Well, get to it then! Ain't got all year.
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
491 points (99.2% liked)
Privacy
46636 readers
575 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
I think its great that Europe is looking to rely less on US tech but nothing about whats going on with Europe (especially within the EU) makes me think privacy is a focus.
Not even the GDPR?
It hasn't stopped countries like France, and Italy (not a complete list just examples) from being some of the least privacy friendly western governments.
GDPR is nice and all, but people have been fighting chat control and all its hydra heads for years now, so no.
But I'm an American so what do I know?
load more comments
(1 replies)
Yeah? Because Chat Control is still a thing. And age verification as well, but the EU won't outsource that to 3rd parties (we have EIDAS and the EU wallet for that).
That reminds me of a quote I heard once. Probably from Cory Doctorow but I cannot remember now.
"Everyone wants you to have privacy... just not from them."
Companies that have had their whole data on Google/MS servers for 20 years certainly don't care for privacy the way you and I do. But they are certainly realizing that US providers are not the way to go. Baby steps I guess.
I think many companies are basically stuck with Microsoft (Excel, Word, Teams, Sharepoint, Onedrive etc). Switching to something else is going to be a pretty serious project. It's going to be expensive and time consuming.
Totally worth doing IMO, but convincing the CEO is another matter. I guess we need a cautionary tale before the executives decide to reserve a few million euros for rebuilding a significant part of the IT infrastructure.
It'll help when governments stop accepting or just blocking links to onedrive and sharepoint, and file formats that are not open. Then companies are forced into using alternatives instead of just blindly using microsoft, or don't work for any government project again.
Now there’s a business opportunity. When companies are that screwed, they’ll start the project immediately. That’s when system migration consults get rich.
Just have companies get tax reductions if they use EU only software. Voila, it’s done within months - to the shock of every it- admin out there.
Yep. Money steers the decision making process. Politics determines how money works, and companies just go with the flow.
Convincing CEOs is not our job. In general they have neither the obligation nor the habbit to take anything else other than their KPIs into consideration. Convincing elected polititians to legistlate is our job.
Some know already, some will bow to reason, many will do whatever keeps them elected. People will need to re-learn to play the long game.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Excel is the biggest hurdle to overcome. No other spreadsheet software comes close to providing the same amount of features and functionality.
Can confirm! Calc is fine as long as you’re not trying to do anything too advanced. Then again, when you bump into those limits, you might want to consider switching to R or Python anyway. Excel just allows you to delay that inevitability a little bit longer.
This is the real thing of it. By the time you reach that you shouldn't be using a damn spreadsheet program.
At least for greenfield set it up right now. There's plenty of actual programs that do things theyre supposed to.
I mean, you can run python (or their own language "LibreOffice Basic") from within a Libreoffice Calc sheet.
Calc's scripting is actually more powerful than the aging VBA thing Excel uses for macros, imho.
load more comments
(1 replies)
So I keep hearing... Yet, I'm having a hard time believing that most people are even aware of those fancy features, let alone use any of them.
I accept that there are important models implemented as excel sheets. Reimplementing or even attempting to migrate away is viewed as risk. But this is a different argument.
And a lot of people don't need all those features.
If they put all the effort they use to change things in favor of ai to migrate to software alternatives, it would be a perfectly viable project
load more comments
(4 replies)
I just wish that the narrative would focus more on the anti-competitive behavior of these firms to make sure we don’t fall into the same monopolistic trap in Europe. We need variety, we need competition. Focus on standards, low switching costs, and allow reverse engineering.
don't talk about it… do it!
It will never happen as long as slugs like van der Leyen or Merz are running the show. These people are completely incompetent.
No.
Merz and von der Leyen are extremely competent, they just don't pursue the goals they say they do. They may even belief that they are pursuing other goals than they really do.
They believe in trickle down economics despite all evidence pointing to it making everything worse. In their pursuit of economic growth, they do the exact thing that in their model should boost, but in reality stifles growth. They increase the wealth redistribution from the poor and middle class to the rich.
And they are so damn good at it. That's the reason money has put them in their current positions.
They are extremely competent in doing the wrong thing.
They believe in trickle down economics despite all evidence pointing to it making everything worse.
It is high time we switch to Pinata economics.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
FYI, Proton CEO also caught flak for praising Trump picks, so they are playing both sides of the field FYI
in that article (which i had to use the Bypass Paywalls Clean extension to comfortably read) Proton states "we do not comply with US subpoenas from either party." which of course is because they comply fully with Swiss subpoenas LOL
load more comments
(2 replies)
Mentally ready. Actually not ready at all.
Given they broke their own procurement laws to choose US tech companies for their cloud infrastructure its definitely silly.
Please do, hurt these tech Oligarchs where it hurts!
oh god.... we have built everything on microsoft stuff and the higher ups insist that anything that legally can be hosted on the cloud be migrated to azure. This will cause us (the actual workers) untold levels of pain if it were mandated by the eu.
I still wish it does become mandatory though
Meanwhile, my employer decided to switch from a self made Linux platform (with it's pitfalls due to the usual "it's free, why should we put so much money into maintenance" reasoning) to Microslop. I and multiple other people warned them, again and again.
The alternatives don't have to be perfect. Reducing the dominance of any single country is a good thing.
load more comments
(3 replies)
France is. The EU is working on trying to get EU-made solutions in use. Switzerland is not in the EU and neither is the UK.
Now that we established this, we can have a productive conversation.
Yeah
I agree with the misworded commenter
Europe ditches US Based tech and software for stuff they control, so they can better enforce their insane privacy invasion laws better more like
Let's not forget most of the swill age verification legislation around the globe is originating from the EU, and that privacy/encryption focused software groups are fleeing the region (see proton) due to their mallegislation
Proton is leaving Switzerland afaik, to operate in the EU. You’re not wrong about the shit the EU is trying to pull with mass surveillance and de-anonymization. Yeae fornyear it geta struck down by courts, but the fuckers try and try.
i'm sorry you have a typo, "the west" is not written "the globe"
The title rubs me the wrong way. "Private alternatives" implies the US tech isn't privately owned.
I think you misread it. "Private", as in "privacy".
The company is private, but your data isn't.
Still, the title is misdirected, and it sounds like Proton trying to do marketing.
Neither is it true that Europe is ready yet (most companies are stuck with MS products like the other commenter said) nor are all those who want to switch looking for privacy (but rather more independence from US).
Doubt it, honestly. The NSA has a Consolidated Intelligence Center in Wiesbaden as well as Darmstadt’s Dagger Complex just a stones throw away from Frankfurt the center of EU finance and logistical hub. Any alternative will be compromised with these bases remain.
view more: next ›