Big Tech Exit

At 39c3, Marc-Uwe Kling, together with the CCC, called for the Digital Independence Day: The idea is to use the first Sunday every month to reduce your personal dependence on big tech and billionaires.

What I like about this approach is that it acknowledges that this is a process of many tiny steps and that a lot of people will need support. Hackerspaces in Germany will offer help to those who require it. I also really liked the idea of the “plus one rule”. Let’s take the example of WhatsApp, the quasi-standard messenger in Germany. Instead of telling people to uninstall WhatsApp, which they will likely be unable to do, ask them to add Signal. This starts a network effect for Signal, allowing you to, one by one, move conversations from WhatsApp to Signal.

Taking Inventory

For the first Digital Independence Day, I want to check where I am at with my dependence on Big Tech and what I want to achieve this year. I’m writing this on the coolest notebook I’ve owned so far: the MNT Pocket Reform. It is open hardware and runs Debian. I also use Linux exclusively for work, most of my applications are open source and I don’t use X, WhatsApp, Instagram…

But still, I have some dependencies on Big Tech. These companies are also known as the “Magnificent” Seven, based on the fact that they dominate the stock-market valuations. Their power over our lives is significant, and centralization of power leads to oligarchy. This is no longer theoretical, as each of the leaders of those companies kissed the ring of King Trump, so their politics are entirely clear. In an ideal world, I would not use anything made by these companies, but unfortunately that’s not the case. So in the following table, I list the “Magnificent” Seven¹ and which of their products I’m still using:

It makes me quite happy to look at this table, but I still want to reduce my dependency on Apple, Microsoft, and YouTube. Let’s go over it by category.

iPhone and iPad

As a recovering Apple user (I used Macs exclusively for over 20 years), I still use my iPhone and iPad. To me, switching from iOS to Android is no improvement. Luca Weiss explained really well why Android Forks are not a sustainable solution either in his talk at FrOSCon 2025, so I will not repeat it here. I hope to switch to mainline Linux on my mobile devices at some point – the progress they made in 2025 is impressive. GNOME is already my favorite desktop UI ecosystem, and I’m sure it will become my favorite mobile one as well.

I might get a refurbished Fairphone 5 this year to try it out, as PostmarketOS already supports it quite well. I do not plan to switch this year, though.

iCloud

Like most iOS users, I had a lot of data synced to iCloud. In 2025, I already made a lot of progress moving things out of iCloud. I went through the storage section in the iCloud settings and deleted the data I did not want to store in iCloud anymore and moved them elsewhere. It is a tedious process, as Apple Settings is slow and crashy. Some deletions I had to repeat several times. This is what’s remaining right now that I want to move out this year:

• Photos: The original plan was to move them to Nextcloud, but unfortunately the iOS integration is unreliable. I guess Immich and Ente are the other alternatives to try.
• Notes and Reminders: Shared with my partner, we want to try Obsidian as a replacement. If it works well, I will also move my personal notes from Nextcloud Notes to Obsidian.
• Messages: I’m surprised that there are 14 GB listed here. I will research if there is a way to archive and then delete them.
• Calendars: I moved mine as well as the ones shared with my partner to Mailbox–only the calendar shared with my family is still there.
• Contacts: I started to move them over to Mailbox, but I’m cleaning up along the way. I will continue with that.

What I will keep in iCloud as long as I have an iPhone/iPad (less than 4 GB in total):

• Passwords: Only contains wifi credentials.
• Apps: Ice Cubes, Overcast & Signal store some basic info.
• Backup

Navigation and Planning

I recently uninstalled Google Maps and am using CoMaps for navigation by foot. In the car, I use its navigation system. For cycling, I will try CoMaps or a bike computer. To no longer use komoot for planning cycling tours, I want to learn Bikerouter instead.

Communication

My main messenger is Signal, by a huge margin. I might be able to convince my remaining contacts and groups on iMessage (the only Big Tech messenger I’m using) to switch. Let‘s see.

My main social network is the fediverse, and I’m very happy with it. I really like having a social network not controlled by a corporation, and I like the interactions there. I’m also using LinkedIn, which I’m not happy about. But I consider it a necessary evil for now.

GitHub/npm

Except for one project, I moved the open source projects I maintain from GitHub to Codeberg, and I prefer it a lot. That last remaining project on GitHub is faucet-pipeline which I maintain together with my friend FND. We will transfer that to Codeberg as well this year. I’m still using GitHub for commercial projects, and it remains the main place for open-source projects in general. I remain hopeful that, step by step, the latter will change.

For frontend and Node development, npm is a sad and necessary garbage fire. It needs to be replaced, but I don’t see any alternative emerging.

Browser and Search Engine

I’m a longtime Firefox user (now LibreWolf, but I consider this a different default configuration and not a different browser). There are only three general-purpose browser engines (Chromium, WebKit, and Gecko), and every single one is financed by Google, directly or indirectly. That’s the sad state of the web. I think Firefox (or one of its “forks”) is the best choice.

I switched away from Google years ago and am currently using Ecosia (previously DuckDuckGo). But the truth is, there are only four search indices (Google, Bing, Baidu, and Yandex) and proxies like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and Startpage to access them. I’m slightly hopeful for European Search Perspective and OpenWebSearch–until then, I will stay on Ecosia and keep an eye on alternatives.

Entertainment

At the beginning of 2025, I cancelled my Spotify subscription and switched back to buying music. I consider Spotify to be similarly evil as the Big Tech companies². I now mainly buy music via Bandcamp, as they pay out the biggest share to artists as far as I know.

For video, it is not that simple. If a video is exclusively available on YouTube or Disney+, then you can either go there or not see it at all. In our household, our current strategy is to rotate through the subscriptions: Subscribe to Disney+, when we watched the things we wanted to see, cancel it, and subscribe to Netflix. I’m not happy with it, but I guess this will still be the case one year from now. We are using an Apple TV for it, as it seems to be the least bad streaming box. However, we are watching less and prefer German public broadcasting, media.ccc.de and PeerTube over YouTube, Apple TV, Netflix, and Disney+.

A long time ago, I used to be a Mac gamer. But it never completely clicked for me. A few years ago, I learned that I actually prefer playing with a controller on a comfy armchair and switched to consoles. I play solo on the Switch (Zelda franchise) and online with a friend on the Xbox (Baldur’s Gate 3). I’m especially annoyed that I need to pay a monthly fee to Microsoft to be allowed to play on Larian’s servers.

Therefore I’m intrigued by Valve’s upcoming hardware releases, as it might be the replacement I am searching for. Additionally, I want to set up a home server with Jellyfin for both audio and video.

Additionally

Outside of reducing my personal usage of Big Tech, at work, I want to continue helping companies to move their applications out of the hyperscalers (AWS, GCP, Azure, and Cloudflare). Together with my friend Dirk, we successfully moved fejo.dk completely away from AWS. Let’s see if other companies want my help with that this year as well.

I will continue not using LLMs. I haven’t seen any productivity gains outside the error margin except for some very narrow use cases, but what I see is a big increase in the dependency on Big Tech, horrible security problems, suicides, stealing from artists and workers, floods of useless traffic on websites from crawlers, the web flooded by slop, misinformation and propaganda, exploitation of workers in Africa, reactivation of nuclear facilities, new, enormous data centers slurping up the energy and of course the potential to pull the world economy into the abyss. And also, thanks for increasing RAM and SSD prices.

Outside of Big Tech, I also see a huge problem with online payments. It is basically impossible to pay online without using MasterCard, Visa, or PayPal, providing an accurate picture of all online trading to the USA. Let’s see if Wero can change that this year.

At 39c3 I learned that DNS provided by German Internet providers is under tight control of CUII, making it an easy way of censorship. To address that, as well as invasive online advertising, I want to set up a Pi-hole for our home network backed by a more trustworthy DNS resolver.

Lastly, I’m using the closed-source password manager 1Password. I would prefer an open-source solution, but it seems like all of them have significant downsides. I’ll keep an eye on that.

My Goals for 2026

This year, my goals for decreasing my dependence on Big Tech are:

• Leave iCloud (except for backups).
• Set up a home server with Jellyfin and PiHole.
• Move faucet-pipeline from GitHub to Codeberg.
• Learn Bikerouter.
• Try out PostmarketOS on a Fairphone 5.
• See if I can convince a few more people to switch from iMessage to Signal.
• Keep an eye on the new Steam Hardware, European search indices, and password managers.

Let’s check back on January 3. 2027 to see how far I’ve gotten.

Conclusion

This post focuses on my personal goals for the year. If you also want to leave Big Tech but feel overwhelmed, my advice would be to start small. You might not feel ready to leave behind your eBooks and audiobooks on Amazon, but you can start by not ordering physical items from them. You might not feel ready to leave WhatsApp behind, but you can start by installing Signal and seeing which of your contacts are already there. If you use Gmail, you can take a first look at alternative email providers and if you use Google, you can try out alternative search engines. Choose one thing, and make a switch.

Thanks

Thanks to nanoparsec, mkhl, Marius and FND for their feedback ❤️

Footnotes