Joan Westenberg – Here’s What I’m Using [this is a long comprehensive read, and very useful especially for researchers, librarians, government, academics, journalists]: “…Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and other tech companies operating on American soil can talk a big game about their sovereignty, independence, and encryption. But talk may be all it is; there can be no guarantee that an authoritarian U.S. government will not compel American cloud, email, productivity, and messaging providers to open their databases and records to partisan law enforcement. If you care about your rights, if you care about your data, if you’re paying attention to U.S. decline, it’s time to start looking for alternatives to American tech domination. I’ve long been a proponent of simple tech. So I’m not looking to build a complex productivity stack with all the bells and whistles; all I want, all I need, is tech that works and does the job. And while in the past, privacy was a major concern, I’m taking that up a notch, trying to move as much of the technology I use off U.S. big tech platforms and servers and onto European / Canadian owned, operated, and hosted platforms, or open-source, distributed software maintained by international teams who aren’t driven by a growth-at-all-costs mentality…”