A European perspective on individual digital sovereignty Christian Triantafillou Schade May 16, 2025 As an IT strategist, digital tool consultant, and former tech reporter, I have been looking at the risk to European individuals and small companies from the possible withdrawal of digital services by providers in the USA. As a citizen of a European country, you need to protect yourself and your family and friends from loss of data, access and utility. In the current geopolitical situation, there is a real and present danger of politically motivated attacks on the digital tools and services used by EU citizens, not just from hackers supported by hostile nations but from foreign governments that are formally allied with European countries. I have created a continuously updated list of current popular technology tools and recommended replacements with alternatives outside the US jurisdiction in each category. It contains alternatives for categories such as word processing, web browsing, email services etc. Find it here: [[Personal Technology Resilience checklist]]. New analysis documents are frequently added. Feel free to drop me a [contribution](https://buy.stripe.com/4gM9AU5QH4AObDrc1vd3i01) to help cover the hosting and production costs, I suggest €5. ## What could happen? Well, that's the key question—what kind of disruption could we actually experience? Many experts and governments in Europe have already warned us. The major risk covered here is that a government that rules a country, where primary IT services are hosted and in whose jurisdiction their suppliers are incorporated, decides to use the threat of withdrawing these services through an administrative decree. As a pressure tactic to obtain concessions, like gaining money or territory, this could be very effective. Say, if the USA decided to forbid all US service providers (Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Netflix etc.) to supply any digital services to European nations, unless they hand over territory. The disruption of our daily lives would be disastrous. The cost to citizens, corporations and governments would be massive. And believe me, switching to other providers is complicated and takes time. Some alternatives are readily available, others involve making fundamental changes in the way you work and personally use digital services. You might have to keep your personal data under lock and key since we would not receive a fair warning in such a case. ## Drawbacks of switching to alternative solutions Usability is clearly an issue. The solutions that can replace established market leaders such as Microsoft Word are rarely as easy to use, integrated, or feature-rich as the tools they replace. Many of them have not had the many millions of euros (well, dollars, really) available to build the powerful solutions we are now in danger of having withdrawn or disrupted. Or they have existed as under-the-radar alternatives, primarily used by the more tech-savvy folks. There is not always a complete replacement available in the market - Instagram and TikTok are examples of services that are so unique in the combination of their concept and reach that there is no credible replacement in the short term. Social media is a special case. You come for the network, not the technology, which also keeps you there. While my general recommendation for SoMe is Mastodon, and it is the most resilient solution on paper, it has the drawback that all of your friends and family might be on a different network owned by Meta. This means that migrating to another network equals starting all over, building your network and convincing friends to join you. I'll go into a recommended approach for social media in a later post. Cost can be an issue, since you will most probably be getting software and services from a larger number of providers, as opposed to fully integrated product suites. Still, some of the suggested tools can cover many use cases with some implementation effort. Also, you might end up paying in cash for services that you have until now paid for with your personal data. ## Benefits of switching Many of the alternatives listed here are more privacy-focused than the solutions they replace. Also, they should be able to survive a cloud disengagement, even if that cloud is not US-based. I am even assuming the operating systems could be disabled (Windows, Android, MacOS and IOS), though that is really the Very Worst-Case scenario here. So you will have a much more resilient setup, and this is the key motivation. Besides avoiding the above scenarios, you might have the added benefit of generally better protection of your digital privacy. Many of the alternative products are in a growth phase, which could mean that they are open to evolving with a better focus on user needs than the megalithic tech providers today. They often have a smaller footprint on your system, size-wise, and they’re usually also less bloated with features. You support overall European digital sovereignty and helping boost the European digital industry, which needs it. Customer service is generally very good in the EU time zone. I still remember the old days when I worked for the American Internet industry, when Europe mostly belonged in the ROW (Rest of World) bucket for reduced customer service. ## Criteria for recommendation So, what conditions have I applied in my research to find replacement solutions? - First, the service provider, online or physical, must be outside the USA jurisdiction to prevent it from being shut down by a US presidential decree or law. - It has to be physically hosted outside of the US to prevent unlawful US government interventions that a court of law could later rescind (but the damage would have been done already), as well as corporate interventions perceived to be on behalf of the US government without actual legal cover. - The preferred hosting and jurisdiction are in the EU, EFTA, Continental Europe, the UK, Canada or Japan, in that order. - If possible, services and apps should offer increased privacy by default. We might as well improve that while we are at it. - There should be a reasonable feature match with the products they are replacing, or at least a decent use case outcome match. This means it might not be the same feature set, but you can achieve at least the same essential outcomes. - The supported operating systems for the choices should be Windows, Mac (macOS) and Linux. This means that even in a worst-case scenario where you would have to replace your operating system (MacOS or Windows) with Linux (which can run on most PCs in one incarnation or another), you should still be able to install or at least access the recommended tool on your laptop or desktop PC. - The recommended solutions should allow graceful stepwise degradation of utility, meaning that you don’t have to opt for a complete replacement of your entire tech stack (set of systems). If your office application is disabled, you might still have full use of the operating system. But the focus in this analysis is on solutions that could support the OS replacement scenario as well, and a lot of possible solution recommendations have fallen on the wayside here due to the condition that they should be available on Linux as an app or at least in a browser. - I have not favored open-source solutions specifically, except when two very close runner-ups were available. However, when Linux availability is a condition, we often end up with open-source or web apps anyway. And remember, open-source solutions are not always free. - Applications that run on your devices and enable cross-platform sync are favored over cloud apps if a reasonable alternative is available. Cloud apps that are unusable offline are avoided with a few exceptions. - For recommended mobile apps, reasonable (if not full) usage should be possible on mobile devices running Android and iOS (Apple iPhone and iPad). Linux is also possible on some mobile hardware platforms, but the hardware is often so specialized that it is not really realistic or even likely. For example, you can’t install Linux on an iPhone without advanced hardware lab-style tools, and even so, it won’t support most of the hardware in your phone. I'll write about the whole mobile worst-case scenario at a later date. - Author's personal preference still applies - I am a sucker for slick visuals, smooth integration and the balance between utility and usability. Your opinion might differ. ## When to switch? For each tool, I have added a recommendation of when to switch: Now or when the current tool becomes unavailable. This is shown by checking the “Plan A” or “Plan B” columns. Of course, this is dependent on your specific situation. However, I have focused on the risk of losing your documents and other data when a service is disrupted, as well as the trouble you have to go through when making the switch later, after the disaster has arrived…If you don't think it will be relevant for you in the near future, at least take look at the Plan A candidates. So that’s it for the context. Check out the [[Personal Technology Resilience checklist]], send some feedback, and if you are so inclined, drop me a buck with the [Stripe link](https://buy.stripe.com/4gM9AU5QH4AObDrc1vd3i01).