@dangoodin The French government, in a bid to get its citizens and businesses off US tech, recently sponsored an open source video conferencing project.
https://github.com/suitenumerique/meet

@dangoodin I'm slowly working towards not depending on any of them. But here's catch-22 that I'm yet to find a good solution for:

Your email domain.

Are there any trustworthy domain registrars that don't require you to have a valid email address in order to acquire and manage a new domain?

@dangoodin I totally feel you. I have been a platform refusenik for many years and have found that people often take a depressingly compliant, conformist attitude towards all their technology decisions. They just do the most popular thing and feel that somebody else should be responsible for the consequences.

But strangely, after a few years of being the annoying guy at a party calling CEOs fascists (not a good tactic), followed by many years of being more "oh no sorry I'm not on FasciTalk. Here's my phone number/email." Things changed.

Now, sooo many people are starting to understand and take an interest in having more independent infrastructure. So I'm actually more optimistic than I've been since like 2007.

That said, I do find that you can't really convince anyone of anything. They have to come to their own conclusions on their own terms. But you can be supportive of people when they do, especially in helping them understand that FOSS solutions may be quite different from glossy corporate stuff and require community care and janitorial work.

@dangoodin adoption and reach are the hardest things to overcome for a product that requires critical mass.

And even if you do not, the truckloads of $$ that have gone into making google or whatever 1/visible and 2/easy to set up are a force on their own.

Call it VHS vs. betamax but without external forces or regulatory events, it is VERY hard to displace even shitty incumbents, just because they happen to be there already.

I appreciate everyone who has taken time to respond. Unfortunately, some of the responses demonstrate how much many of us privacy-minded technologists live in ivory towers and have no idea how hard it is to get the rest of the world to take on the added friction of switching.

@dangoodin If any of these larger orgs have the capacity to do like a "social media strategy", they should also have the capacity to build a strategic roadmap to leave big tech.

One step at a time, starting with the easiest steps and growing their experience.

It can't be like "we have no strategy to leave Facebook, therefore we're going hook, line and sinker". But I think that's what's happening.

@taylorlorenz

You are not alone in having difficulty convincing people to switch. This thread contains alternatives to several Big Tech offerings.

I guess the smaller servers are not cool enough for some, and others don't want to have to learn a new system. And there is the constant campaign against small servers, asking if they are safe and generally throwing doubt.

Also smaller servers are more vulnerable to attacks like DDOS and stuff.

So it amounts to a lot of resistance.

@dangoodin

https://european-alternatives.eu/

;-)

@dangoodin Perhaps a mental shift could help light a different path?

Those organizations have formed with people who are spending their focus on solving a problem. They cannot solve all problems and would rather exert energy solving the problem they exist to solve.

This is where Community helps. In a community, you have different people with different priorities. In your communities, you have you.

Do you have bandwidth to identify what your union is using, say, Google for, and get that shifted over to a better solution, at the cost of becoming the union's expert and manager in that domain?

@dangoodin Even trying to pursuade certain relatives off WhatsApp. Oh my friends are all on it & I don't want notifications for another app as well.

@dangoodin working on posting a full-fledged list of alternatives here, for people & teams looking to change (so far just a few - stay tuned) - https://goodreports.com

@dangoodin Noone NEEDS to use those comanies services. Any person, business or organisation can deside to stop using them. Then make a plan and line up other opions, and then moving on.