Not every european company embodies european values. As an example, Signal is listed as a US company people might want a european replacement for – and yet Signal represents european values much better than many of the alternatives.
This is a great point where nationality does not reflect political values. Many Americans exist that do not carry the opinion of their government, as do many Russians.
If a global set of "Don't be an asshole" values could be defined, put into words, shared and progressed, it would have much greater value to a consumer and the world than merely going back to nationalism and protectionism.
But it is not nationalism as the set of common shared values aren't bound to nations. And neither is it protectionism in the traditional meaning of the term. If you don't participate in upholding the value system (or worse actively seeks to destroy it) then you don't get to reap the benefits. I read this "buy European" initiative as a "don't buy American" in light of the current political situation. Withholding trade is an incentive to US voters to fix their system and tap into the benefits once again as a reward.
Those are sufficient excuses that prevent countries from signing free trade deals with other nations: we don't trust the health of your political system to sign a free trade deal with your nation.
In a world without an electoral college, I’m not sure you can say this.
Almost every state is winner take all in electoral votes.
I suspect there are a lot of discouraged voters who don’t vote, because they live in states where their opinion is overrun by the political slant of the state’s majority.
In a direct popular vote, their vote counts a lot more.
They don't support imperialism, but they also don't care enough to be against imperialism. They care about egg prices or their favorite culture wars more than about people dying elsewhere.
I think it’s more complicated - this feels like a psychology and biology issue.
Those things are naturally closer to them which then means they generate stronger emotions. Just intuitively, emotions fuel pretty much all decisions. I mean, if heroin didn’t feel good people wouldn’t do it. If fast food didn’t taste good people wouldn’t eat it. Conversely, negative emotion create patterns of behavior.
Our behavior is complex and choice is a spectrum. I don’t really choose to brush my teeth, it just kind of happens. I can stop, but I don’t. I look around me and nobody stops brushing their teeth. Perhaps brushing our teeth is so popular because it creates positive emotions. Less shame, less worries, more comfort.
I think, those in power harness this quite effectively.!
People have choosen to believe obvious lies because they wanted them to be true, not because they thought they were true. It's as much their fault as the politicians who lied to them.
They know enough to understand which way should their ignorance be pointed to support their worldview.
I've seen this countless times, I'm from eastern Poland, we had our own MAGA ruling for 8 years, and eastern Poland is where most of their voters come from.
When it benefits these people - they understand enough to know what the mainstream opinion is and they don't oppose it.
When it does not support their worldview - they suddenly stop believing the experts or forget what the expert opinion is.
Ignorance is not the root cause. It's a protection mechanism.
It's fascinating to watch at first, but after 8 years of this I'm just tired.
> They know enough to understand which way should their ignorance be pointed to support their worldview.
Again, you assume or are you god? Did you mind read everyone? Otherwise there's no way to really tell. Are the votes public? What people say might not be what they vote for.
> I've seen this countless times
As in you've looked at everyone in existence?
> Ignorance is not the root cause. It's a protection mechanism.
Again how do you draw this conclusion that 100% or at least >70% are like this. It's like you decide for them. So even if they're ignorant you're going to rule otherwise.
> It's fascinating to watch at first
This is worse than stereotyping. What's fascinating is listening to your reply.
> That's not what people voted for (agreeing with the government)
I could play your game (asking at every point how do you know). And we will get to the point that we both agree it's just our interpretations of facts.
Now that we established that - can we return to a regular discussion?
I live among such people. They are my family and my neighbors. We talk about this. My uncle has a company distributing pig feed. He's doing it for 20 years. He pays taxes. When our Polish MAGA introduced a tax reform that they reverted next month (becuse it was self-contradictory) - he defended them and argued his taxes will be lower when it was mathematically false.
He's not stupid. He have choosen no to understand something he's good at - because he wanted to preserve his political beliefs.
My father is a teacher. He argued previous government "never raised teachers' salaries" and that his beloved MAGA government did. In reality (and I know that because my wife also was a teacher at the time) - it was the other way around. I've googled the data on the official government website. He did not changed his mind.
These are 2 examples out of dozens.
It's like talking with flat-earthers. It's not that they never encountered anybody to teach them science. They did, and they actively choose to ignore it. In fact they have to know the mainstream position at least well enough to know what not to believe.
> And we will get to the point that we both agree it's just our interpretations of facts.
You're trying to prove something with a much higher requirement than mine. Where are the facts to begin with?
I'm saying it's "not" what they voted for, the equivalent of trying to prove "not guilty". So as long as there are suspicions that's easily done.
What you're trying to prove is that everyone is "guilty", which is a lot harder, e.g. you'd need a high majority in court.
> I live among such people.
> These are 2 examples out of dozens.
i.e. your reply is you live potentially in a bubble that might not even be statistically enough to prove any point and because of that you've concluded.
So if my friends at school all buy the same game, somewhere this game is popular in my country or even the world? For all I know it could only be my school or my state. E.g. many US states swing differently.
It did because that's exactly what people want, it's just that many people will tell you otherwise because they live in an information bubble and cannot believe that there exists voters outside of their bubble.
Same with opinions on HN. People here don't realize they're in a bubble and their opinions aren't representative for the masses. If you tell them that you get downvoted and flagged.
But the US doesn’t have direct presidential elections. It has an archaic, anti-democratic system called the Electoral College, which grants land in Wyoming greater relative weight than people in Texas.
Don't forget: Only about 2/3 of eligible voters voted. So those 1/3 who didn't vote, effectively voted for (or at the very least, condoned) the winner.
They didn't physically vote, but by not-voting, they are literally saying "I'm OK with whoever wins."
A huge number felt they had to vote for the lesser of two bad choices. I think many that voted for Trump were naive and are genuinely surprised at what they are seeing. At least I’d like to think so, despite what you might find on forums.
My point was that a company, and thus products and employees, do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the government of which it is based.
Besides taking ethical actions, how do you signal that that you share a certain set of political values with your consumers and shareholders, instead of your "somewhat arbitrary" law makers. It is a big shift, and not always an option, to move physical factories, workplaces, etc.
I agree, but there are also cases where it is blatantly clear that companies are not only on Trumps side but taking initiative themselves to corrode our political culture, and people here in europe are too comfy to make a switch, apart from a lack of similar alternatives.
X and Meta are most obvious, and I don't know about google's involvement, but have been trying to convince people to move away from it for years. It's a similar situation with streaming services.
Ultimately it doesn't matter. We haven't blocked trade only with the segment of Iranians who support their government's nuclear program. We blocked trade with all Iranians, and put extra restrictions on specific government actors who enact nuclear policy.
Same thing with Russia. Or Syria. Or North Korea. In foreign affairs, all the citizens of a nation are collectively held responsible for the action of that state.
Which is to say: stop hedging. This is your government. You cannot wash your hands of this mess because you voted for Kodos. It's your mess, admit it, and see what you can do to fix it. The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing.
Something being a right means that law does not grant it. If law granted it, it would be a privilege rather than a right. Governments exist to protect rights, but they don't grant rights. That's the solution to the bootstrapping problem for non authoritarian forms of government and why it is always OK to defend your rights, even if they are illegal under a specific form of government. America's founding document, the declaration of independence, is explicit about this idea.
> shared and progressed
No, this is where you are wrong, you didn't use the word defend, and that's really where the problem with liberal ideas starts and ends. They must be defended, at personal cost, with force.
Defending an idea that can't reward or punish you will not be as profitable or safe as defending a man who can reward or punish you. It is much easier for a man to build an army than for an idea to build an army. It will always be painful to defend your rights in the short term, but if you don't you will never have rights in the long term.
Solidarity, risking your own safety and well being for the benefit of someone else, is the only way to achieve a world you want to live in, but some of the builders of that world won't get to experience it, and that's a hard sell to people who just want to see their kids smile.
> If a global set of "Don't be an asshole" values could be defined, put into words, shared and progressed...
Being a cynic, I expect the speeches to start with that then smoothly translate into "and therefore we have to spend more money on waging war in foreign countries". The US is exemplifying some of the best international values right now of trying to find a sharp end to all the meaningless dying we've been seeing for the last few years.
If it takes nationalism to make people serious about avoiding WWIII, so be it. Vote nationalist.
> The US is exemplifying some of the best international values right now of trying to find a sharp end to all the meaningless dying we've been seeing for the last few years.
Signal comes from the country where the Prism [1] is still functioning. While it has open source, NSA can request from deployers on any stage to inject surveillance functionality: request from Signal authors, from Android / Apple Store repository maintainers and probably many other actors on the deployment chain to my mobile phone.
I could install it from sources but I do not have any guarantee my message sent to my friend is not eye-picked by PRISM on his phone.
While I do agree with what you say, I feel the og post is more in the spirit of "buy local, support your local x/y/z" rather than just sharing values. At least, this is how I see it, even if the title says support European values, which is surely much more inspiring
Local circulation and tax payment does make a big and positive difference for many things (e.g., less transport for physical goods). Doesn't require the first recipient to be aligned with your values to have an effect.
It's just unfortunate that it had to be forced for stupid reasons, especially as it doesn't necessarily make sense for everything. This timeline sucks.
Replace European with Cosmopolitan values. There are no unified European values, as the states of Europe are quite diverse. But there is significant cultural homogeneity for a subset of the population, the cosmopolitans. They tend to be the elites and form these kind of discourses. They use the term European values, mostly unaware of their cosmopolitan nature.
We accept that each European country people are equal, we agree to collaborate and not screw each others for land.
Also we in majority are against fascism,racism and discrimination though social media managed to make a portion of idiots to hate LGBTQs and wokes so they want they adopted fascist values. We as citizens we re doing our best to fight aginst this fascists groups.
And before some MAGA will calim that right wing extemists are not fascists, I remind you that supporting assassinations, deportations, killings while at the same time pretending to be Christian is fascist (at least in my country, in USA might be labeled different)
Signal forces you to use Apple or Google phones (which enable spying on users via, e.g., push notifications [0]), actively fights with third party clients and servers, goes against decentralization. They want to be the single point of failure or attack. They also use the AWS. This is all too suspicious for me.
Not if you're using Molly-FOSS, which strips all Google integrations down to a shared library level. UnifiedPush instead of Firebase. OSM for location sharing instead of GMaps. There are de-googled AOSP-based mobile OS's such as GrapheneOS that can be used with Molly-FOSS as well.
It's not necessarily the perfect end goal, but for those who are at an earlier phase of their privacy journey, GrapheneOS + Molly-FOSS is a massive improvement over stock Android + stock Signal, while maintaining a relatively minimal disruption to their ordinary workflows with e2ee messaging on an android-based smartphone.
>Not every european company embodies european values.
What even are "European values"? Is there such thing? Every EU country I know has varying values to the other members, that's why we have separate borders, languages, religions, cultures and laws with autonomy over them.
The EU is not one-nation one-culture like the US, but an org that doesn't impose any kind of universal values across the different diverse members except some laws that ease trade, labor movement and cooperation and that's it, but every country, and even every citizen has wildly different things they value based on culture, economy, history, social class and upbringing.
While every country has its own culture and values, the European union is founded, at least theoretically, on some shared values such as promoting peace, democracy (...)
Well, one might say that we sell weapons to dictatorships (and they would be correct), but at least on paper there are some shared values we more or less share throughout European union. Full list here: https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor...
I guess you're referring to the Romanian candidate which was found to have millions of euros and tickets to Russia.
Yes, protecting democracy and peace also includes punishing those who put at risk the existence of peace and democracy.
For the war part, it kinda tickles your butt having a war on your neighbor's garden, I see nothing wrong with supporting such a war (on Ukraine side's, of course)
There's a stark difference between voting to change your countries foreign policy and an enemy state interference in the affairs in the country.
The Romanian candidate said he had spent nothing for the campaign, but that is not true given the recent developments, and these donations were part of the decision to abort the election results
>I guess you're referring to the Romanian candidate which was found to have millions of euros and tickets to Russia.
You mean just like politicians from Austria and Germany who were Putin's lobbying arm in Europe, then took jobs at Russian oil and gas companies when their political careers ended? Why didn't they get arrested too?
>Yes, protecting democracy and peace also includes punishing those who put at risk the existence of peace and democracy.
And who gets to decides who are those "violators of democracy" when they're popular with the voters? The current corrupt Romanian government with vested interest to stay in power and keep competitors away from challenging the status quo? Because in the case of Georgescu the intelligence agencies making the claims about his connections to Russia have not provided no such evidence to the public. So how do you know that their assessment is truthful? Because the government would never ever lie to you right? Right? Sorry, but "trust me bro, he's guilty" from the Romanian authorities doesn't fly with me. Otherwise JD Vance wouldn't have pointed it out if he were a Russian trojan horse.
>For the war part, it kinda tickles your butt having a war on your neighbor's garden, I see nothing wrong with supporting such a war (on Ukraine side's, of course)
I have a problem when the war gets too expensive and no progress gets made. Biden and EU kept doing this for 3 years already. We're just funneling endless taxpayer money into a black hole at this point while more Ukrainians keep dying. Ending this conflict peacefully ASAP through negotiations and concessions is the way to go. This isn't fighting Gaza or Iraq. You can't win a conflict against a nuclear superpower via conventional means.
I would be fine with having corrupt politicians arrested in Germany, too, if they were found guilty of corruption, I do not see why they should be exempt
I do not believe for an instant than the roman salute making roman candidate isn't a Russian asset, given his salute shows support for other Russian friendly politicians currently sitting at the white house.
Regarding the war, AFAIK Ukrainians would rather be in the conditions to continue fighting than to surrender and sign an unfair peace agreement. I would have no issues with rearming Europe if it meant that, as proposed, we would get a better pipeline for European weapons procurement. Having basically stopped the advance of Russia is a huge win on its own, given that it was supposed to be one of the most powerful armies in the world. Shrugging this off as "no progress" is unjust to the taxpayers as well to the Ukrainians
You're not arguing in good faith using logic , proof and reason, you're deflecting my questions using optics and biases, so i will end the conversation here.
Maybe be specific, are there any specific wars you find undemocratic. Afganistan and Iraq was heavily debated, the attack on Ukraine is seen as an attack on Europe but is also heavily debated.
Fair enough. I suppose it is your decision to donate 1%.
But would you like your president to make that decision for you? Would it be okay with it you if they asked you to sacrifice like 60% of your pay towards this cause, that too indefinitely?
"HN discovers the concept of taxes, gets mad about it."
With that kind of argument sewers are also clearly unconscionable, after all they cost money you didn't donate. In that hyperbolic case where the EU throws 60% of it's productivity for the war effort, Ukraine would win in 6 months. That's an absurd amount of equipment, and more importantly with that kind of money you can set up a foreign legion that would vacuum every half-decent soldier without better prospects from Ethiopia to Perú. This will not happen of course, a wartime economy is not necessary to retake the invaded territories. The "WW3 totally gonna happen guys!!!11" is also exasperating, no, nothing is gonna be nuked unless someone attacks Moscow, which also will not happen.
It's a donation towards the greater good of Europe, so up to a certain amount I am absolutely for it. I have no say in taxation in the first place (well, indirectly through voting, but you know what I mean).
60% is excessive though, and would make it impossible for people to pay bills. That's detrimental for the future of Europe :)
Russia won't ever use a nuke, because then India and China are not going to support them again ever. I am not scared a single bit of any nuclear saber rattling. The biggest threat is an uncontested russia.
Lemme reuse the same response I give to my antivaxxer and climate change denier friend: If only you would have spent the time watching those videos doing something useful world would be a nicer place.
Half of the sons, daughters, and mistresses of Russian leadership and their plutocratic friends enjoy vacationing or living in western Europe, so they will probably replace Putin with somebody else or let Russia lose and run away with their pockets full of money before letting any nuke fly.
> But would you like your president to make that decision for you?
Not without a discussion, of course, and I may disagree with the decision after the discussion, but on the whole I have been happy enough with the parliamentary systems where I have lived within Europe that I can say yes to this.
What would upset me and concern me to no end would be if the premiere went rogue and made these decisions unilaterally while ignoring all other branches of the government.
So basically, I think at this point if you support this to go on, then you are really willing to face an all out war that possibly involves your country. So there is a real chance that you won't be able to limit how your pay will be affected. But things could get much worse if some country goes nuclear.
So what I am trying to say is that may be some people are acting from this point of view (which makes a lot of sense to me, if you are realistic), and is actually not unsympathetic to Ukraine.
I'm not able to make sense of what you're saying in this context, I apologise. There's a lot of "this" and "it" with very little clarity regarding what those actually refer to.
There will never be a perfect direct democracy but a lot of Europe is pretty good on the democracy index. Of course things could always be better and there are always worries of regression but it's been my experience that I've felt decently represented; I've spoken with my representatives, I've felt heard and I've felt that my views were reflected in debates at the highest levels.
Why not? I've had direct contact with not only my own representatives on the local, national and European level, but also with members who didn't represent me directly but who nonetheless provided open ears to my issues. I have been able to vote for all three since I turned 18, as well as in various other referenda. Where are you, and what is different about your situation that you are denied this?
Because the parties I support are not left wing or far-left wing. So it gets called Nazis and ignored even though it gets a lot of support, but because it doesn't align with the mainstream narrative of mass media and governments and challenges the existing status quo.
> but an org that doesn't impose any kind of universal values across the different diverse members except some laws that ease trade, labor movement and cooperation and that's it
Also human rights, democracy, anti-corruption stuff. Now, as we've seen with Orban, Europe's mechanism for actually _enforcing_ this is basically defective.
And peace. Like, the original stated intent of the Coal and Steel Treaty (the EU's ultimate predecessor) was to prevent another European war (largely by making it economically impracticable).
> And peace. Like, the original stated intent of the Coal and Steel Treaty (the EU's ultimate predecessor) was to prevent another European war (largely by making it economically impracticable).
And has a war broken out amongst ECSC/EU countries?
There is a lot of history and values behind the "org that eases trade". It even has its own anthem, and the Treaty of Lisbon explicitly lists what values it is founded on.
Continent is a mass of land, it can't have values. E.g. countries on the European continent include Turkey and Russia. European Union on the other hand explicitly declares shared values.
Most European countries have proportional elections, at least for some levels of the government. Such elections give a pretty good idea of the popular support for various ideologies. On the average, parties that are broadly aligned with US Republicans get ~25% of the votes, though there is a lot of variation from country to country.
>Share of respondents who said Trump would be good or bad for their country..
No no, that is not what is being said here. To match with it, the poll should ask if they would like someone like Trump to be their leader, not if Trump in US would be bad for their country.
Am I missing something? The only alternative offered for Signal is a Matrix client. Matrix is open-source and federated, so, well, can really embody whoever's values you feel like. Though it, ah, certainly lacks something in _usability_.
It should not be just about values but also security. Well I use Signal but what if their servers are sized or blocked for EU users? (This is also valid for many companies listed in the page that are hosted on US clouds).
I'm not sure that's the best example, as Signal places a strong emphasis on personal freedoms which is _not_ particularly representative of European values at this time.
Yes, I agree. Signal is inherently contrary to the statism en vogue in most European nations at this time, and why they have repeatedly affirmed that they would leave the EU rather than allow user surveillance should Chat Control 2.0 or 3.0 be passed (rather Orwellianly officially named the "Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse (Child Sexual Abuse Regulation)".
I'm well aware, as I was involved in the effort to block it (on four separate occasions now, and undoubtedly will again).
> Should we dig up USa stupid proposals? Or dig up actual laws like the USA laws for snooping on people that were revealed by Snowden?
The topic of this thread is European values and whether Signal embodies them or not. It's hopefully obvious to anyone interested that the prioritisation of individual freedoms that Signal embodies is not reflective of current European values, given the ever increasing levels of State surveillance across the continent.
That these are also not US values, even though their populace and politicians endlessly claim they are, is not relevant to this discussion.
extreme free speech with ZERO consequences is not such a value
my initial comment was clear, but some USAians will try to add that free speech is more important then any of our values, we can disagree on that
and I will keep my opinion that kissing up to fascists is a good value to have, having them in leadership role is a disaster but USA will learn it the hard way.
Worth noting that Europe is the only place where someone could have actually been a Nazi, historically speaking. Plenty of other countries managed to avoid both Nazism and sweeping free speech bans.
And let’s not forget — the actual consequences for genocide were delivered by the Americans, Brits, and Russians, not by internal bans or laws.
Reminder for USAians that in USA free speech has limits and you can also get fined for your speech. USA decided that the public needs to be protected by boobs and Europeans decided that nazis cause much more damage then boobs.
You also have the issue that a company like Ecosia is listed as a German company, but their search is powered by Bing and Google, so does it really make much of a difference?
Bing and Google will always be powered by Bing and Google. Ecosia can bootsrap itself with their services until its value is great enough that it can fund itself a solution. That would be the ideal here anyway.
Users usually typically flag advocacy/rallying posts on HN, especially if they make the frontpage. It doesn't have to do with the specific cause being advocated. It's because they're off topic on HN since they don't primarily appeal to intellectual curiosity. We also tend to ban such sites, for the same reason.
This has been the case for many years, and it isn't a judgment on either the site or the cause—it's just about the scope of this forum.
Ah ha. Is this the start of MAIA - "Make America Irrelevant Again"? Do they really need the help? Seems like their about to do a great job on that already... ;-)
I don't see this as an attack, but rather a push for independence from the US.
I don't want America to be irrelevant, but i don't feel like I can trust them as much as I did before. Both private and in business.
Yeah. I feel great common ground with half of the American people, who share European values such as democracy, right to self defense and striving towards a sustainable future.
It's the other (republican) half which is in power every 4 years which makes cooperation on these issues almost impossible, and you can't just ignore the US every 4 years. We need independence, and the US needs to think about where they want to be as a nation in 20 years.
Why would anyone put so much trust in to the US in the past?
I'm American, an army vet, and proud. Yet, I fail to identify anything other than the US acting in their own self interest since WW2. The list is long, but to name a few, Vietnam, War on terror, mass surveillance network, etc...
People are waxing poetic about an America that never was.
Sure, I really do agree and I didn't mean to romanticize the past. However, there was a time when the self-interests of the EU and the US overlapped much more than they do now. From your point of view, it might seem like nothing has changed dramatically, but from our perspective, it certainly has.
I've noticed this shift both in my professional life and personally. And I'm not talking about just eating up what the media spews in my face, but actual cold, hard and direct consequences I've had to deal with since Trump came into office.
European values, like consumer protection, privacy, and environmental standards, are, in my view, among the best in the world. However, bureaucracy and politics push them in the wrong direction or tie everything up. I had never thought much about this before, but I now plan to look more into supporting European industries. However, only for products of comparable quality. If a product doesn’t measure up, I don’t see many people choosing it just for the sake of buying European.
not an attempt at rebutting or so, just adding my thoughts:
It doesn't matter if the product is great because of those values if there is a lack product (bc politics and bureaucracy make it infeasible to produce). Makes you think if those values might contribute to the bad politics and bureaucracy. And if so, how.
Why is it always attributed to politics and bureaucracy when there's a much more obvious point on why European products take a long while to gain market share even inside the continent: the EU is made of 27 independent countries with their own culture, and language.
A consumer product created in the Netherlands needs to be adapted to be marketed across 27 different countries, sales teams need to know how to approach each of them, manuals, UI, etc. need to be translated into the customers' languages, so on and so forth.
Is there bureaucracy? Of course, some of it is to uphold values, some might be unnecessary but it's not the main obstacle faced by European companies to grow themselves into the whole of the EU.
Imagine for a moment that each US State had its own centuries-old way of living, its own language, and history separated from the US as a nation, there would be much more friction for products to spread around the whole country, there would be much more localised versions of the same market niche, exactly what happens in Europe.
A federalisation of Europe is a slow process, it will take generations to integrate all these different cultures, streamline production pipelines to allow products to be released across many different member-states at once, etc. Ironically the US becoming more insular and adversarial might be a catalyst for European companies to do so, there will be quite a few market gaps opening up in the wake of US's influence retraction.
Wouldn't you implicitly support Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, Dell/HP, Snowflake/Databricks, Datadog, etc. with almost every sale though? For many European businesses, infrastructure and platform costs likely exceed their own margins. In that sense, a lot of European businesses are really just "value-added resellers" of US hardware and platforms.
Agreed Europe has never had to care about that because we have always supported the US. Now there is always Loongson/Zhaoxin to base your infra on. Considering the way the US is heading you might see people considering a "neutral party" in the war.
You absolutely could go bare-metal with emerging local platforms and a Chinese stack — that’s the path Russia (and obviously China itself) is heading down. But...
Equinix? US. Digital Realty? US. NTT? Japan. Interxion? US. CyrusOne? US. That’s your top five DC/colo operators in Europe.
Same story with Tier-1 and Tier-1.5 ISPs.
It’s not just software. It’s not even just hardware. It’s the whole stack — down to power grids, land property rights, and regulatory frameworks.
Nationalization? Multidecade supply chain reconfiguration? Trillions in investment to rebuild local capacity — likely still with deep reliance on China for core infra components.
Europe isn’t just "a bit dependent" — it’s completely entangled.
I do not think completely entangled is a problem, it is just that there will be actual reasons to look for alternatives how ever bad they are. Considering that the EU is under fire from the current president of the US it is going to affect how people think in the EU.
And that is not an excuse to do nothing. Much to the opposite, it should be an acknowledgement of risk, and that steps should be taken to have an infrastructure less dependent on foreign nations. Especially when they are hostile, such as the US right now.
Would the investor even outlive the investment though? Imagine building data centers in the UK — only to get Brexit halfway through.
Any long-term, shared investment relies on continuous, guaranteed political and economic unity. Today it’s the US that’s hostile — but how confident can you be that tomorrow it won’t be a PiS-led Poland, or even an AfD-led Germany?
I made an account specifically to post this comment here.
I went to this website because i've been looking to buy a non-chinese wireless keyboard and mouse lately. So i looked up "keyboard" in the searchbar and the first company that came up in the search results is Logitech.
And let me tell you, i spent last 2 months driving to every single tech shop and outlet imaginable(in a reasonable distance) and every single Logitech keyboard that i checked was made in china. Every single one. I'd know there were any keyboards not made in china, because i'd buy one on the spot, and i didn't.
I don't understand what's the purpose of this website then. What european values are bing spoken of here? Outsorcing everything to cheap chinese labour? Is this website a SEO backend? Some elaborate corpo prank?
"Solely made in China" is true for many electronic product categories, unfortunately. I love China but don't like any country dominating manufacturing to the extent we seem to have reached. For keyboards there is at least still the Topre Realforce. It is made in Japan. I am quite happy with it.
Manufacturing small % of value add. Spend $100 on keyboard, $20 goes to PRC, $80 goes to brand country. You pick whether $80 to goes to US company or Swiss company.
I know there is some rule about commenting about this on HN, but a website about "buy European made" that immediately starts with _two_ cookie banners about "Your privacy rights under _US_ state privacy laws" does seem weird. (I'm not in the US)
What are "European Values"? Are they identical to the values of the EU, that are in section 2 of the Treaty of European Union:
"The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities."[1]
Also, did all the listed companies sign a codex that they will adhere to those values?
And finally, in which way do non-European companies, for example Amazon, violate those values?
Honestly the way the EU pays countries to catch refugees leaving their shorelines headed to the EU, I'm not even sure the EU conforms to that statement...
Amazon makes their warehouse workers pee in bottles, much respect for dignity there. Oh wait I hear that happens in Non-EU Britain, so that's not a problem! /s
> Amazon makes their warehouse workers pee in bottles, much respect for dignity there. Oh wait I hear that happens in Non-EU Britain, so that's not a problem! /s
Do you think the population supports that or there an inevitable lag between real-world actions and political responses?
I just suggested via the form bpm power, an Italian electronics e-commerce. Sometimes Amazon isn't the cheapest choice, even when taking into account shipping costs
What are “European values”? I was born in Europe, been here all my life, and I don’t think such thing exists - values that are shared among all Europeans AND that set us apart from other regions.
Europeans are much, much more culturally segregated than people from outside Europe seem to think.
It's not empty. It often happens that you don't notice things that you've seen all your life. It's only when you go somewhere that you notice the difference.
Why add "Support European Values" to the title when I can't find it anywhere on the page? Pointless inclusion for something with quite the potential for polemics...
EDIT: whoops, either I'm blind or some JS blocking hid it from my eyes...
Also the entire site keeps in the dark who is behind this initiative. You can become a coordinator / collaborator and "Reach out to our team at catzlaura@proton.me". Whose team? I always find campaigns like these with anonymous groups behind it kind of fishy. Have a honest campaign? Make yourself known.
I get why people might feel this impulse, but they should realize that it follows the same logic as tariffs. You do not gain by closing yourself off from the world. Having the choice among the best products in the world is prosperity. Whether you restrain yourself by choice or by force, it's the same zero-sum mindset. Free trade, with some exceptions for fledgling industries, is one of the rare cases that makes everyone better off. Unfortunately, even the simplest explanation [0] is a bit unintuitive, which may explain why trade restrictions are one of the few things popular among parts of the left and the right.
This is not about value signaling. It’s a reaction to the fact that US is willing to shutdown US service offerings and hardware owned by counter parties for political arm twisting.
US products are great. But suddenly they look just as risky as Chinese offerings for any critical infrastructure.
I think you're ignoring the externalities of supporting a business/country that is doing things you don't agree with. If ACo can sell me widget cheaper than BCo because they dump the polluting manufacturing waste in a local river it's perfectly rational to decide not to deal with them. The intent is to make them change their behavior by impacting their business. Should we ignore the effects of our purchases just because we can get something cheaper or better?
What you should really aim for is companies that can win in the market. "Found European" instead of "Buy European" if you will. Right now might be a good time to try and reverse some of the brain drain into US tech.
Could we avoid politics on the tech scene? I think we're all better than that, and we know the tech scene thrives through collaboration, not isolationism.
If your startup is selling to US government, sure, but otherwise I don't think there is much unreliability in selling SaaS, courses, or whatever gadget to US residents?
I agree there's no need for personal insults here, it's not nice to see especially on HN where one comes to expect better, but I think you can understand the place of exasperation it was coming from. The American government has become vociferously hostile in a very pronounced way recently and for the people on the receiving end of the hostility it feels like an attack in itself to hear "what's the problem, why are you worried?"
The opinions on the government differ, the losing side appears to blame all and everything to the government. Although tariffs, if any, will definitely have an impact, but it doesn't seem like any startup will be blocked from selling to the US, and I don't see why will one not want to sell to the US if there are buyers there.
We will get Greenland one way or another. That's a horrid statement if you are Danish (and worse if you live on that island). Realistically it's a horrid statement, anyways.
From a UK perspective (and I'm not a CEO or anything) it looks pretty volatile over there. Tariffs, radical changes to government funding, widespread corporate overhauls... . Predictability is surely desirable when considering dependencies.
If you depend on the US for defense, and the USA says that the victim should just surrender, there's a risk the same might happen to you. It's quite black and white in this case.
It's up to us, the users, to flag the political content. It seems like we're losing the battle, there's more and more political stuff allowed on the front page every month. As it keeps increasing, people like me will give up on the site and go elsewhere, and then there's fewer users flagging political stuff, and it takes over. Either we nip it in the bud now or it's all downhill from here.
There's often a cross-over between tech and politics, though. As more and more important tech news (DOGE in server rooms, the government crypto scams, even this list of European tech alternatives etc.) gets flagged here then people like myself will give up on the site and go elsewhere.
As much as I agree that this forum shouldn't turn political, it's hard to ignore the metaphorical war that is happening on the internet at the moment. It's a revolutionary war for people to take back the narrative that's been imposed on them by the (what I would argue) trans-national, powerful and unelected monarchs.
Tech is directly affected by policy. Hell, any mention of OSS is eminently political by definition.
The imminent trade wars that the current US administration is set to start will dramatically affect the tech sector. Discussion of region-based alternatives are not only relevant, but important in the current moment.
Buying from local vendors doesn't have to do anything with politics. From groceries to software it makes perfect sense to me to buying locally. The money i spend in my town or country will have much bigger effect here again than when i spend it in a different country or even a continent
We can't avoid politics in any sphere of life, that's what makes it so important.
> I think we're all better than that, and we know the tech scene thrives through collaboration, not isolationism.
And there you go, it doesn't matter what we know because the US government is going over our heads and taking isolationist measures. Even when we're "better than that" the reality is that our lives are shaped by the world around us as much as by our own initiatives.
Tech is partially, some would say even mostly, responsible for the current political atmosphere and climate, so no, neither we are any better than this, nor should it be avoided.
I remember hearing a talk of a tech guy who say why do techies like to talk about politics so much, and he said it's because tech-inclined people can see what the technology can do, and how it can be abused, and some want to warn the rest of the public.
Imagine if East Germany's state security service have the surveillance tech of China. Aha oops, I guess you don't need to imagine, you just have to look at China.
All software is inherently political, whether it's possible to ignore this fact or not is up for debate and your personal situation. Much like a gun, if you look at it in complete isolation from everything else in existence, you might be able to make the case that it's just an object with no meaning attached. But just like guns, software does not live in isolation. In the same way that producing guns, access to guns, buying and selling guns, etc is deeply political, so is software. Pretending that it isn't is only hiding your head under the sand in the hopes that the world won't come knocking.
We need to accept this fact as an industry and take responsibility for our work. Whether it's tracking people online, facial recognition at protests, aggregate cellular data used to deanonymize or etc, all of this software was built by people and claiming it's just a tool with no harm no foul is trying to shed responsibility we should bear.
There's a size point at which rolling your own infrastructure is worth it, and may get government support. Help grow companies you want to see succeed.
Absence of a (high-level services) cloud provider is a big problem. I hope that changes at some point, but probably impossible to start something like that without measures in place to make the existing offering less attractive.
I guess that's joke - indeed, in the EU - Northern counties + flat lands + Spain[x] are monarchies where the monarchs have all but representation powers.
You can add Monaco (which is not an independent State), if you really wish.
Then there is France and the revolution in 1789 which (outside the US) is considered a big thing.
[x]: Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands; Norway's also a monarchy but not an EU member state.
Quote:
"Norwegians are girls who love girls, boys who love boys, and girls and boys who love each other. Norwegians believe in God, Allah, the Universe, and Nothing."
There are no 'conventional'/old-fashioned monarchies in Europe (except, arguably, for Liechtenstein). Some European countries have monarchs, who are powerless figureheads; executive power rests with the government (even in most European republics, executive power rests with the government, not the president).
Not really powerless. They have powers, but people see them as ceremonial. They're not of course ceremonial, rather it's traditional that they don't fire the loaded gun they're given and everyone pretends like they're not only incapable of it, but doing so would end the monarchy.
The truth is, a monarch with significant ambition could, if the right situation arises or is engineered, convince the populace that their exercise of power is necessary to save the country.
> They're not of course ceremonial, rather it's traditional that they don't fire the loaded gun they're given and everyone pretends like they're not only incapable of it, but doing so would end the monarchy.
I mean, traditionally, doing so is bad for his majesty's health; see Charles II in particular, but also to a large extent Edward VIII (the divorcee thing was a handy excuse, but a big part of the reason that the government was so keen to fire him was that he was seen as high-risk for misbehaviour).
As a general rule, I find that the "left" is always guilty of every single thing they accuse the right of doing. They just don't phrase it that way and think that they can control the narrative forever. The narrative, unfortunately, is crumbling and people are waking up. The only way they can stop it is by silencing and downright banning social-media, because that's currently the main vehicle for un-approved opinions spreading.
I don't see the point. Why should it be European (or American, Japanese, Chinese or whatever)? Shouldn't it be better value/quality? Not everything is better just because it's European. I believe that if someone is doing something great (incl. privacy policy, support, etc.) it shouldn't matter if it's European or from somewhere else.
I live in the EU and I often see this cult of people deliberately buying worse things just because it's European. Yet there are many areas where a European alternative is worse than the imported one. I'd say support quality and innovation, not nationality.
Have you ever heard the term voting with your wallet? Well, you're not only voting for the company whose product you're buying, you're also enriching the country that houses them. People in Europe are increasingly worried about hostility from the US and many people are rapidly trying to reduce their support for and reliance on the ruling regime.
I don't necessarily agree that better products sell the best. Better marketing, better sales, that's the capitalism I know, and European companies would do well to cash in on this generational marketing opportunity.
Okay, that's true, I agree - marketing is the main driver of sales. But it should be more than just "being European". At least it should not cost significantly more than comparable imported equivalents.
Even ignoring the moral and ethical values, doing business with US based companies seems much more risky now. I'm specifically thinking of:
1) tariffs / trade wars and
2) The big tech's total and swift capitulation to Donal and Elon. They have shown themselves to be totally spineless and pathetic. Why is that a risk? Donald is erratic. What if you prime minister piss off Trump in some way, and he orders US companies to pause business with your country? What happens to you AWS? Or your Google account? Or even Office?
2) might seem far-fetched to you, but there's a million ways this could happen. Cutting off all support to Ukraine seemed far-fetched to me at least, just a few months ago :(
I am working on this, and here are my personal observations thus far;
# Low hanging fruit:
- Food and clothes, like Coca Cola, Snickers, Nike, Levis, The North Face etc
- Mondelez. This is hard because they own so much. But obvious things like Oreo and Corn Flakes are easy.
- Social Media I rarely use. For me this was Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, X, Bluesky and Messenger.
# Harder to ditch
- Facebook. Family :(
- Microsoft; Windows, VSCode, MS Teams, GitHub
- Google; Gmail is my primary for 15+ years, gDrive, gCalendar, google.com
- Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure.
- Streaming: YouTube, NetFlix, HBO and Disney+. This will be difficult.
- LLM, Claude and OpenAI-things
- Steam
- Discord
- My Tesla model Y.
# Impossible
- Smart Phone OS: Google Android or Apple iPhone/iOS
- Intel / AMD, hardware in general is difficult
So, this is all work in progress, but I keep this document in my Google Drive (gah!) and I'm adding more stuff every day and trying to shift my habbits.
I think an important distinction is whether you send money to those providers or not. Using free services with a strong adblocker is probably a net loss for them. And regarding streaming... the high seas are very welcoming ;-)
PS: Did you mean Mondelez? The only thing I ever bought on their list of brands[0] is 'Lu', but I will make sure I don't anymore ;-)
I would argue to that not all US companies are the same. Both ethically and based on risk.
Tesla is directly supporting Elon, and IMO much worse than, say, Netflix. Also probably more risky, as Elon is probably more pilled that the CEO of Netflix and Google
The EU and Canada, UK, Australia, Mexico/etc need some new Trade Pact to counter What Trump is doing and to reduce their dependency on the US as a trading partner longer term! The Social democracies around the world are Trump's/Crony Capitalists' target because the Social democracies provide for the health care for their citizens instead of those countries letting the Crony Capitalists bleed the citizens of those Social Democracies dry! The Social Democracies provide for other progressive social Safety Net programs and education benefits that benefit the Social Democratic societies as a whole and not just the 10% most wealthy!
Trump and the Republican Party wants to get rid of the Entire New Deal legislation and return the US back to a regulatory structure that existed in the Pre Sherman Antitrust Act(1890) days in America when the Robber Baron controlled Crony Capitalistic Trusts had free reign and the US Economy was effectively cornered by the Robber Baron Trusts and hardly free market at all!
The Social Democracies need look at the US as not sharing the same values as the Social Democracies in the world and those Social Democracies should have been taking measures since 1980 to reduce any dependency on the US economically!
The US Should be Actively Labeled a Crony Capitalist Country and one that is Oligarch Dominated and not really a Free Market Capitalistic country!
And Trump/Crony Capitalists are actively trying to destabilize the Canadian economy as well as the economies of Mexico and South America!
Are you pretending that projecting power across the Atlantic was not something done by the US to protect its own interests? You think US kept bases in Europe out of goodness?
I am not sure if you are naive or just plain dumb.
To be frank, I love that the US decided to sacrifice its own power, forcing Europe to prop up its own defense industry instead of giving money to the US so it would strengthen itself first and foremost
you are talking about something else now. I responded to "we did it already" . afaik europe is still heavily dependent on usa and nothing actually has changed.
can you stay on topic and not resort to personal insults.
I think you just don't understand how international relations work. The US wanted those bases in Europe for its own interests.
And you might not be aware, but the EU just announced a hefty package to rearm itself. I wouldn't be surprised if in the comings months the US is out of NATO and those US bases in Europe are shut down.
And it is not really an insult, I still wonder if you are naive or dumb. I am friends with some very dumb people, it's not a character fault.
It's even worse when you remember how Europeans kept criticizing the USA with the example of "European Socialism" and all the good they do for their people whilst America "doesn't have free healthcare" etc. The free-ride is unfortunately over, and they'll have to pony up for not just their own people and their security, but for the concept of "Europe" that the EU monarchs are so attached to and can't let go of.
That is, until the eastern-european countries realize who they're more aligned to culturally at this point, and start leaving one by one.
