Services listed in the Wired article, “How to Avoid US-Based Digital Services—and Why You Might Want To,” along with others I’ve added as I learned about them are below.
Updates on privacy laws in Switzerland, where Proton, a leading privacy-first communications provider, based its servers prior to expected or implemented regulatory changes:
- In September 2025, I learned Proton is indeed moving its servers (source 1, source 2) due to uncertain and likely invasive changes to Swiss privacy laws. The shift will occur in phases, and the company’s AI product will proceed first. Proton mentioned it will be focusing on EuroStack, which appears to be a consortium of business aiming to build digital infrastructure for Europe that presumably supports the privacy tenets of companies like Proton.
- On May 17, 2025, I learned of the Swiss government considering new laws (article here) that would render Proton, a great option amid those below, essentially less secure than Google accounts in the United States. The company’s CEO, Andy Yen, said they’d find another nation in which to base their business if it happens.
The resource list:
- A thematically related list of resources about managing daily life if core functionalities of the current baseline civilization fall apart: https://margiprideaux.substack.com/p/a-collective-guide-to-surviving-climate
- Abduction management
- Stop ICE Raids Alert Network / Stopice.net
- Iceblock / https://www.iceblock.app/
- Signal Safe / https://www.signalsafe.app/
- People Over Papers / https://padlet.com/PeopleoverPapers/people-over-papers-anonymous-anonimo-lf0l47ljszbto2uj
- Book clubs (Goodreads alt), e-reading devices, book services, audio books
- StoryGraph / https://www.thestorygraph.com/
- Kobo / https://www.kobo.com/
- Storytel (audio books) / https://www.storytel.com/tv
- Browsers
- Brave / https://brave.com/
- Vivaldi / https://vivaldi.com/
- Waterfox (UK) / https://www.waterfox.net/
- Code repositories (aka GitHub)
- Codeberg / https://codeberg.org/
- Databases
- Uwazi / https://uwazi.io/
- Email (and calendars, but you’ll need to explore the sites)
- Proton / https://proton.me/
- Tuta / https://tuta.com/secure-email
- Forms and data collection
- Open Data Kit (ODK) / https://getodk.org/
- Hosting, website generation and management
- IONOS / https://www.ionos.com/
- Nextcloud / https://nextcloud.com/
- Tella Web / https://tella-app.org/tella-web/
- Instagram/social photo sharing
- Pixelfed / https://pixelfed.org/
- Proxigram
- Internet connection
- EUTELSAT / https://www.eutelsat.com/en/satellites.html
- Maps
- Magic Earth / https://www.magicearth.com/
- TomTom AmiGO / https://www.tomtom.com/en_us/navigation/mobile-apps/amigo/
- HERE WeGo / https://www.here.com/products/wego
- OpenStreetMap / https://www.openstreetmap.org/
- Organic Maps / https://organicmaps.app/
- Mesh networking / decentralized computing and messaging
- Article: Best Mesh Wifi Chat Messaging Apps / https://medium.com/@xenovandestra/best-mesh-wifi-chat-messaging-apps-without-internet-for-emergency-chaos-earthquake-other-16468017a342
- Article: Decentralized Computing: The Future of Resilience When the Grid or Internet Fails / https://onsurvival.substack.com/p/decentralized-computing-the-future
- Berty / https://github.com/berty/berty
- Bitchat / https://github.com/jackjackbits/bitchat
- Briar / https://briarproject.org/
- Bridgefy / https://bridgefy.me/
- Jami / https://jami.net/download/
- Jitsi (video conferencing) / https://jitsi.org/
- Matrix / https://matrix.org/
- Meshtastic / https://meshtastic.org/
- Meshenger / https://github.com/meshenger-app/meshenger-android
- Muzi / https://muzi.works/
- Retroshare / https://retroshare.cc/
- Start9 / https://start9.com/
- Tox / https://tox.chat/index.html
- Umbrel / https://umbrel.com/
- Movies, music, and TV
- Plex / https://www.plex.tv/
- Jellyfin / https://jellyfin.org/
- Office (word processing, spreadsheets)
- CryptPad / https://cryptpad.org/
- LibreOffice / https://www.libreoffice.org/
- Proton (also mentioned below) / https://proton.me
- Phones
- Hushed / https://hushed.com/
- Phoner / https://phonerapp.com/features/
- Photo editing, visual editing (Photoshop, Adobe products)
- Affinity and Affinity Suite / https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/
- Search
- Brave / https://search.brave.com/
- Qwant / https://www.qwant.com/?l=en
- SearXNG / https://searx.space/ | https://docs.searxng.org/
- Startpage / https://www.startpage.com/en/
- Storage
- Tella / https://tella-app.org/
- Cryptee / https://crypt.ee/
- Transcription
- Good Tape / https://goodtape.io/ / Servers in Europe. Denmark company. Use OpenAI Whisper model.
- Video watching and hosting (YouTube replacements, via LibRedirect)
- VPN:
- Nym / https://nym.com/ / Based in Switzerland, and so may suffer the same fate as Proton if new Swiss laws pass (article here).
- Proton VPN / https://protonvpn.com/ / See the note about Swiss privacy laws in the bullet point about Nym or in the intro paragraph to this blog post.
List of lists:
- https://www.disconnect.blog/p/getting-off-us-tech-a-guide
- https://codeberg.org/Linux-Is-Best/Outside_Us_Jurisdiction
- https://european-alternatives.eu/categories
- https://gabriellefeather.substack.com/p/digital-resilience-companion-guide
- https://github.com/anitwek/alternatives-to-us
- https://jillianratliff.substack.com/p/secure-comms-for-the-resistance-0ce
- https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/
- https://libredirect.github.io/
A guide from Imagine the News: https://imaginethenews.com/index.html
A visual guide to switching services from this Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1jhvd58/your_guide_to_moving_away_from_big_tech_and/
And a visual shortcut. I cannot recall the source:
