I’m in the process of dropping US tech services. Here’s how I did it, and options you should consider.
The United States has become the world’s biggest bully, threatening any country that doesn’t do as it demands with tariffs, and its tech companies are taking full advantage by flexing their muscle and trying to avoid effective regulation around the world. The drawbacks of our dependence on US tech companies have become more obvious with every passing year, but now there can hardly be any denying that where we can pry ourselves away from them, we should make the effort to do so.
I’ve been trying to replace the services I use with alternatives that are not based in the United States or heavily tied to it. I won’t lie: it’s not always an easy process. There are some services that have plenty of alternatives, but others where drawing back from those offered by US companies means retreating from communities that don’t exist elsewhere or have far less functionality. And that’s not even to get into how many non-US services are still hosted on servers owned by Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.
