this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
1004 points (95.0% liked)

Buy European

513 readers
705 users here now

Overview:

The community to discuss buying European goods and services.

European Alternatives

Related Communities:

Buy Local:

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Buying and Selling:

[email protected]

Boycott:

[email protected]

founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
 
(page 5) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I would be cautious to trust an American company just because they are non-profit. We know that if they get sufficiently big they can just transition into being for profit (see OpenAi), chances are regulations regarding this won't become stronger later.

Signal being open source of course helps, but it's usually the ecosystem that people grow to rely on that keeps them in place, not the technology. Just look at how big Reddit is compared to Lemmy for a good example of that. If signal was federal that would be quite different since jumping ship would be easy.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

For clothing id probably recommend thrifting. But I love this list.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

Thank you - from (sadly) an American

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This seems to have been made by a Swede.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

what do you mean sibylla (being named after a member of the royal family in sweden) isn't an international brand??

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Honestly a lot of this is just good advice in general, even speaking as an American.

Also, oof that General Motors apparently isn't important enough to be worth avoiding (and that ~~Chrysler~~ Stellantis no longer counts as American).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Maybe they don’t have a huge physical presence in Europe like ford does

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I've barely seen any of the drink alternatives (unfortunately).

Besides Redbull, which I don't drink, I've seen fritz cola, but that's usually at 2-2,5x the price of a coca cola. As an alternative that really stings.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

the drink alternatives feel rather german-centric lmao, like fritz seriously?

the only one i know as a more widespread brand is zingo and red bull. And really, we're talking about 3 categories of drink here: cola, orange, and caffeine. I would be very surprised if there aren't at least 3 generic brands available per country that taste perfectly okay and are cheap as fuck to boot.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Hahaha for some reason the generic sodas from Aldi/Lidl/... Slipped my mind. Most of them don't taste that great though. Guess it's a good excuse to just drink more water ( and add a bit of lemon juice or other slices of fruit for flavour ).

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (4 children)

First time i see this sub on the frontpage.

You should boycott evil corporations regardless of where they are from, don't make it a nationalistic thing, some of the alternative suggested here are as much bad as their usa counterpart. You are not achieving shit by switching from nike to adidas...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The last line on the document says "Perfect is the enemy of good. Every little bit counts."

It's pretty apt. To deal with this particular issue it makes sense to divest from one country to another regardless of brands. Divesting from mega corporations is another issue entirely and beyond the scope of this boycott.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No you see, when the workers are locked in the burning production plant, it matters a lot if they are are murdered for a billionaire who avoids taxes in the EU, as opposed to a billionaire avoiding taxes in the US.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

You do know that RedBull is owned by a right-wing extremist in Salzburg who tries to undermine Austrian democracy with Servus TV the same way Murdoch and Springer do in Germany and elsewhere?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Spond?

Spond is The Free Sports Team Management App Chosen by 1000's of Teams Worldwide!

Social media? Sports management is social media????

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

L for Proton mention.

CEO is fascist loving boot licker

Edit: company rescinded statement Andy Ten Yen made

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Fastmail is a good non US alternative. Based in Australia.

For those that don’t know about Proton. Proton CEO said “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.” The company then doubled down on a Reddit post which it eventually deleted.

You have to be blind or a liar to look at what the Republicans have done in the last 10 years and think they pro little guy.

Despite claiming political neutrality, Proton later issued a statement reiterating its support for stronger antitrust measures, particularly against Big Tech. The company noted that regardless of broader political views on the Republican platform, the appointment of Gail Slater as head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division under Donald Trump was a positive step.

So they don’t care how bad the government is as long as it helps them. So not a Nazi but willing to support them if they can get something out of it. Furthermore it is also not true. The US under Trump has threatened Europe multiple times to defend big Tech.

Proton further argued that major tech companies were attempting to align with Trump because his administration posed an “unprecedented challenge to their monopolistic dominance.” This statement only fueled concerns that Proton was leaning politically despite its claims of neutrality.

They don’t seem to understand what politically neutral is. Also if you wanted a president that went after big tech, Biden did way more than Trump:

Under President Biden, the DOJ and FTC have taken a more aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement.  

The Justice Department filed another suit against Google over its dominance in the advertising technology space and sued Apple for allegedly monopolizing the smartphone market.  

Biden’s FTC also sued Amazon for antitrust violations, accusing the e-commerce giant of engaging in anticompetitive behavior to dominate the online retail space.

Proton also lied about logging user data.

In 2021, Proton Mail admitted to handing over a user’s IP address to Swiss authorities following a request from French law enforcement via Europol. This revelation contradicted Proton’s earlier claims that it did not log user data.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Yikes that's worse than I thought

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I am still waiting for anyone to give actual evidence for that. Stating on twitter that the Democrats were unwilling to even listen to their concerns, while the Republicans were willing to meet, seems to be quite far from bootlicking imo.

The whole outrage seemed to be engineered in the same way there were people claiming Proton would be a CIA assets, but never providing any lead, not even some obscure untrustworthy website making such a claim.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Looks like the company officially recinded the statement Andy Yen made. Posted text to avoid Xitter link

Tap for spoilerWe want to clarify that Proton's CEO did not endorse Trump, only the Republican nominee for antitrust. Nevertheless, we have retracted the statement, which was put out by mistake due to an internal miscommunication. For further information, you can also see this Reddit thread that contains an analysis of why many believe that Proton and our CEO are not supporting any party:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/1id5v21/does_proton_really_support_trump)

Proton is not controlled by any single person, but by the non profit Proton Foundation which has neutrality in its governing principles and we remain committed to the neutrality principle. The Proton Foundation is also legally obligated in its charter to defend freedom and democracy.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You can add Miele to the appliances list.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Consider buying Solovairs instead of Dr martens. They're basically the same, the main difference is that they are made in the UK in a factory that used to make Dr martens before they delocalized their production to Asia

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Pretty sure Qwant just uses Bing's index for search

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

It's pretty much just Bing and Google no matter what engine you use nowadays. Well, unless you go with Yandex or chinese search engines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines - Mojeek is a meta-search engine, but it also crawls the internet itself, which makes it very interesting.. I might give it a go.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Same goes for Ecosia though both are now creating a European search index.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

They're working on European search indexer along with Ecosia

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Love to see Europeans jumping on board as well. At some point Americans only customers will be Russia and North Korea if Trumps administration keeps bullying and alienating countries like this.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Delta Chat is a European decentralized instant messenger alternative using existing protocols.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

protocols? isn't it just a very quirky email client?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Yea email is a protocol

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›