https://www.patreon.com/posts/alternatives-to-126902702
"US tech services, the everyday tools and apps we need to function in the new
now, were generally untrustworthy and even harmful for US and non-US citizens
alike even before Big Tech partnered with the Trump government. Now that the US
is basically doing an anti-democracy speedrun and tech corporations are not
only in lockstep, but actively participating — and aiding the administration's
reach outside the US — more and more people are asking about alternatives.
The rest of the world sees it, too. Two weeks ago, Germany's leading tech
magazine
c't ran the cover story, "Get out of the US Clouds" as well as a
supporting video. "The internet giants are at Trump's feet," they wrote,
adding:
With Donald Trump's return to the White House, dependence on US cloud
services is becoming a growing problem. The Cloud Act forces US companies to
comply with instructions from US authorities, regardless of where their
servers are located. Not only states and companies, but also private
individuals are affected.
From data storage to email providers and online office applications to basic
internet services like DNS or certification authorities. It even affects
smart devices like Wi-Fi plugs if their core services are hosted on a
hyperscaler like Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure.
I think what stood out for me was when in 2023 I saw an increasing number of
pregnant people making throwaway accounts on Reddit to find out which US states
were safe to travel to, and to travel through. Not necessarily for abortion
services, but in case of emergency — if they needed a life-saving procedure
but wouldn't get one. That, coupled with this excerpt from a Proton post:
Even before the US Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in
2022, many states had passed laws restricting abortion rights.
To prosecute those cases, investigators have used chat logs, location data,
and web searches stored on the servers of American companies like Google and
Meta... Sometimes these data requests affect people that haven’t broken any
laws.
The good news is there are plenty of alternatives, and lots of people are
collecting resources. After I wrote this article for
WIRED about becoming a
digital ex-pat, readers sent me even more options, so I wanted to collect them
all in one place."
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-era-digital-expat/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
