Many roads lead out of Rome

Our digital switch recipes provide an easy, simple way to say goodybe to Big Tech, but there are other options as well. To make it easy for you, however, we focused on one approach – without saying that other options are any worse.

The criteria for “good”, “not so good”, and “bad” are certainly open to debate: At DI.DAY, we're focused on simple ways to move away from Big Tech (without being purist or dogmatic). If you have suggestions, feel free to reach out to us at hallo@di.day.

A good general overview of alternatives to Big Tech is also available here:

Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, MetaGer and many more: Different search engines have different pros and cons. If you’d like to find out more, you can find further information here:

Many bookstores now offer online shops that are just as good as those run by the market leaders. There are alternatives for the international book market too. If you’d like to find out more, you’ll find further information and comparisons here:

Signal, Threema, Matrix, Element and others: Different messaging apps have different pros and cons. If you want to dig deeper, you can find more information here:

Firefox, Brave or Ungoogled Chromium: Different browsers have different pros and cons. If you want to dig deeper, you can find more information here:

In our view, moving away from X is long overdue. However, people have different views on which communication platform is the best alternative. We are currently recommending Mastodon. You can find out about other alternatives here:

Because email operates using open protocols, you can reach anyone from any provider (unlike the closed data silos of social media networks). That’s why there’s genuine competition in the email sector – and plenty of options. If you’d like to find out more, you can find further information here:

One company dominates the online transactions market: PayPal. And the credit card companies VISA, Mastercard, and American Express are also based in the U.S. – Is that what diversity and independence look like? More tips and tricks for switching payment providers are available here:

There are alternatives to Microsoft Office – and some people are glad to escape the U.S. giant’s subscription model. After all, your data stays with you – and the alternatives are just as practical. Here’s some further information for those who want to delve deeper:

Google and Apple Maps don’t just show you the way – you also show them your habits: Which restaurants you visit, where you shop, or when you drive to work. If you no longer want to let Big Tech track your data, here’s some information to help you dive deeper with the issue:

Older computers often run better on Linux as the operating system uses fewer resources than Windows. What's more, Linux doesn't collect any data about you, and you can take another step away from the major U.S. tech monopolies. You can find further guides and tips here:

A home for your photos, texts, and spreadsheets, protected by the European General Data Protection Regulation – without your vacation photos being used to train a tech giant’s AI. Where can you find it? You can read about it here:

Thanks to widely recognised formats (CardDav, CalDav, WebDav), you can manage your calendars and contacts outside of the Big Tech platforms and synchronise them across all your devices. Here, you’ll find further overviews of possible alternatives:

Thanks to the German software Nextcloud, you can set up your own cloud storage. There are a few other alternatives too – if you’d like to find out more, you can continue reading here:

This giant is based in Europe: Spotify dominates the music streaming market, pays artists significantly less than other platforms, and in some cases helps content reach a wider audience that has little to do with European values. If you’d like to explore alternatives, you can find more information here.

The next stage in the shift of power: the AI models of major US companies are processing our data on a massive scale. And because they display results directly (rather than providing links like search engines), the rest of the internet continues to wither away. If you want to know your data is in better hands and don’t want to support this widespread copyright infringement, you can read more here.

Your passwords are the key to independence: there is hardly any other digital information that is so valuable to protect – or so vulnerable if compromised. Read on if you don't want to leave the protection of your passwords in the hands of a browser manufacturer.

Always in your pocket and increasingly essential to our daily lives, the mobile phone is our silent companion — and, if it has a Google or Apple operating system, a silent data collector. Read on if you no longer want to enrich the big tech monopolies with your data, but can't bear to part with your mobile phone.

Amazon, Shein and Temu dominate our online shopping. If you'd like to see more variety in your purchases, you'll find some useful tips here.

Ever since the pandemic, at the very latest, video conferences have become part of everyday working life – and sometimes part of our private lives too. Here you’ll find more tips and tricks if you’d like to dive deep into more alternatives.

If you want to free your books from the clutches of Big Tech (and, let's be honest, if books aren't free anymore, what is?), you'll find more resources here for further reading.

YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime dominate the streaming market, at least in landscape mode — in portrait mode, TikTok is also a major player. However, there are some great alternatives out there. Read on to find out more.

Google and Apple make it easy for us to store our photos straight from our phones to the cloud — and for good reason. After all, by storing our photos in their clouds, they gain access to data that encroaches on our privacy. If you’d like to learn more about alternatives, you can read more here.

The internet enables cooperation, or 'collaboration' as it is known today. Some see this as a blessing. However, many view it as a curse because this collaboration is leading more and more companies, organisations and individuals to shift their work to platforms such as Google and Microsoft. Click here to read more if you’d like to approach collaboration differently.

Google and Apple keep us trapped as much as they can: they want us to download apps from their stores wherever possible. Yet there are plenty of good alternatives offering lots of exciting apps. If you’re interested in finding out how to get apps without using Google and Apple’s app stores, you can continue reading here.

Authenticators provide a second security barrier to protect our data, emails or accounts. But Google and Microsoft don’t allow us to simply export them. If you want to break free from the Big Tech cage, you can dive deeper here.

Your podcasts are trapped in the silos of Spotify, YouTube Music, Audible (owned by Amazon) and other platforms. These big tech companies make it difficult for you to take your podcasts elsewhere and subscribe to them independently. Yet podcast subscriptions are based on an open protocol: RSS. If you want to find out more about how you can free your podcasts, you’ll find further reading tips here.

With Pixelfed, you can share your photos with a large online community and view other people's photos, all without the many drawbacks associated with Big Tech platforms like Instagram. If you'd like to give it a try, you can find out more here.