this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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I believe this is how we can cripple the US.
I just switched my services over and there are some great alternatives, we have just been pre-programmed to use the American default brands.
Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon all easy to replace.
The only challenging one so far is YouTube, content is just lacking elsewhere, but atleast with adblockers YouTube isn't getting my money.
Depending on what content you watch, Nebula might be a good choice.
As an American I'm here for it and encourage it. These greedy evil fuckers need to be brought down and if we have to burn it all down so be it, so we can rebuild better. What we have now is clearly not functioning for anyone but the 1%.
As an American, I'm already subscribed to !buycanadian@lemmy.ca and !buyeuropean@feddit.uk.
I'll eat those tariffs to ensure the companies that stood at Trump's side feel it in their stock portfolios.
That's a great idea and I may do the same, because I have the means. I won't blame ANYONE that can't because they are just struggling to get by, though. There's going to be a lot of pain and a lot of people are going to have to go into survival mode. If they have to buy the cheapest shit at Walmart to get by, I won't judge.
Same. Hard times are coming, and I have a suspicion it's going to be worse than 2008.
People will need to do what they can do, and I don't blame them for surviving.
Anyone who can should backup their favorite channels with yt-dlp while you can. Don't forget to embed the subtitles and metadata. I intend to put up torrents soon and others should as well. If you wish to support the original channel put document with links to patreon or whatever that creator uses.
Any recommendations? It seems a lot of my alternatives are turning heel and I would like more options. Preferably ones not likely to turn heel.
Not a complete list, but
Amazon - the logistics company - is just a front end for (and leech on) various drop shippers, lately, anyway.
Amazon used to carry quality guarantees, and have meaningful reviews, but lately the wild West crapshoot of the rest of the web is just as good.
(And at least on the rest of the web I have some idea who I'm buying from, and can avoid them after a bad experience. On Amazon, it got to where there was no way I could tell.)
Aren't drop shippers finished with the recent tariffs, especially closing the loophole of de minimis?
For you guys. Amazon canada will still be infested with them, for instance. Also that's assuming the dropshippers don't just reroute their stuff to whoever has the lowest tariffs before delivering it here, like how lindt is moving all it's delivery back into Europe so that they can go around the US to deliver to places like Canada.
Little choice?
Depends on where you live. Here in Germany we have a few alternatives, like "Otto" and a few others with specialisations like electronics. Some of them have a marketplace just like Amazon and they even offer the same cheap chinese crap that Amazon has to offer. So you could feel right at home.
Can use a website like idealo to search multiple stores at once. I just wish they had a filter to block amazon results.
The game console, made by Sony, who famously keeps trying to fuck everyone else over?
All game console companies famously keep trying to fuck everyone else over. Sony actually comes off fairly well compared to Nintendo and Microsoft.
Sony shipped literal rootkits with their software years ago.
Jeez, guys... You're a paleontologist or what? That happened centuries ago.
Yes. Twenty years ago. Now take a look at what Nintendo and Microsoft have been doing just within the past couple of years (as well as what they were doing twenty years ago and beyond, since they both have long track records of shitty behaviour.)
Yes, Sony is not a good company, but we're comparing them to Nintendo and Microsoft here.
True. Nintendo is extremely cutthroat with their IP, they like going after emulators and similar.
Which is nowhere comparable to infecting your stuff with malware...
Which is a thing that's happened on Steam twice this month thanks to update loopholes and some outbound link fuckery. Also anti-cheat is kernel level, which is why you can't play a lot of multiplayer games on Linux, but you don't see a lot of PC games forgoing it because the alternative is being unplayable. Turns out some idiot Sony music exec (which is literally a separate company from Sony interactive) was ahead of the curve on the new normal, much as I also hate it lol
Amazon is barely a thing here in Sweden. It’s niche drop shipped garbage for the most part, very similar to Wish and the like.
They have some non-garbage stuff at the same price you find elsewhere.
They also don’t do logistics here. Utterly useless company.
Yeah they pulled out of QC so if I wasn't so close to Ontario they'd be completely useless for me in canada too. Not that I haven't avoided them for big purchases like computer stuff already, gonna have to look what general marketplaces we have otherwise lol
Tbh I just duckduckgo the company and product if I find it in Amazon and order directly
I've heard good things about lineage OS for android and maybe apple phones but I haven't got around to using it
Thank you for this!
All the alternative businesses to Amazon suck. And also probably advertise on Amazon as drop shippers anyway.
Yeah, switched to a different company for kitchen stuff, bought it on their site and everything, felt good about it.
Delivery day comes, guess who delivered the package? Amazon. So that was great.
TBF, just leaving YouTube would be better. There's plenty of information out there which don't need some glorified video hosting platform (books, blogs, wikis and so oh). I really struggle trying to understand people's addiction to YT...
I like long form video content from someone who is passionate about a subject
To each their own, I guess. I prefer written stuff.
Me too. A good written guide is always way more effective. There rare today though :/
Shout-out to Gamers Nexus for making a written site for all their content https://gamersnexus.net/ tho i recognize that's not very helpful for avoiding American lol
I use YouTube extensively (I mean, 2-5 hours a day) and 7 days a week for years now; I use it for language learning, there is really nothing better than normal people chatting (to the camera or between themselves) about regular daily stuff that I'm also interested in, to improve comprehension, I'd love to find any source as rich as YouTube. Peertube is hopeless, I tried and failed there due to a complete lack of content (though I do check in occasionally, I'd love if some of my subscribed YouTubers would start publishing on that platform... Though I don't know if there are any monetary incentives for them to do that?).
Can you not just make sure YouTube gets none of your money by using a front end that strips out all ads and sponsored segments? My kids watch YouTube but they’ve never seen an ad.
I pay for YouTube premium. Although I'd prefer to find an EU alternative, I really have no problem paying for a service that I consider worth the price.
A red flag for me, is if I'm paying for a service and they still show me adverts.
Google's been attacking those lately, mostly to success (Piped and Invidious are effectively dead, ViewTube is also dead, and FreeTube's a target now).
I'm specifically talking about the video as a medium to share information, and youtube is the worst, as it's 99% filled with crappy influencer stuff whose only aim is to monetize people's time.
Sure there's that. I'm just trying to help you understand the viewpoint of some of the people that are heavy users of YouTube, and why there are currently no good alternatives, as you said "I really struggle trying to understand".
I'm sure, like me, there are other people with their own alternative valid reasons for using YouTube for enormous amounts of time.
Just because some of the content on a platform is bad or not to our tastes, doesn't mean it all is, and it certainly doesn't mean that the users are wrong for using that platform in a way that suits them.
I do disagree with the publishing of content that is hateful or deliberately trying to misinform people, and I think YouTube has a lot of that, I'd obviously prefer it didn't.
"I really struggle trying to understand the addiction", was my original statement. The two last words are important.
That's fair.
It's not really the same kind of media at all, depending on what you watch. I guess what I look for in YouTube are interesting perspectives, often on things I haven't even considered. Maybe something like blogs could partially replace it, but I'm not aware of any blogging platforms that have tons of interesting perspectives and things to talk about and actually knows what to offer me. Isn't blogging kind of dead?
I used to read books when I was younger, but I have serious attention issues with text-only stuff. And it's straining on eyes.
I agree with your point but you mentioned the services that are literally the hardest to find alternatives for. Need to use photoshop professionally, good luck getting around adobe. Sys admin only allows microsoft because he doesn't want to manage a bazillion different setups, get used to windows buddy. I could go on with examples...
Getting rid of those predatory megacorps is worth the fight, but it's a fight. And it's not getting easier just by calling it easy.
I think you're forgetting the power of consumers. At work you might not be able to replace Photoshop or Microsoft but at home you certainly can. The more people that become familiar with alternative software the more likely professional environments are to adopt it.
Why would a company want to pay Adobe or Microsoft if their employees are more adept with free alternatives? Especially if those alternatives gain feature parity with the paid services while the paid services lock parts behind paywalls and subscriptions.
Don't let perfect get in the way of good!
Adobe has a Print Production feature where you can run a Preflight Analysis that identifies all the elements in the PDF. I haven't been able to find a similar feature elsewhere. I'd love to get off Adobe, but that one feature is pretty critical for my workflow.
Agreed. I've been using Krita quite a bit lately and honestly, it's really good. I haven't used an Adobe product for a few years, but it's been able to do everything I want it to do so far.
Small buisnesses and more so consumers can flex on what they use. Academia can choose what they teach and require Governments can choose what they pay for
We have power
yes, there are clearly unfair trade practices here. EU has been making money for Google and Amazon, but the US are not using our services. I hear the best solution to this are tariffs: EU users have to pay to use gmail until enough US users start using EU email providers and we rebalance the services trade!