The IT Blog<p><strong>Myown <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://www.locked.de/tag/unplugtrump/" target="_blank">#UnplugTrump</a> to more digital sovereignty</strong></p><p>If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’m gradually moving away from “classical” Big Tech social media, focusing more on Mastodon and my own homepage.</p><p>On Mastodon, I came across <a href="https://mastodon.social/@_elena" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Elena Rossini</a> and <a href="https://news.elenarossini.com/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">followed her journey</a> toward greater <strong>digital sovereignty.</strong> Inspired by her example, I decided to give up my YouTube channel in favor of a self-hosted <a href="https://joinpeertube.org/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">PeerTube</a> instance.</p><p></p><p>That, combined with a desire to make better use of my NAS and keep up with recent developments in the tech world, pushed me to seriously evaluate some <a href="https://european-alternatives.eu" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">European alternatives</a> to the cloud services I’d been using.</p><p>Somewhere along the way, I also discovered the <strong><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://www.locked.de/tag/unplugtrump/" target="_blank">#UnplugTrump</a></strong> hashtag—a campaign (or movement?) calling for more digital independence. It encourages people to disconnect from platforms tied to Trump and Big Tech and instead opt for privacy-respecting alternatives.</p><p>The emphasis is on decentralization, open-source solutions, and European-based services – aiming to reduce reliance on (U.S.) tech giants. That didn’t sound too bad – so I decided to put my own setup to the test.</p><p>But enough talking – where do I stand now? Did I even need to change anything?</p><p><strong>Services that I changed / migrated completely:</strong></p><ul><li><strong>Webhosting</strong>: I was lucky here. I was hosting all my online presence(es) in German data centers (under my own Domains) anyways since years – so nothing to change.</li><li><strong>Twitter</strong>: I left Twitter in about Spring 2023 and deleted all my content there.</li><li><strong>Facebook</strong>: I left Facebook quite a while ago, still have a dormant account but haven’t logged in since long.</li><li><strong>Pi-Hole</strong>: To reduce (Ad-)Tracking I had a <a href="https://pi-hole.net/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Pi-Hole</a> running for quite a while. I’m surprised by how many requests it blocks.)</li><li><strong>Delete Cookies</strong>: I always thought this would be annoying. But after accidentally clearing all my cookies, I gave the setting a shot – and it’s surprisingly smooth (<a href="https://www.locked.de/how-to-get-rid-of-cookie-adtracking-easily/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">see the blog post</a>).</li><li><strong>Youtube</strong> publishing: I abandoned my YouTube channel in favour of a selfhosted Peertube instance (<a href="https://www.locked.de/how-to-selfhost-peertube/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">see the blog post</a>) and I am happy with it.</li><li><strong>Google Photos</strong>: As I am moving my photos into Lightroom and my NAS anyways, I deleted all photos and videos from Google Photos.</li><li><strong>Cloudflare DNS</strong>: I once praised Cloudflare’s malware-protecting DNS in a <a href="https://www.locked.de/how-to-get-simple-dns-protection/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">blog post</a>. But after reading about their <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/password-reuse-rampant-half-user-logins-compromised/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">analytics</a> practices, I realized: nothing is truly free. I’ve since switched to a <a href="https://european-alternatives.eu/category/public-dns" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">European DNS resolver</a> without analytics.</li><li><strong>GMail</strong>: This was by far the biggest pain to evaluate and migrate! I’ll probably write a separate blogpost about it. (TL;DR: I’d recommend <a href="https://mailbox.org/de/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">mailbox.org</a>, that would also solve my pending calendar issue).</li><li><strong>Contacts</strong>: also off GMail</li></ul><p><strong>Partially Migrated or Decreased Usage:</strong></p><ul><li><strong>LinkedIn</strong>: deleted almost all content (<a href="https://github.com/onceiwasadev/delete-linkedin-activity/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">using some great scripts</a>) and might use it to link into my blog.</li><li><strong>Instagram</strong>: There are still a bunch of people I don’t want to lose touch with there – so I’m keeping it for now.</li><li><strong>WhatsApp</strong>: the final boss. It’s unlikely I’ll ever fully quit, but I switch to other messengers whenever possible.</li></ul><p><strong>Services that are open for possible migration (later):</strong></p><p>These are services I’m still evaluating. I haven’t found the right alternative yet – or the effort just isn’t worth it (yet).</p><ul><li><strong>Calendar</strong>: I was a bit surprised to find that some basic calendar solutions don’t even support inviting other people – and are often tightly linked to your email and contacts. As mentioned above, <a href="https://mailbox.org" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">mailbox.org</a> might be the way to go. But that would mean moving email – <em>again</em>.</li><li><strong>OneDrive</strong>: could be replaced with Synology Drive, but might also require quite some configuration.</li><li><strong>Search engine</strong>: I’m still looking for the perfect balance of privacy and good results.</li><li>An external <strong>Backup Target</strong></li></ul><p>There are still some services and applications left. But the rest is either too cumbersome to change or I just don’t have an alternative with UX that works <em>for me</em>. And honestly? I’m fine with that.</p><p>I don’t expect to fully unplug from everything – but being more intentional about the tools and platforms I use has made a big difference.</p><p><a href="https://www.locked.de/myown-unplugtrump-to-more-digital-sovereignty/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">locked.de/myown-unplugtrump-to</span><span class="invisible">-more-digital-sovereignty/</span></a></p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://www.locked.de/tag/dataprivacy/" target="_blank">#DataPrivacy</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://www.locked.de/tag/decentralize/" target="_blank">#Decentralize</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://www.locked.de/tag/digitalsovereignty/" target="_blank">#DigitalSovereignty</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://www.locked.de/tag/eutech/" target="_blank">#EUTech</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://www.locked.de/tag/fediverse/" target="_blank">#fediverse</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://www.locked.de/tag/selfhosting/" target="_blank">#selfhosting</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://www.locked.de/tag/unplugtrump/" target="_blank">#UnplugTrump</a></p>