Let me tell you about the “boycott light”: It is of course difficult to directly eliminate all American products and all American technology from your life. Smartphones are one technology in particular for which there is no real European alternative. And of course, in some cases Amazon is the only place where certain products are available or where certain products are significantly cheaper than elsewhere. Boycotting is hard, but there is a way to hurt them without hurting yourself.
But: the big tech companies live from your “engagement”. The more time you spend on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, the more advertising they can show you. And the more profitable you are for these companies. That’s why they rely on all these addiction mechanisms, because every minute you spend there is hard cash for the companies. This also applies to the eCommerce giants. PayPal collects a commission for every payment. Visa and Mastercard too. Amazon also takes its cut and so on.
Every minute that you are not surfing Facebook but are on Lemmy, Mastodon, on other websites or even offline is a minute in which your engagement there drops and in which no profitable advertising can be shown to you. You can of course stop using those services completely and delete all accounts, but if that’s not possible, a partial boycott is also a good idea. If only one of your friend groups stays on Facebook and you move with the others, that’s less time spent there and therefore less profit for Zuckerberg. Your local football group wants to stay on WhatsApp, but you can move your friends to Signal? Less time spend in WhatsApp, KPIs are going down.
And of course it’s hard when certain products are significantly cheaper on Amazon than in other stores. But if you compare prices before you buy and then buy many products elsewhere and don’t just go for the default Amazon, then that’s poison for Bezos pocket. If you simply select the other payment methods for stores and not PayPal by default, that attacks their business model. Does a store only have PayPal? Then you can of course do without the purchase completely, but: If you no longer use PayPal as the default, but only where it is absolutely necessary, then the KPIs at their HQ will be on fire.
This also applies to other digital services: If you no longer use Google Search as your main search, but only as a backup when you haven’t found what you want in other search engines, then they will absolutly go nuts at Google HQ. If you use an Android phone but refuse to use the AI and all the cloud services, then that kills their engagement metrics and honestly: it doesn’t do you any harm.
So: If you are unable to do a full boycott, a partial boycott is still an effective method of harming certain companies. Try to be as unprofitable as possible for you in your circumstances.
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Yes, this has been my point exactly! People are getting too lost in the sauce, not realising dropping their usage of 100% US products/services, to 50% US products/services, that’s already a huge damage to their profits.
Bonus points if the other 50% can become EU consumption, because then you’re also enriching our common block. Take your time, reduce your US dependency one app at a time, and you’ll be surprised by how quickly you reach 60-80% EU products (where I’m at currently).
The more of us start trying EU only products, the more complete our availability of other products will become. Our own version of Visa/MasterCard is already in development, and hopefully we’ll soon have some reliable alternatives to AWS and Azure too.
Very good post, I agree completely! It’s easy to let perfect become the enemy of good.
One thing I’d add is that many social media companies sneakily get their trackers added to random web pages or other services you might use, so doing random things on the internet could be included as extra engagement (and it also doesn’t require you to be signed up to their service in the first place, though it helps them). In this case their business is the data they collect on your behaviour, even outside of their own services, and the ads they can target to you using this on behalf of other entities who outsource their advertisements. It’s quite scary how ubiquitous this is.
I think what OP suggested here is a very good mindset to live by, and it will help a lot. If you wanted to go one step further, you could consider combining this with steps to try and prevent these companies from still harvesting your data when you’re not even aware that you’re using them, e.g., by blocking such trackers as much as possible.
Fairphone from netherlands
or just, like, buy a second hand phone
pixels are pretty easy to find second hand and you can just unlock the bootloader and slap lineage on them
Yes that is true and a good option, but fairphones are also modular and designed for home repair
Super hard to order in Canada unless you find an american distributor, which defeats the point.
@Routhinator @retrolasered I know, I am just a random stranger on the internet, but you can buy them already degoogled with /e/OS here: https://murena.com/products/smartphones/
It comes at a bit of a premium, and it can be quite a wait, but they do ship to Canada directly from France via UPS
Else I would be glad to figure something out with you.
Thanks!
Still running on Android
Yes does run android but they publish instructions how to install custom rom or you can get one running murena OS which is degoogled. I just run stock android and disable google myself
De-googled, isn’t it?
No. It has custom ROMs like calyxos that are degoogled but out of the box it itself isn’t degoogled.
Source: have installed calyxos on mine because of that reason
You could buy them with
/e/OSpre-installed IIRC, at least some model at some point.You are right, /e/ is now named Murena
@F04118F @neons From https://murena.com/products/smartphones/ you can.
Kay. Running grapheneOS for that matter. Thought fairphone come cleansed, too… the more you know.
@SrMono @neons Stock is indeed normal Google Android. But they really do make it easy to switch to Calyx or /e/OS and back.
Would love for @WeAreFairphone to also start offering a choice of OS, especially in the current geopolitical climate. #unplugtrump
@rraggl @SrMono @neons @WeAreFairphone
Keep in mind that you can only receive a google ready license for your device if you ship the google services by default.
Any other operating system must be installed by the user after purchase or by some other company that does it for them.
Where is the difference between Fairphone offering a google free OS to install post purchase or supporting the community around E or Calyx to make their version work on Fairphones?@taketwo @SrMono @neons @WeAreFairphone And offering the alternative OS would show many consumers that there ARE alternatives out there. Most ordinary people have never even heard about the things we are so casually discussing here.
Many just want to just use the device and wouldn’t be able to flash ROMs etc. So many people are perfectly happy and fine if they know how to turn on their computer to watch YT, send mails, write letters and do their budget. We nerds tend to forget that.
@taketwo @SrMono @neons @WeAreFairphone And your point is?
They already do work with Murena. Keep in mind Fairphone is still a very small company, compared to others, with limited resources. They can’t do it all on their own. And each Fairphone sold is contributing to the idea there is a way to do things differently than what happens now.
Until things like #jolla or #VollaOS and #ubuntutouch gain significant traction (especially UT needs a revival), they are our best chance.
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