How to Avoid US-Based Digital Services—and Why You Might Want To (www.wired.com)
from cm0002@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 21 Mar 20:46
https://lemmy.world/post/27174103

#technology

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apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world on 21 Mar 21:30 next collapse

archive.is/oRUQV

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 21 Mar 21:37 next collapse

Just pirate everything. Problem solved.

floofloof@lemmy.ca on 21 Mar 23:00 next collapse

Not all online services are streaming media services. There are lots of other US services to get away from.

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 21 Mar 23:10 collapse

For example?
Other than apple google and facebook

Edit: Smooth, no examples. Stay classy.

floofloof@lemmy.ca on 22 Mar 00:15 next collapse

You want me to list every US tech company that provides an online service? That’s absurd. Am I supposed to be proving that there are more than three companies in the USA that do this?

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 00:41 collapse

Any examples would suffice. But you’d have already done that if you’re replying in good faith.

AarynBlack@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 01:28 collapse

You could start by reading the article you’re commenting on.

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 02:03 collapse

I obviously did, i said not the companies the article talks about.

You’re not as clever as you think you are.

AWittyUsername@lemmy.world on 22 Mar 11:25 collapse

I don’t think you are

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 11:54 collapse

Asking for alternatives shouldn’t be met with so much hostility. But please, carry on.

[deleted] on 22 Mar 21:50 next collapse

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echodot@feddit.uk on 23 Mar 08:57 collapse

You’re getting met with hostility because you are being unimaginably rude and dismissive.

Your original statement was that you would just pirate everything, and you’ve been as several times now how you plan to pirate Wikipedia how you plan to pirate Salesforce or Cloudflair. You can’t because those services aren’t just the downloadable files, they’re servers, and ongoing constant updates. “Lol Pirate it” is not an answer, it doesn’t even make sense. It’s like saying that the solution to expensive healthcare is to just pirate medical treatments.

ladfrombrad@lemdro.id on 22 Mar 01:51 next collapse

GitHub? Internet Archive? Wikipedia?

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 02:05 collapse

What are the alternatives to those?

ladfrombrad@lemdro.id on 22 Mar 02:12 next collapse

Exactly, you tell me since I’m just giving you examples of US hosted services as you asked for.

Personally you could self host all three, but it would be a fairly expensive endeavour and you’d be operating on a brand new platform with no users.

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 03:39 collapse

How would i tell you when i asked you for the alternatives? That doesn’t make any sense.

ladfrombrad@lemdro.id on 22 Mar 16:59 collapse

Pray tell, how do you “pirate” a SSO service as you alluded to above?

No one asked for alternatives. We’re more interested in how you’re gonna “pirate” these things. Cheers!

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 23 Mar 11:02 collapse

I asked for alternatives. More than once. Cheers!

EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world on 22 Mar 02:43 collapse

[deleted] on 22 Mar 03:39 next collapse

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taipan@lemmy.world on 22 Mar 05:34 collapse

Britannica is headquartered in the US (Chicago) and most Wikipedia editors are not from the US, so I wouldn’t count out Wikipedia so quickly.

dubyakay@lemmy.ca on 23 Mar 01:30 next collapse

Damn. We need a decentralized archive and encyclopedia badly.

echodot@feddit.uk on 23 Mar 09:01 collapse

Eh?

The problem is Wikipedia is based in the US. Where editors are from doesn’t really matter. If Wikipedia gets taken down by the government the fact that I don’t live in the United States isn’t going to allow me to continue to update it. We would have to move everything over to a new platform outside the United States, so yeah I absolutely would include Wikipedia.

Most people who post on Facebook aren’t located in the US either

taipan@lemmy.world on 23 Mar 18:27 collapse

The difference between Wikipedia and Facebook is that Wikipedia content is under a Creative Commons license which allows the entire encyclopedia to be forked and the underlying software (MediaWiki) is free and open source. The entire Wikipedia database is continuously mirrored to servers in countries outside of the US, so Wikipedia can be resurrected in any other country if the situation you describe happens. In contrast, any Facebook content would be lost due to adverse government action.

Asking people to stop using Wikipedia is like asking people to stop using Linux because the Linux Kernel Organization is based in the US (California), despite Windows and macOS also being US-based. There’s no comparable non-US alternative to either Wikipedia or Linux, and the projects can be forked to different countries by their contributors without any action from the projects’ managing organizations. If you boycott Wikipedia, you also play into the hands of Elon Musk and other agitators who are attacking Wikipedia in an effort to redirect the public to right-wing US media sources.

Finally, part of my point was that Britannica is not an improvement over Wikipedia, because Britannica is also US-based. This is the reason I mentioned that Wikipedia editors are mostly from outside the US.

EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world on 22 Mar 02:38 collapse

Other than three of the largest tech companies in the world that encompass services from social media to maps to email?

Well there’s X, Amazon, Reddit, Microsoft, Oracle, Broadcom, Salesforce, Intuit, Cisco, Palo Alto, Ubiquiti, and CloudFlare. There’s a total of 15 examples, not counting subsidiaries of these companies, nor breaking them down by product like YouTube, Gmail, Twitch, Maps, Azure, AWS, VMWare, etc.

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 03:41 collapse

Thank you. What are the alternatives to those?

EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world on 22 Mar 03:54 next collapse

To those what? Those are the American companies behind the services, the actual list of services and products those companies provide would take awhile to list out. Then each one of those products or services is going to have 1-3 alternatives at least. If you want some alternatives you’re going to have to narrow down your question, because like the guy you originally replied to said, there are a LOT of them. If you want a teaser, you’re making these comments on an alternative to one of the products of these companies right now.

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 10:14 collapse

Ok. Thanks for the help…

samTheSwiss@lemm.ee on 23 Mar 08:55 collapse

Have a look at european-alternatives.eu

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 23 Mar 11:39 collapse

Nice, thank you for a real answer. I appreciate it.

WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world on 22 Mar 00:30 collapse

I’d pirate a data center if I could

TachyonTele@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 00:42 collapse

Id download the whole damn thing, along with a car.

lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works on 22 Mar 12:01 collapse

Good one! 🤣🤣🤣

tad_lispy@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 06:25 next collapse

Is this coming from Wired magazine, aka the press organ of silicon valley? Big wows.

reksas@sopuli.xyz on 22 Mar 10:37 next collapse

when shit really hits the fan europe will lose access to some if not all us based services.

ColdWater@lemmy.ca on 22 Mar 12:17 next collapse

The only US service I ever used nowadays is YouTube with extreme ad block ofc

marsNemophilist@lemmy.wtf on 23 Mar 11:22 collapse

that cannot be true.

lseufer@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 13:52 next collapse

Qwant is owned by Huawei. Leaving Trumplandia for Xi…

chakan2@lemmy.world on 22 Mar 15:41 next collapse

Xi isn’t going to take me away to special education camps. They can have my data.

JigglySackles@lemmy.world on 22 Mar 21:48 next collapse

Yet…

echodot@feddit.uk on 23 Mar 08:48 collapse

Why would he start? Meanwhile Trump is already an active threat today.

BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world on 22 Mar 22:53 next collapse

You do sound special

OccasionallyFeralya@lemmy.ml on 22 Mar 23:13 next collapse

Literally

Goretantath@lemm.ee on 22 Mar 23:42 next collapse

Pretty sure they already have detention centers wjere they send their “unwanted”.

Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee on 23 Mar 10:45 collapse

Yeah, but if you’re in the US, you’d be more concerned about the US authorities.

[deleted] on 23 Mar 00:57 next collapse

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GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml on 23 Mar 01:55 next collapse

We are literally watching ICE kidnap people in the USA with legal resident status and deporting them or transferring them to detention centers, and somehow people are downvoting you.

RoosterBoy@lemm.ee on 23 Mar 08:58 collapse

The Uyghurs disagree.

uniquethrowagay@feddit.org on 23 Mar 00:00 next collapse

Can you back that claim up at all? Qwant is not owned by Huawei. They don’t even hold shares as far as I can tell.

lseufer@lemm.ee on 23 Mar 16:01 collapse

8 million convertible bounds in a company that hasn’t turned a profit. Sure no risk at all.

TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world on 23 Mar 09:36 collapse

Qwant is owned by Huawei.

No it isn’t.

Why are you lying like this? What’s the goal?

Qwant is based in Paris and its owners are:

  • Jean-Manuel Rozan

  • Éric Léandri

  • Patrick Constant

  • Caisse des dépôts et consignations (basically a public investment institution owned by the French government)

  • Groupe Axel Springer (an online media company based in Germany)

So again: why did you lie? What’s the goal here?

lseufer@lemm.ee on 23 Mar 15:58 next collapse

lefigaro.fr/…/le-geant-chinois-huawei-va-financer…

TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world on 23 Mar 17:09 collapse

This source backs me up, not you.

Under the terms of the contract, the Chinese group has the possibility of converting its obligations within two years in order to become a minority shareholder in the French group - in the order of 5 to 7.5% of the capital, according to the documents obtained by Politico. But such a scenario, which would allow Huawei to influence Qwant’s strategy, can only be achieved if the Chinese group obtains prior among other conditions. According to Politico, this mechanism reassured the Deposit Fund. Qwant, on the other hand, assures that Huawei is not trying to get into its capital.

So, a 2021 source says Huawei, in accordance with agreements, could possibly take a 5 to 7.5% stake as long as they did it within two years. It then states that this isn’t something Huawei actually intends to go ahead with.

It’s been well over two years, Huawei indeed didn’t take a stake in Qwant, and Qwant is still entirely French-German.

With that above information, you went online and lied, saying Huawei owns Qwant. They do not. You lied. And now you’re doubling down on it.

Bit suspicious, by the way, that you’re a new account with only 3 comments, all of which spreading misinformation.

Octagon9561@lemmy.ml on 24 Mar 07:26 collapse

That last bullet point is indeed a negative for Qwant.

loudartist@lemmy.wtf on 23 Mar 10:58 next collapse

Some of us are behind paywall. Here is a link to get a full access. archive.ph/nV6RS

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works on 23 Mar 17:26 collapse

This is a weird line in the sand. Instead of focusing on where something is build, shouldnywe focus on technical details and software licenses?

For example, Signal is based in the US, but the app is structured in such a way that they have minimal information: just the creation time and last login, associated with a phone number. That has even been tried in court, and that’s literally all they could provide. Telegram is worse technically speaking, but it’s headquartered outside the US.

Don’t evaluate software based on where it’s developed, evaluate it based on what is does and can do in the future.