Right around the time of Trump's re-election, I discovered European Alternatives, a page dedicated to—well—European software alternatives. It was the first time I reconsidered my software choices in terms of origin. With that in mind, I was taken aback when I checked the apps I had installed on my phone. They had US and Silicon Valley written all over them. Now what about these European alternatives? Can't we build software too? Europe can build software too! Bear is my favourite notes app. It‘s built in Ireland (previously Italy) and is therefore not only European but it also resisted the general tendency of today's software manufacturers to enshittify their tools with the likes of AI. Plausible is my analytics tool. Not only built in Estonia but also the polar opposite of what Google Analytics does: namely, it doesn't track any identifying information about my website‘s visitors. It's built for privacy-minded people like me who are fed up with big tech and surveillance capitalism.…
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Great post! 🤝 I feel the same way about Spotify, but it's hard to let go. Deezer is nice, but I decided to give self-hosting a try first.