In a place without access to US apps and online services, how would you use the Internet?
Imagine there is no YT, no Twitter/X, no Facebook, no Netflix, no Amazon, no Apple, no Google to to search the Web, no chatGPT. Imagine there is no TikTok either (even though it’s not US). Just imagine there is no ‘giant’ tech from anywhere owning any app or service that millions if not billions of people are willing to use.
A world without any of those giant (US) tech companies and services that many of us take for granted.
In that world, what would you use the Internet for? How would you use it? And how much time do you think you would spend online, compared to now?
(my own answer in the comments)
The same way we did it before those things existed or had taken over. Believe it or not, the internet used to be that way 👴
Funny, but for me very little would change. The only one of those I use even occasionally is YT, and the videos would start appearing elsewhere. Peertube, maybe?
EDIT: Oh, I'd lose my steam library. That would be a nuisance!
You'd lose most of everything. If you think AWS and cloudflare and such arent U.S. owned, ignoring Microsoft, we are missing most of it.
Edit: your domain you are posting this on is cloudflare I believe, so U.S.
OP only listed consumer services, not the infrastructure side. I completely agree with you that if we would take that part into consideration then ... Not a lot in the beginning. And in the end because the whole financial sector is also dependent on various US companies and their online services to process most payments ... Shit. I don't know which other critical infrastructures would break because stuff behind the curtain disappeared.
--
That said if it's really only "what I as consumer use" then things would look different - even though it all comes down to the details. I.e. no smartphone would be a nuisance .. unless Linux phones count.
You know the internet was around before AWS and Cloudflare? People could go back to hosting their own websites on their own hardware. Sites would take longer to load without the cdns.
I self-host my own shit including game servers, so I would read lemmy while playing Terraria or AssaultCube.
So pretty much no change.
Yeah, I am currently using a PieFed instance that is behind Cloudfare, because my regular instance has problems. But I have preferred instances not behind Cloudfare.
AWS, it's not really legal for any public institutions in EU to use AWS. Many do anyway, though. So yeah, some stuff might break in the society. But not that many things I use personally. Hopefully they have backups of their code on their own servers as well, so that if AWS ever disappears, they can quickly run the same code on some sensible platform. Wonder where their databases are physically located, though :D
Yes, this is the best answer.
I used up so much of my youth on mIRC. I was even on a server that had a make shift 1 pn 1 yugioh online battling platform that I believe also ran through irc. Those were the days.
It's also not as if there wouldn't be search and alternative hosting services, which all existed to varying degrees outside of US control.
Pretty much the same as before?
The only giant tech firm from your list I am actively engaged with is
GoogleAlphabet because of Android and YouTube. Apart from that, there is PayPal because of online payments and WhatsApp because of other people. But for both, I have 1:1 replacements already in place to be used wherever available.AOSP is opensource, MicroG, a Play Services alternative is developed by European guys. Huawei also has a similar alternative framework, as they are already banned from using Play. Obviously you would loose access to your paid apps, and some spy apps would stop working, but Android can totally work without the goog. I've been using it this way for ages ![email protected]
Google is in fact Android. The AOSP is just a fig leaf.
Written from my phone running GrapheneOS and MicroG.
Most of those US services (YouTube, Twitter, etc.) arose to fill a niche which was opened by expanding access and bandwidth. Take YouTube as an example, the idea of sharing a video on a dial-up connection was simply silly. Just downloading the contents of a 1.44MB floppy on a 14.4kbps modem took forever. Even when we got to a 56kbps modem, pictures could still be slow and GIFs were painful to download. It wasn't until home DSL or cable connections became common that sharing a video was even close to reasonable. In that environment, we saw the start of media sharing services rushing to fill a previously unknown "need". The most well known was Napster for music sharing, but we also saw the start of bittorrent clients. While not exactly legal, early music sharing and torrent sites showed that people wanted to be able to download media. And with sites like MySpace or GeoCities cropping up, it was apparent that people wanted to also create and share media. YouTube simply married up those two desires at a time where the technology could reasonably support it. And they have massively capitalized on the first mover advantage. With them also having Google money to scale the service, they now sit in a fairly privileged position in their niche.
I bring this up to say that, were US based services snapped out of existence, new services would arise to fill the gap. If you look at somewhere like China, where access to US services is highly regulated, they aren't simply doing without, they are creating their own alternatives. TikTok is a good example, while it lacks the longer form videos of YouTube, it did provide media sharing in China. Were YouTube to be blocked at the Great Firewall, TikTok is in a good position to expand into the longer form videos. China also already has WeChat which fills much of the Twitter and FaceBook nice. Russia has VKontakte for those spaces as well. Basically, any place which isn't well served by US based media giants has their own solutions to fill those gaps.
Western Europe (using EU as shorthand, though yes I know the EU isn't all of Western Europe) has the issue of being closely linked with the US economically and culturally. US based services can operate in most EU countries with little friction. Sure, they have to figure out GDPR and Data Privacy issues, but that's not a major barrier, despite US companies' whining. So, given the size, first mover advantage and money behind the US based solutions, there hasn't been space for reasonable EU based replacements. Why use some second rate EU based system, when the US system works so well, and the EU and US are such good allies and closely linked?
Of course, that last bit is changing (which is part of why you're asking the question, no doubt). With the US Government going quickly off the rails, and US tech giants doing their damnedest to enshitify everything, the deep cultural links between the US and EU are starting to slip. There might now be space for EU based services to try to step in and replace services like YouTube or Twitter. And that's the answer to your question. If those services go away, they will be replaced by something else. In time, they are probably bound to be replaced anyway. At one time everyone though MySpace was here to stay, these days I suspect some folks had to google it to figure out what the hell I was going on about. It may be a long time to come, but I'd bet on YouTube eventually being replaced. I have no idea what will replace it, but nothing lasts forever.
maybe? :)
I would be tempted to agree (while also recognizing a minority (like myself) would try to steer away from anything remotely looking like a clone of those 'original models' and rekindle the interest for a smaller more fragmented Web) but, at the same time, suffice to see how that less-democratic USA we now have to live with is dealing with anything that even remotely looks like a threat: invading a country, taxing it do death (unless they withdraw any law deemed unfair for US businesses),... I doubt those USA would allow any serious alternative to grow and to reach a large enough audience... But then, in my first hypothesis and for some mysterious reason we would already have lost access to US tech/services, and therefore one may conclude that at the same time USA would have lost access to us as a potential market and wouldn't have any leverage against our own attempts, well, maybe? ;)
Not even empires, or wannabe new empires. But isn't it what history is all about: failed dreams of grandeur?
edit: typos.
Why wait? https://indieweb.org/
Thx for the link, I will check that and see if my own tiny, silly blog can fit anywhere with them.
Just FYI when switching to light mode the layout on your website breaks (doesn't have a max-width any more)
How do you switch mode on my blog? I mean, it's static and, to the best of my limited understanding, I've removed anything in the theme that remotely looked like a script... so I'm surprised you can toggle its theme. Is there a toggle I've missed somewhere? (Also, maybe we could discuss that through MP to avoid making useless noise in the thread ;))
Your blog follows the system theme.
porn? no change, furry porn sites aren't run by big tech
gaming? very little change as all I seem to be interested in lately is Space Station 14 and that's open source with a standalone launcher that doesn't require Steam
social media? nearly all of that for me is just mastodon and lemmy.
youtube videos going away would suck for the lost knowledge and art and discussion, tho if it meant google died that's a price I'm willing to pay
I'd use a different search engine... and the rest of those I don't use now. That's not the Internet to me. I read webcomics and blogs, check fora, and play online games. I go directly to the websites I want, or I use RSS to get there from my aggregator. Hell, I still use webrings.
So... Just like I already do today?
I suppose you didn't mean litterally just those, but many American companies.
But of the ones you listed, sure I don't really use any of them.
Tiktok? Really? Yuck. Facebook? Never have. Netflix? Do they even have anything good on anymore? Google? I haven't used their search index long time. And so on.
My email has never been a major provider.
Maybe? That's the whole point of my question (and why I also briefly shared my own usage in a comment): getting an overview of what it would change, if anything.
Indeed, I just listed the most obvious. Maybe it was also a way to trigger reactions?
Email is an interesting one. I haven't used any major provider, and I always use my own domains.
I used to just host my own.
But hosting your own email is tricky now. Getting the major providers to trust your domain is a pain in the ass.
Yes, I tried self-hosting too. Too much frustration for me. Heck even with my own domain that is hosted by a tiny but legit host, can sometimes have issue with emails not reaching their destination.
Happily.
:)
I don't use Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Apple, Google search, TikTok, or ChatGPT.
I use Amazon to order N95 masks a couple times per year but that can be done with other sites.
Twitter = Mastodon or Bluesky
Netflix = Torrent
Apple/Google = GrapheneOS if we are talking phone OS. Perhaps Linux if both companies are gone.
Google search = DuckDuckGo, Esonia, Brave
ChatGPT = I don't trust any "AI" to give a factual answer.
Youtube = Odyssey, Bitchute, there is a video site in the Fediverse but the name escapes me at the moment.
The video platform you're talking about is called Peertube.
Also I say look into Kagi the search engine. It's a paid one, but it has provided me so much value and they also take Bitcoin as a alternative currency in case the other ways to pay are gone.
Kagi is too expensive. It's an ok search engine, not much better than anything else, but they need to lower the price to make it worthwhile.
If more people used and improved https://yacy.net/ that would be swell.
Honestly for 5$ it is slightly better than other platforms. You get so much value if you use everything it offers and it's better for privacy than other engines. But that's just my opinion as a customer whose used it. They're small and not as robust as the giants, but it's sustainable compared to DuckDuckgo, and a fee others.
Alright I am looking again with another triail. I wish the browser that they install on android would open links in Firefox Focus (drops cookies, blocks ads).
Kagi (of which I was a happy paid customer) is US so it wouldn't fit into that scenario
Oh I understand, I just wanted to share Kagi as also an alternative as well outside this scenario. I am curious, are you no longer a Kagi customer and if not why did you stop being a customer? Maybe we can send them the feedback and they can try to improve.
Peertube. Thanks for that.
No problemo! /ᐠ - ˕ -マ
Imagine there is no...
YT - dont use it. Don't like video tutorials, I prefer to read them, don't like adverts or propaganda!
no Twitter/X, no Facebook - not used them I over ten years
no Netflix, no Amazon - stopped using a few years ago
no Apple - never used
no Google to to search the Web - plenty of other search engines
no chatGPT - soon won't be there for anyone!
I get my apps from F-droid, I read my web comics on websites, I send emails, I chat with my friends.
Does steam go in your scenario? In that case I imagine GoG will take over there!
You know, the only reason these companies have so much power over your government and so much of your money is they've tricked you that you're missing out without them. 💁♂️
Agree for all except YT. It is unfortunately VERY VERY useful. You seem to have found a workaround that works for you though
I don't know if you're speaking to me specifically here but I would like to point out an issue I see in your comment (as well as in a few others, yours being an excellent demonstration) that I think is at least as important as that supposed gullibility you seem to think is mine/ours in regard to big tech. I'm talking about this habit too many of us share in thinking and maybe I should say 'in believing' which seems more appropriate to this type of behavior, that we know (what's going on, what to do) better than the others around us, while those others are being wrong and they are doing it wrong.
That 'you' (are wrong) you insist so much on, vs an implied 'me' (I know what I do), doesn't help much pleading your argument. I thought you might to know that.
Also, note that you have no idea at all regarding my stance in regards to those big tech, nor how I chose to spend my money—like I have zero idea regarding the you do it, but I don't suppose anything either.
Finally, the reasons you listed are correct, at least partly are (sure, our willingness to use them is an important factor), but they're also far from being the 'the only reasons' things are the way they are in regards to US big tech, and why they have gained so much power. It would too long to list but allow me to share some quick hints:
We could go on discussing the many other 'reasons' that make things the way they are but I think it's enough, at least I hope so, to show you we can and should focus on much more than blaming our own lazy asses, that is if we want for things to really change, and that we could and should do it without trying to put our own little precious person on a pedestal while telling the rest of the world they're all being stupid morons.
My 2 cents.
It's one of the thing I would like to know: how many of us have had a taste of the old web and how many of the younger people have no idea anon corporate(US)-owned Web was even a thing.
Like I said in my answer, 'my' Web wouldn't change much either: blogs and emails wouldn't go away, just less blog/emails to and from the US, probably ;)
This is one of my biggest beefs. There’s been a whole generation that have grown up with the media. They believe they need it, not just convenience but need. They are happy to pay through the nose and trade their privacy.
Trying to get my kids to look beyond that and look at alternate ways of consuming digital content…and of course consider what they consume. It’s still hard they are like your crazy this stuff is to hard just DL ### app. I sound like my own dad.
Like I did 25 years ago. We'd all use more different websites and that would be it. I'll gladly take these giant corpos for granted because if they disappeared, the market would not disappear with them. There would be others which would replace them and in the beginning, they would all be small companies or community driven efforts. A glory to behold.
What do you really think there corporations can offer that can't be replaced by anyone else? Shit, google in the 90's was two guys in a garage and ebay was someone's old computer used as a server and it worked. It can all be replaced.
I would use the internet like I did back in 2005 I guess. Seriously... the necessity of these tech companies is a mixture of them sniffing their own farts too much, propaganda from them to ensure they are perceived as essential, and finally people being too lazy to find alternatives.
We're literally talking on Lemmy/Piefed right now, which would continue to work so I would just come here for recommendations on which search engines and websites to use as alternatives lol
This question looks odd on the fediverse. It seems to assume there's no european alternatives to the sites mentioned here, which for most of them isn't true. Or that there are only giant tech alternatives.
You do realized piefed.social isn't giant tech, right?
I think with a world without access to US apps and online services, the biggest loss to humanity would be Wikipedia. If we narrow it to just giant tech, I think it's easily doable. It would be a shame to lose the wealth of content on Youtube, but it's something we can manage with.
About the same as now? I mean, again, hobbyist social media exists, it's not just giant tech. We're literally using it. In such a hypothetical world, stuff like the fediverse would be much more popular.
I see your point but no, not really. I only listed the few most obvious example of big tech I could think of, as a trigger.
I do. and that is a neat example of why it matters to keep things in perspective: how many of us is there compared to gigantic Reddit? So, when I was mentioning those few big tech I only mentioned what most people do use, it implied nothing on what alternative may be available.
As a matter of fact their existence is the very reason why I decided to ask the question: wanting to see how people were using the Web and if/how they would need to change that usage without access to US-tech. Reading the many answers, a lot of seem to be fine without US tech but, obviously, we're also aposting that on Lemmy which make most of us already biased against big tech ;)
US tech is a big pile of garbage.
All of it is to make you addicted, to track you, to influence you, to collect all sort of intel about you, and then use that against you. And they will serve you ads as the cherry on top.
For me they can all disappear and be gone. There are plenty of activities (internet or otherwise) that can be done without that pile of shit.
I have Proton with custom domain as email service, I have my own encrypted backup in an European VPS, have my own private cloud also in European VPS.
Don’t need US garbage.
I'm very happy suddenly. I would spend exactly the same amount of time online and do exactly the same things
🎵The internet is for porn.🎶
Sounds like paradise, can we make the US this way please?
How would I use internet?
Pretty much the way I use it now?
For maps I use OSM, with eventual searchs in HEREwego in case I don't find something.
I use proton and tuta as mail services.
I don't have any social media account (that is xitter, fb and the likes).
I don't use youtube at all (I prefer reading to watching a video):
For gaming I mostly play indies and they are rarely from the US, I could live without the US ones. Worst case, I love retrogaming, I can go for years with my chinese retro-handheld and the amount of roms and romhacks that exist right now
As for streaming? I'm all in stremio, and I despise usonian content (even more lately) so all I watch is European shows, korean shows and anime.
As I was writing this, I came to realize that I really don't depend at all of usonian shit. They could go to hell and banish from this world for what I care.
Despite the quality of their results going down in recent years and getting worse because of AI slop, the search engines I would miss the most in terms of type of service. Most alternative search engine still use the indices of Google and/or Bing and the ones that don't, don't have a very big index. I'm old enough to remember a time when search engines were plentiful, but terrible, and back then I actually made use of web directories, like Yahoo! at the time, more. A still-existant example would be Curlie, an heir to dmoz, and there are also more local sites like the Dutch Startpagina. Being more dependent on things like that would probably make my web usage more exploratory and less about trying to find a specific piece of information quickly. And I would also go directly to specific websites more often when I do need specific information. But there are also a few companies working on making a European search index and this happening would undoubted accelerate their efforts, so depending on how that works out, not much might change at all.
Streaming-wise, there are local streaming services for films and TV shows and they would undoubtedly expand their offerings with the loss of competition from American giants, but also, I never stopped buying BDs and DVDs (in fact I have a backlog). I never understood the appeal of music streaming, so I still buy music, sometimes even on CD. As for something like YouTube, Nebula is America-based, but it's not "big tech", so I would watch more of that. Niconico Douga isn't what it used to be, but that might change without YouTube. And there would probably also be some movement towards federated video streaming.
I don't actually make use of any of the big social media platforms. Technically, I have a LinkedIn account, but I don't really use it and wouldn't miss it. It's not really social media, but I do use WhatsApp, but that being gone would just make it easier to convince friends and family to switch to something better.
The only difference is I wouldn't be able to use Amazon gift cards that I get given at work.
I still use RSS quite a lot, both for articles and for podcasts.
Is wikipedia in or out? Because that affects my answer a lot.
Same for xkcd.com
Good point. I would say we should consider Wikipedia as big-tech not "corporate owned" and since it's also open source we should be able imagine it would not be tied to being US.
yeah, you're describing China. it fucking sucks ass if I'm honest
you can "just use VPN lol" but you might be surprised how difficult it is to use a lot of websites with a VPN IP address block. and people around you will generally not be using any of these websites, so the social networks are kind of useless. you basically live on The China App
I feel like Zuckerfuck made this post for ideas on how to circumvent competition.
How did you manage to notice me?
Get a VPN and use Euro internet. Actually I'm starting to think that's a good idea anyway.
For me the web is mostly the place I read blogs. I read a lot of US-based ones that are maintained by smart people. I would miss those, but the rest of the world is certainly not lacking real smart people. If they were to remove access, the US would be the real loser imho.
Self censorship robbed us all. I loved coming across some random blog of a passionate enthusiast. Sitting at 2am thinking hmm maybe I do need to consider learning how to wire lights on a small boat….no 226 lights is a perfectly fine amount of lights for a 12ft boat. I hope this guy sails past me one day. Those were the days.
These days you just don’t find them. People looking to monetise exploited anything good out of existence…and of course you literally can’t find them due to search engines turning to crap.
And of course those places were more about what you could give rather than what you could take.
100%.
You can still find blogs, thx to... human curation. by trial and error, too. Or by using dedicated search engines that focuses on a more personal Web. I used to use Kagi 'small Web' feature that centered searches on small website. Like it a lot? But there are others Thinking about it, it could be worth putting all our solutions and workarounds together.
Kagi is paid yeh?
I already replaced quite a few of these sites and apps. I still waste lots of time here on the fediverse though 😅
Vivaldi for browser, Ecosia for search engine and AI, newspapers apps instead of Google news suggestions and Lemmy.
Other companies would come in to fill the void and we'll have new tech giants, if not in the US then elsewhere. The point is nothing will change, these tech giants are what they are today is because they ultimately provides services that a lot of people want to use. I don't see them going anywhere.
However, for the spirit of your question, if we just remove the corporate world from the internet, the internet will be what it used to be 20-30 years ago. It'll be largely run by nerds and enthusiasts, and the user base will be a lot smaller and more niche based.
I do use Youtube. Through newpipe though. I'll extend your premise , and presume there is no large tech company holding any site or service online. That also includes any generative AI.
How would I use internet?
Well, the same I did in the early 90s I guess. I can't fathom it would be long before some kind of search engine popped up though. I guess I'll be searching art online and sharing mine on platforms similar to Deviantart or the likes, if DA doesn't exist I one hundred percent believe there would be online forums dedicated to sharing art and connecting through messages. I would probably also be text roleplaying in forums as well. Those things still exist on a small scale today.
I guess I would also connect to check news to a couple official news sites if there is no such thing as rss. Same for weather forecast.
I wonder what the situation would be about maps. Without Google, would we still have something large and accessible such as OSMand? I believe not only we would, they would be better, and they would probably be easier to use downloaded locally so that's probably another thing I'd do.
Do we still have torrenting? I can see myself torrenting even more if I don't have any streaming platforms.
I would use that corporate-free Web for email, like we used to in the 90s) and for the Fediverse (the little of it I’m using). I would use it to read… blogs, and to post more regularly on my own blog too.
I don’t use social media much (beside here) and would not miss not accessing Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter or whatever else. I have not used Google for search for quite a few years now, so that would not change much for me.
I would probably miss YT, though. I would try find alternatives to it and... to the majority of US content I’m subscribed to on YT.
I’m not much of a gamer and would not miss much there. I do play chess, mostly IRL and against people not machine, but I would probably still play from time to time online chess on Lichess (not US and not corporate owned, no tracking, no ads, free and open source).
I’ve quit using streaming services a few years ago, moving back to owning physical copies of the media I watch or listen to, and read.
Since, I use Free/Libre Software there is also no real dependency on any country of origin for them. Also, all those apps all work fully offline too. No need to even connect to the Internet to use them.
Well I guess I'd use a different Lemmy server. Probably a different Mastodon server too. I think I'd have the same Matrix server though, so that's nice.
The same thing I use it for now, except it would be slower since I assume latency still matters.
If it's just ditching the big tech firms, I could probably survive well enough. Just trade out yt for something worse and probably worse for my mental health like Odysee ( where I can still find SomeOrdinaryGamers but no Dex or JeromeASF or Jokefish, sadly ). That, or end up trying to find things on peertube.
I don't think FurAffinity or Weasyl are controlled by large tech firms, so they'd probably be safe. And I'm positive e621 would be considering no big tech firm would ever want that furry porn site on their books.
I'd be safe on Wattpad since I looked them up and looks like they're Canadian.
I'd have to find a replacement for duckduckgo's noai search since Mullvad let go of their leta metasearch engine.
I'd probably slim down a couple apps because I wouldn't be able to use discord to keep in contact with the college club I'm in and wouldn't be able to play PvZ2 mods like Reflourished any more since it requires a version of the base app. Would have to quit the last Sintendo holdout for me ( Fire Emblem Heroes ).
I don't gotta worry about streaming services or normal people social media since I don't pay for streaming or the normal social media ( besides yt ). It's basically just here and Mastodon for me.
I'd be screwed because I'd lose access to all my Steam games. There goes a lot of what I do for fun on my computer. And my hobby of collecting CDs and occasionally older games would turn a lot more local since eBay would be off the table for me.
My time would probably just end up being less video watching and less computer game playng. That's assuming I don't get dragged down some dark hole on Odysee. My time online would probably be lower since I'd probably just try to spend more time watching things I've torrented. That, and probably free up more time for me to actually try and learn guitar.
If no US based services in general ( bank not included because that seems a little ridiculous IMO ), I'd end up probably missing out on a lot of stuff here on Lemmy and Mastodon, presuming one of the people I follow is on an American instance ( wetdry(dot)world ). That, and no more ways of seeing my favorite artist Panda Paco's work officially, at least as far as I know. But hey, maybe I'd have more time to devote to writing more fanfiction on Wattpad.
In terms of YouTube, I would use Peertube and Odysee or perhaps, GrayJay. Mastodon instead of Twitter, I don't even need Facebook so nothing for Facebook, I'm a pirate anyways so I don't even need Netflix, Amazon. I don't need Apple in any way since I use Android. If there's no existence of even an Android device, then I would either use a Linux Phone or just Linux on desktop. Brave Search or Mojeek or others instead of Google. Ask Brave (it's American so I guess it's not counted), Deepseek, Qwen etc. instead of ChatGPT. I don't use Tiktok so nothing here. I would probably spend just a little bit less time on internet (mainly because of disappearance of YouTube). For me, not much would change other than the YouTube experience. I predict I would most likely watch TV channels more once again due to not finding enough enjoyable content.
Fediverse users are already prepared greatly if something like this were to occur 😹
And I wish this would really happen
I would probably need a different phone (iPhone) and would replace YouTube with Nebula or something. Other than that nothing would change for me.
Without ICANN, the domains (market & tech) would become so much less US centric. A dream!
Lemmy. Peertube. Matrix. Codeburg. Mistral if i cant reach local AI.
Only real lack i have access to movies and shows, and losing steam for new downloads. So that time would have to be spent elsewhere
Of course too, how much of these services would be wiped out with out big tech for auth (sign in fron google, etc) and big tech from cloud services (AWS, Cloudflare, GCP, etc).
Straight back to ebaumsworld and geocities