Honest question, is Switzerland a part of the EU now, or do they just get a pass for being surrounded?
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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They are not an official member, but being surrounded by EU countries lead to them being included in a lot of treaties and such.
Oftentimes they are considered friendly.
Where's the part suggesting getting off social media altogether, and stocking up on guns, ammo, and cans of beans?
@skeptomatic @SrMono You find that aplenty over on Matrix...
And in other communities. Also you misspelled beer.
I would recommend deezer over Spotify. Spotify enables Rogan and all his bullshit
Qobuz! It pays artists the best out of any streaming service appartenly
How is deezer these days? Last time I used it is many years ago.
edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Industries Access Industries owns Deezer. They invest in the US and Israel and have donated millions to republicans in the past.
Or Qobuz (both are french)
Is Waterfox the most recommended Firefox alternative nowadays after the recent Firefox controversy?
Also not sure I would call Proton privacy focused. I still use it, but they have been rating out an environment activist to French authorities before.
After switching your search engine, hop into your European time-machine and go back to February to continue this guide.
Idk who you are talking to 😂 The overview originated on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1jcr8ks/here_is_the_new_and_improved_guide_to_help_you/
No Threema?
Unfortunately, Threema will never be a real alternative because of the price tag. There are just too many good alternative that are for free. For example, Element is European, privacy-wise good and for free.
Orion is not a paid browser. Kagi, however, is a paid search engine, and Orion was made by the Kagi team. The browser is completely free and is in all Apple OSs (coming to Linux soon) and gathers absolutely no data. And the browser comes with no search engine chosen by default so it isn’t really an ad for Kagi.
I personally think it’s amazing especially how you can have both Firefox and Chrome extensions on it. Its only issue is it being proprietary.
Orion was really well made. It is still beta, but when it is more stable, I'll give it a second go! 100% recommended.
In what way is mastodon privacy focused?
Well, the flyer originated here: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1jcr8ks/here_is_the_new_and_improved_guide_to_help_you/ but mastodon stands out as it has no commercial driver. There aren't any ad-services profiling you, so that is a big win for your privacy.
Yeah, but all your data is public, everyone can see it
You can set a deletion time and hope that every client comply with that :-)
Why does nobody ever remember about the Vivaldi browser?
What makes Vivaldi better than other Chromium-based browsers in terms of privacy and such?
It's also chromium based. But other than that it's european and a pretty cool browser!
Well, certainly not nobody, I hear it mentioned quite often on the internet! Just make sure to keep talking about it, if you want it to get more popular :D
Both Tuta and Proton have a free tier for their email. Also, I think Infomaniak's kmail might be an even better replacement for the typical email/cloud providers than the aforementioned, for normies at least.
can anybody explain why people hate on Waterfox? I'm using it for over a year now and it's been great so far!
why people hate on Waterfox?
it used to be owned by an ad company, so I guess some people just don't want to put their trust back in yet
I think it's about none of Firefox forks being remotely capable of evolving on their own. So any large scale push to leave Firefox for any of these forks might only hurt Firefox which would in turn hurt its forks.
My insignificant opinion on the matter is that it's great to have different flavors of Firefox that might be better suited for you, but it doesn't appear to lead to a solution to the underlying issue.
thanks for that answer so we should all continue supporting firefox, as it helps it's forks too? i mean they are still a non profit but they have been doing weird stuff lately..
I would be more interested in why they didn't go with LibreWolf?
i tried librewolf about 2 years ago but it didn't quite work for me since it's high security settings were breaking the sites i visited :O
Kmail suite for mails, cloud... (Switzerland ) they have a free plan (15GO for the cloud, and the cheapest paid plan is 2e/month for 1TO (20e/year ).
Threema for discussions (Switzerland) . the application is 5e, definitv not cheap for an app, but it is a one time paiement.
Swisscows (Switzerland), mullvad Leta (Sweden) as search engine.
=> they do not use their own index system but brave or google (you can choose for mullvad)
All those options are Europeans and have strong privacy policies.
Is it possible to set up a signal server, or is it not completely FOSS?
It isn't at all. It is closed source powered by an American non-profit organization.
You can consider this organization as friendly.
They recurrently said, they would shut the gates if U.S. government/law wants them to store more than metdata (phone number+last activity date) they are storing.
So noodlejetskis comment below is wrong?
Thanks for the info BTW, I'm an avid user and proponent of Signal (best out there today eh.)
@Valmond @SrMono Most popular out there and one of the easiest to set up / easiest to convince non-tech users to switch over to. Not the best... For me, that award would go to Matrix / Element.
Threema would be second (and should be first), but many will balk at the shocking fact that they dare to ask money to contribute to their development and operation costs...
What about SimpleX Chat? Comes without identifiers, is open source and not located in the US. Relay Servers are located in Germany, UK and Sweden and it's possible to host your own. Last audit was in 2024. No metadata is stored. Fundings are handled very transparently and presentated on the Website.
Not meaning to advertise it, just genuine interested in other peoples opinion.
In terms of security I would go Matrix, Threema, Signal.. in terms of usability I would say Signal, Threema, Matrix.
Threema also has a Business line which helps to cover the cost, but yea.. the price went up from 1€ to 5€. Back in the days I sponsored some licenses and spilled a bunch 1€ in the club like a rich man.
you can set up your own server for your own needs as far as I know, but you'll probably have to build your own version of the client to connect to it. there's no decentralisation.
@Valmond@lemmy.world
@SrMono@feddit.org
Very good question and one of the big critic points about signal.
It is theoretically foss, but so complicated apparently, (or parts missing?) that it seems nobody ever menaged to set it up.
So in effect it it proprietary.
And since I is lock-in there is also no incentive to start another server. That's one reason to use federated protocols.
:xmpp:
Ecosia also has a browser for Android and Windows/Mac. Just not Linux. Vivaldi is great for Linux.
There's also the free ksuite mail/drive as a free email alternative!
@SrMono isn't bluesky also US owned
Absolutely, and they evaluate training AI on user content. It's just a stopgap solution, I would always recommend mastodon instead.
Last time I read here that Tidal is American. Which is it then?