What crazy times we live in, and now everything is becoming even more absurd with President Trump. Regardless of the big-picture political situation, the goal should now be to become independent of the US and strengthen the EU. There is also a lot that can be done in the private sphere, and I would like to gradually present alternatives for US services and products in a small series.
Early 2020, I had tried to sketch out in my article “An IT Strategy for Europe” what I thought such a step towards digital sovereignty might look like in broad strokes. Not much is happening in this regard.
I would like to offer the following criteria for achieving independence and reliability:
- Self-hosting → If you operate your services yourself, no one can shut them down and the data belongs to you.
- Decentralized → A distributed system is less susceptible to outages and censorship.
- Open source → The software cannot disappear and can be verified.
Image by mistral.ai
Selfhosting
It is so nice and convenient to use the services of large providers like Google, Microsoft or Apple, but more often than not you pay with your personal data. Even services like Apple can quickly change their privacy-friendly stance; there are already signs of this and the history of comparable services makes trust shrink.
Home network
Unfortunately, operating your own server is not for everyone, but it is less complicated than you might think. You can start at home with a NAS. I own a Synology (Taiwan). It comes with many services of good quality that cover the essentials. But actually it can be any computer, the main thing is that Docker can be operated on it.
Docker is the key to really easy and secure operation of “self-hosted services”. There is an almost infinite number of solutions for every problem.
For example, I run Home Assistant (open source) on my Synology, which is the dashboard for all devices and sensors in my own home that are somehow connected to the network. For photos, I use Immich (open source), which also has features that can keep up. A VPN connection - in my case WireGuard via a fritz.box - allows me to use all services while on the road.
Internet
But even running a Docker service on the internet is not rocket science. At Hetzner (promo link), for example, you can set up a virtual server for less than 5 EUR and get it ready to go with Docker. After a few preparations (https://github.com/holtwick/selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#selfhosted) to connect your own domain to the IP, you’re ready to go.
I run many services there, but for private use I mainly use nextCloud. The look is a bit outdated in some places, but it serves its purpose for file sharing and other things you know from iCloud, for example.
Decentralized
Everyone uses the internet’s most famous decentralized service: email. Actually, the whole magic of the internet is its decentralized structure. If something fails somewhere, the information finds another way, just like an ant trail.
Large providers are usually centralized. Of course, they try to distribute the load in the background, but these services are still technically vulnerable to disruptions, data loss and security breaches.
All the better that there are now more “federated” services again. Lately, Mastodon has become particularly well known as a Twitter /X alternative. But in this so-called Fediverse, other solutions are also emerging that can then also connect with each other. A good example of this is the YouTube replacement PeerTube.
But there are other forms of decentralized data processing. One movement that I particularly like is called Local First, which again emphasizes the importance of data being available locally. Storing the same data in different physical locations is also a form of decentralized structure. The prime example of this is versioning systems like git.
Open Source
Free and open software is the cornerstone of deeper trust. First, open software is not so quickly “out of the world”; it exists a thousand times over in copies. Secondly, with a little expertise, you can see exactly what the software does. And thirdly, it can be adapted, which in turn contributes to the project. It’s a digital form of volunteer work, without having to join an association ;)
Further links
- Kuketz blog on the same topic with interesting links and tips (German):
https://www.kuketz-blog.de/unplugtrump-mach-dich-digital-unabhaengig-von-trump-und-big-tech/ - Directory of European alternatives:
https://european-alternatives.eu - General search for alternatives:
https://alternativeto.net - Lots of pre-installed self-hosted projects, good for testing:
https://adminforge.de
Published on March 11, 2025