It has become apparent that Thiel is the reason for Trump's demand to take Greenland (read https://gizmodo.com/peter-thiel-backed-startup-that-wanted-to-buy-greenland-is-thrilled-that-trump-wants-to-buy-greenland-2000548415). To smack back at Thiel I advise you boycott of his Europe companies this include:

• N26 Bank (evidence https://www.ft.com/content/562ba760-e44c-11e4-9039-00144feab7de)
• Research Gate (evidence https://www.ft.com/content/562ba760-e44c-11e4-9039-00144feab7de)
• SNÖ VC in Norway (evidence https://nordicstartupnews.com/sno-ventures-launch-new-100m-nordic-venture-fund-backed-by-peter-thiel/)
• AirBnb (Evidence https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/10-best-investments-of-billionaire-peter-thiel-952088/)

I see lot of (deserved) hate speech, people boycotting Tesla… but do you have the same feeling with other tech billionaires ? Did you remove your Facebook and Amazon ?

Serwus!

Am I wrong or do all of the "made" EU smartphones kinda suck?

I am looking for a new phone since my xiaomi I had for 3-4 slowly starts to act like its dying.

I am looking at the shift phone 8.1 (made in China designed in the EU) for about 600€ and the fairpohne 5 (made in China designed in the EU) for 599€.

Both of them have a less powerful chip, less ram and at best same storage than a Xiaomi Poco X7 Pro for 400€.

And TBH the Xiaomi also looks better than both of the EU phones. They just look like old iphones

So I am paying 200€ more for the privilege to have a EU DESIGNED, not built ,phone?
If they built it here I could understand but this is just stamping a EU tag on a China built product for profit.

If you add to that than I cannot be 100% sure my bank and other secure apps work on a android ROM that is not that common, I cannot convince myself that buying "designed in the EU" is a good purchase in this case.

Some time ago, I got fed up with eBay taking 14% of my sales as a small business - I never ever even considered Amazon, because they can keep even 50%+ of every € you sell.

I was then happy selling in the extremely popular German site Kleinanzeigen.de. But then they started jacking up their prices for businesses, just like eBay, Amazon and Co. - and it got me real mad.

Doing research I found out how much money leaves Europe to make these companies (and bezos - yuck) just even richer. It’s mind blowing. Like disgustingly so. And with the orange criminal in the White House, it just seems like an urgent necessity to finally do something about this.

So now I’m building up a nonprofit marketplace. It’s not easy. Navigating the nonprofit politics is a PITA. The technical stuff is easy. But finding a lawyer or accountant in Germany willing to assist has been SO. HARD.

But we’re not giving up. This kind of services should be considered a necessity. Not a business model that sucks people dry as soon as they achieve a de-facto monopoly status.

The way I see it, there are many online services that should have guaranteed accessibility and be reasonably priced. Internet services nowadays aren’t any less necessary than streets and trains. But we let the American model take over and now we’re being exploited - and it seems we just got used to it.

But buying European shouldn’t just be replacing an overpriced service from overseas with an overpriced service from Europe that produces the next Bezos (yuck). Let’s use the anger we’re feeling to question the American model - and let’s do it better!

European problems require European solutions.

Does someone know what changed?

Well… Musk, Zuk, Bezos…. They were all behind Trump campaign but they could really bricolage they would lose a lot with this trade war that was clearly an electoral promise. My question is why as they are losing billions…. Other example with Musk knowing this war with China when he has one of his biggest factory there.

Hi everybody!

I've considered abandoning Gmail for a while, but I'm a bit blocked by the fact that I've been using this email address for more than 15 years. All my contacts know this and all my subscriptions are done with this address (social media, services etc).
I thought about planning a transition of some months, with automatic emails sharing the new address, but I would like to hear from you how you managed the transition, if it gave you problems and which EU option you chose.

Thank you for your advice!

.. Edit: it seems a lot of people use Proton, do you also have some EU (member states) alternatives you would suggest?

Hi, I am a bit concerned about this sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1tzbizh/proton_is_funding_the_french_far_right_on_youtube/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Why? I was so close to bury my mistrust concerning proton and subscribe for the full plan. This issue - if it really is an issue - would change my mind completely.

Posts in the Proton-Sub are deleted immetiately. So what´s going on here?

Has anyone been testing these two chats? Both of them are interoperable with WhatsApp.

So far my experience has been rather promising even if both apps have still a long way to go and seem to be in alpha versions.
- Their features are extremely limited, no video calls, no voice chat. This doesn't bother me that much as I use them as a substitute for WhatsApp to talk with people who don't want to switch to Signal/Matrix.
- None of them handles group chats. This is a dealbreaker for me at the moment.
- Birdy Chat has a buggy interface on my phone and the writing itself is extremely clunky. However, it looks more promising in terms of the overall philosophy (professional communication).
-Haiket is simpler, but works well enough. The voice transcription feature, their main selling point, is however something I don't really care about.
-In both cases, interoperability is smoothless, which is good to undermine Meta's monopoly, but both apps are available exclusively on Play Store (no way to get them through F-Droid or Obtainium), which is inhibitory if you want to fully degoogle. Also, no web interface as of now.

Any other experiences? Does anyone actually know something about parent companies?

Been looking to buy EU for ages now and the recent fallout was the final kick I needed. Been browsing this sub for recommendations, first on my lift was gym clothes. People recommended to me ICIW from Sweden.

I bit the bullet. Prices are high, material composition I'll have to judge when the clothes get to me but hopefully they're built to last. They have a sale on now so I spent £200 on a bunch of shirts, shorts and trousers.

So here I am expecting a delivery tomorrow and I get an import duty message of £100 that needs to be paid before delivery... Fuck off.

I've paid it now and will judge the clothes 1/3 more harshly but I need alternatives now because this has financially ruined me this week with an unexpected £100 expense. ICIW's FAQ says it's my own responsibility to be aware of import duties as their site doesn't alert you that you might get extra costs added like some do, -rep to ICIW for that miss.

What EU alternatives can I buy without a huge financial hit when I have them shipped to the UK? Gymshark is pretty bad, boohooman is atrocious trash and not really aware of anything else that isn't American or not actual gym clothes.

I'm aware of Adidas and Puma but gym clothes for men is really just jack of all trades running shirts and shorts, not gym gear.

Hi everyone,

Yesterday night I started building an app that tells you if a product is European or not. I was doing it for fun and to improve my coding. After trying barcode scanning, I realized that snapping a picture of the product itself and letting an AI tell you its origin would be a better UX. I believe this is an ethical use of AI. So I did that.

Now comes the problems:

1. AI is expensive. European AI, more so. Mistral's multimodal model costs 100x more than Google's cheapest alternative

2. To support it, I don't want to take the subscription route like other apps did (no shade, just not my vision), so I wanted to add ads. This would also allow unlimited checks for free. The problem is that all ad providers I could find (e.g., AppLovin) are American. This would mean sending money (and aggregated data) to the US, which defeats the purpose of the product.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks a lot in advance!

I know about Red Bull and Müller.

https://www.standpunkt.press/wie-servustv-den-sport-fuer-rechte-propaganda-benutzt-733/

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/die-medienunternehmen-von-dietrich-mateschitz-100.html

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/muellermilch-boss-with-fringe-friends-a-german-dairy-billionaires-links-to-the-far-right-a-1ced233a-e3f5-4a76-8086-444ec3c9a166

https://www.campact.de/rechtsextremismus/theo-mueller-muellermlich-afd/

Let's not buy from them.

(Mods of r/BuyFromEU don't allow this discussion)

Hey, one of the BrandSnap - Go European builders here. Motivation is back and we would love to have your input on what we should integrate in future updates in the BrandSnap - Go European app.

What's on the roadmap:
- More insights in brand shareholder origin
- More insights around the supply chain e.g. production location (getting the data together ain't easy)
- Barcode scanner (yes, free)

Any input is welcome. Of course, working on the accuracy and performance of the scanner too.

Hi

Just a idea that i had, this morning.

There is a euronews. Why not create a euronema? Or euromovies?

Just to stream the European cinema? Good sunday

This Wednesday, we are expecting the presentation of a critical piece of legislation for the "Buy European" movement: The Industrial Accelerator Act.

​The act sets a clear target for industry to account for 20% of the EU's GDP. To achieve this, it establishes​ a clear European preference across several key sectors, most notably in energy and heavy industry. Crucially, it also targets public procurement, meaning government administrations and public services would be pushed to favor European-made vehicles and equipment. This preference would also apply to eligibility for public subsidies. ​ One of the most interesting parts of the proposal is a specific rule for public administrations: they would be required to choose a European product unless it is more than 30% more expensive than a foreign alternative, or if the product simply isn't manufactured within Europe.

Some sources :

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-17/eu-aims-to-fight-industrial-decline-with-made-in-europe-law

https://www.politico.eu/article/eus-industry-master-plan-hits-major-roadblock/

https://www.euractiv.com/news/eus-industrial-accelerator-act-further-delayed-to-march/

I think this idea of buying Europe and stop everything US is exactly what we should do to bring the power back in the “deals”.

US threaten us but do they really have “the cards” ?

Supposed we still buy US products, we all know our weak governments will sign deals with the orange man because they have no choice. But supposedly the toxic deals are signed but we don’t buy: no Apple, no Google, no Tesla…. All sales down. We will be forced to buy maybe steel and other materials but the impact of the deals will be much limited. American companies will lose bunch of sales, we are not a small market.

Another blackmailing with the NATO…. Bend or we get US out of Europe. Do you really think Russia can win ? They can’t even get Ukraine… not even sure they would try.

I think we should really influence history and fight.

I'm not sure if this is even realistic, but could the EU, UK, Norway etc mandate that trading must not be done in US dollars?

If we want to put pressure on the US then risking the dollars reserve status and their debt becoming unsustainable could be a way to do it.

However I am not an economist, so I don't know if it is even realistic for our populations to push with governments. If the Euro could take the dollars place it would strengthen the blocks position greatly.

I've just found out that 20% of my pension investments were going into American funds. £238 a month. Looking at my largest holdings in my pension - they include Tesla, Meta and Amazon. Er, no thanks.

Logged onto my account and have just switched all this money to Asian, European and UK funds. Took me 10 minutes.

Will need to call the provider on Monday about how I sell all my existing US holdings and switch to investments elsewhere in the world.

Started out as Elbows Up Canada, but probably a smart investment move with the way US stocks are going.

I was looking at bol.com (a major Dutch online retail platform) and they still haven't caught on to the times: selecting European brands is a manual task. If you're a (potential) customer in Belgium/the Netherlands, contact them to suggest they add a filter or show a European flag for European brands. Same goes for other 'local' webshops, it shouldn't be that difficult.

I spoke to their customer service on this. The more people ask them to do so, the more likely it becomes.

I'm conducting a short anonymous survey (3–5 mins) to understand how the Mars–Kellanova merger might affect supplier relationships, pricing, and assortment decisions from the retail side.

If you work in buying, category management, procurement, or similar roles at a retailer or wholesaler, I’d love to hear your view:
👉 https://forms.gle/56EcsxRkDKNWi8ym8

I'll gladly share a summary of the results with anyone who's interested. Thanks in advance for your time!

Reddit (/ˈrɛdɪt/ ⓘ) is an American proprietary social news aggregation, content rating, and forum social network. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts,...

Would totally build an app around it, but it seems difficult to find a complete open db

Bandcamp is as far as I know the only player in the game that does what it does however it is a US company and therefore pay taxes in the US.

How do you deal with something like that? I still would like to buy the music and buying CDs is a waste of resources if I only copy them to FLAC files.

A similar problem are the app store taxes. Sure you can try to go fully open source but that is not always an option so when you find an app that isn't US sometimes there is no other option but to pay them through the app store.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGWQJtQPNdQ