurocentric. Enjoy the block.

zbrando Jan 28

@FransVeldman
I agree that open standards, OSes and programs should be preferred but the data reside on servers and no normal person with no technical knowledge wants to run his/her own server. So you have to choose in which region and under which laws your data will be processed. In this regard at the moment, the EU laws are better than the US for EU citizens.

Also, open standards doesn't mean the specific service, server or instance is not evil.
And in these times Europeans are not very keen to send money to businesses to a nation that is more and more considered hostile, if they can chose.

@randahl

Kotki Jan 28

@FransVeldman @randahl Agreed. That kind of 'own region' chauvinism also misses FOSS alternatives that are excluded just because the developer happens to be American, even though contributions may come from all over the world.
Open standards and compatibility are what prevent lock in, not trusting that any particular country's government will remain benevolent in future. That's what created this mess in the first place.

EF Jan 28

@FransVeldman @randahl two issues are being mixed here. Current concern is a few big tech companies, or the jurastiction they are in, could pull the plug. When these ignore or bypass laws or guarantees there is a problem so the pro-European flag waving isn't to fix all the problems, just to keep European data under European law and control.

The second is everything 9n the 'Net is owned, controlled or available to potentially problematic tech companies or jurasictions. Distributing is a method for some services as you state but DNS, IP addressing, the communication infrastructure... is controlled or influenced by 3rd parties. An example is the worldwide copyright claims in Italy, Spain, India... which stop access to services inside and outside of their borders.

The open, free Internet has gone. Getting European data back into Europe may not be a perfect solution but people are now realising what we currently have is far far worse.

@randahl @dalstroka https://matrix.org

Torger Åge Sinnes Jan 28

@randahl Matrix is not there. It would be a good alternative to Messenger and FB groups...

@dalstroka Matrix?

Matrix.org

Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications

@utf_7 very interesting!

@dalstroka

Are you kidding that you don’t know about Matrix?

@FransVeldman never heard of it. Not once. And I am a user of quite many platforms.

Frank Paul Silye Jan 28

@randahl @FransVeldman Try Element X and FluffyChat on your mobile for a start...

https://redecentralize.org/

See the problem? Big Tech has the money to advertize their platforms all over the place.

You want to take out the services out of the hands of Big Tech? Fine, but then nobody has the money to force them down your throat.

This is where you and I come in, to make people aware of all these gems that already exists, built by volunteers, truly decentralized, but because nobody really “owns” the service, nobody is going to run an ad campaign for it.

Take a look here:

Take a look here for a list of self hosted services:

https://awesome-selfhosted.net/

Ask me if you want more.

Redecentralize.org

No, because Matrix is not European, but decentralized. It is everywhere, or nowhere, depending on your viewpoint. ;-)

�Jan 28

@randahl i disagree with ecosia listed there.

>The search results of the search engine come from either Bing or Google. Which index is used depends on the users' preference, the location and the device type.

Honza Vacek Jan 28

@utf_7 Actually @ecosia is using Google, Bing and new European search engines.

Skamu Jan 28

@utf_7 @randahl it is true that Ecosia uses Google/Bing, but there are not really many other "native" index available, and alternatives use those or somehow fallback to those in a point. Ecosia and Qwant want to create one, but so far there is no truly European alternative. Any other search engine basically uses Google and/or Bing as index (or they fallback to it ina point). The only alternative would be SearXNG, but you need to be careful on what instance you use (trust is on your own there)

https://archive.is/scS7L
https://www.ft.com/content/8264122b-cb6b-4af5-85b8-3789c3ae3a78

@randahl

Like the switch away from fossil fuels, the EU needs to accelerate this change away from US tech if it is to retain its sovereignty.

https://archive.is/9UbL9
https://www.ft.com/content/869aae15-4c37-48a6-9a8b-d80b5d40db6a

American tech is gearing up for some nasty surprises.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/27/media/tiktok-trump-ice-epstein-censorship-tech-issues

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/26/tech/tiktok-ice-censorship-glitch-cec

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/every-data-centre-is-a-u-s-military-base/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2026/01/27/tiktok-settles-social-media-addiction-lawsuit/88377911007/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2026/01/24/ai-chip-manufacturing-data-centers-humanity/88215945007/

Ditto for their financial & trade systems.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/us-retail-traders-buy-silver-etfs-faster-than-tech-favorites-vanda-research-says-2026-01-27/

@Npars01 there! That is a video I need to make. Thank you.

Khleedril Jan 28

@randahl @Npars01 Please take every encouragement.

@Npars01 @randahl in reality EU is caving to big fossil fuels 🤷‍♂️

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gwp2me3gzo

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/21/eu-parliament-blocks-us-trade-deal-trump-tariff-threat

It appeared they had, but that ridiculous energy purchase agreement was canceled thankfully.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eus-pledge-250-billion-us-energy-imports-is-delusional-2025-07-28/

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5435369-the-numbers-in-trumps-eu-trade-deal-are-a-joke/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-28/the-eu-s-monster-energy-deal-with-trump-looks-hard-to-achieve

There is little difference between buying fossil fuel from Russia, OPEC, or Koch Network despots.

All of it must be phased out, or face fascist rule.

EU suspends approval of US trade deal

The move follows renewed tensions between the US and EU, as Donald Trump pushes to acquire Greenland.

@Npars01 @randahl We also had high expectations on ban on ICE (not that ICE) vehicles, but it went away just like that.

The days of the internal combustion engine are numbered.

EV's are cheaper to produce & there's a growing after-market for the batteries.

@Npars01 @randahl They are numbered, but it might take 100 or 10 years sort of. Don't forget that infrastructure is seriously lacking for mass adoption.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/30/balcony-solar-power-states-laws

People are charging their cars off balcony solar panels. Even Ikea sells them now.

https://www.dw.com/en/boom-small-solar-devices-plugged-into-household-sockets-german-energy-transition/a-75022163

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/homeowners-could-save-hundreds-on-energy-bills-from-solar-drive

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-portable-solar-battery-pack/

As electricity rates rise to subsidize pointless AI data centers, balcony solar is taking off as are portable inverters.

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/07/14/solar-generators-are-a-major-step-toward-grid-resiliency/amp/

Power surge: law changes could soon bring balcony solar to millions across US

Tweaks to state laws mean many Americans will be able to benefit from small, simple plug-in solar panels

The Guardian

@Npars01 @randahl I doubt that people are actually doing (charging EV from balconies) that because of low power and other practical issues.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/38036995/ev-charges-while-you-drive-unveiled/

https://businessmotoring.co.uk/nissan-reveals-solar-powered-ev-concept/

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/autos/news/aptera-s-solar-powered-ev-just-hit-a-crucial-milestone/ar-AA1Qm9Y6

https://thedriven.io/2026/01/28/nissan-adds-pv-to-its-ariya-suv-to-test-how-evs-can-harness-the-sun/

https://theconversation.com/right-to-charge-laws-bring-the-promise-of-evs-to-apartments-condos-and-rentals-206721

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/11/28/sunlit-unveils-bidirectional-inverter-for-pv-carports-balcony-solar/

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/03/23/bluetti-ac300-the-ultimate-portable-power-station-for-home-work-and-play/

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/07/29/want-to-kiss-your-utility-company-goodbye-plug-in-solar-could-be-the-key/

https://www.pveurope.eu/e-mobility/ecoflow-launches-new-home-energy-management-system-and-ev-charger

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/08/15/germans-fight-climate-change-on-their-balconies-in-solar-panel-boom

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/new-hampshire-vermont-bill-cheap-balcony-solar-plug/

Groundbreaking EV that charges WHILE you drive is unveiled – and can add 14 miles a day...

The Sun

@Npars01 @randahl They are placing panels on balconies, not chargin EVs with them.

https://thedriven.io/2025/11/07/milk-eggs-and-a-fully-charged-ev-supermarkets-turn-to-solar-canopies-and-public-charging/

There are people charging EV's with solar panels.

They may or may not be attached to a building balcony.

They are called "balcony solar panels" as a catchphrase to indicate their portability, not to mean they are restricted to use on balconies only.

Australia has carpark canopies with integrated solar panels & charging stations.

Milk, eggs and a fully charged EV: Supermarkets turn to solar canopies and public charging

Retailers are set to drive public fast charging as they hone in on a new revenue model from electricity sales.

The Driven

Angie Jan 28

@randahl 💞 keep us informed in USA.

Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven Jan 28

@randahl There's another good one at https://euroalternative.co/

Discover European Alternatives to Big Tech Companies – EuroAlternative

Keep your data in Europe, support local innovation, and simplify business operations. Our directory connects you with European digital service providers.

EuroAlternative

@asmodai thanks.

@randahl Yeah! This page is one of the reasons why I am trying Mastodon! Also I switched years ago to mapy.com from Google Maps and Waze. Much more detailed maps, awesome worldwide offline maps and tourist maps, actual traffic and traffic warnings ala Waze. Recommend! Also I switched to @ecosia and their really good AI search.

Raymond Schmid Jan 28

@randahl cool info. Alternatives are plentyfull.

aysc Jan 28

@randahl Nope. We don't need a eurocentric Internet.

Christian Stadelmann Jan 28

@randahl In Germany, there is also Digital Independence Day, an initiative to help others regaining control over their digital infrastructure https://di.day/
It is partially relying on European Alternatives, but also has lots of other hints

@genodeftest wunderbar!

charizard Jan 28

@randahl As cool as this does sound, I'm American and it would feel... inauthentic to *only* use European alternatives. Still do enjoy some EU stuff.