Well said.

Countries that gravitated towards the Western tech ecosystem (whether willingly or otherwise) always get enveloped with seemingly no way out… the only way out is if they stopped rubbing shoulders with fucking Western digital landlords and move towards coming up with state-owned solutions…

but nah screw all that let’s just make WhatsApp and Instagram de facto mandatory to conduct most forms of business in West Asia and LATAM

On discussions around here about recommendations to alternative social media platforms and other digital services, there seems to be a growing presence of believers of European platforms, the platforms are vouched for not on the merit that the alternatives to US services themselves are good, functional and are independent of any state/private sector interests, but simply because the platforms are European, which is framed as “secure” and “sanitized” from any of that potential “bad stuff” we’ve witnessed (AI slop, helping the state to suppress activism, on one hand allowing freeze peach, which really just emboldens neonazis, on the other censors anything going against the interests of the West, etc).

https://www.wired.com/story/protonmail-amends-policy-after-giving-up-activists-data/

I’m having difficulty to articulate this but… why move from one doghouse to another if all you cared about was the color of the roof?