Daily reminder that
- Brave's CEO donates to homophobic organizations and
- Brave is connected to the BAT pay-to-surf scam
Don't use Brave.
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
242 points (97.3% liked)
Buy European
6214 readers
509 users here now
Overview:
The community to discuss buying European goods and services.
Rules:
-
Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. No direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments.
-
Do not use this community to promote Nationalism/Euronationalism. This community is for discussing European products/services and news related to that. For other topics the following might be of interest:
-
Include a disclaimer at the bottom of the post if you're affiliated with the recommendation.
-
No russian suggestions.
Feddit.uk's instance rules apply:
- No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia
- No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies
- No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users
- Do not share intentionally false or misleading information
- Do not spam or abuse network features.
- Alt accounts are permitted, but all accounts must list each other in their bios.
- No generative AI content
Useful Websites
-
General BuyEuropean product database: https://buy-european.net/ (relevant post with background info)
-
Switching your tech to European TLDR: https://better-tech.eu/tldr/ (relevant post)
-
Buy European meta website with useful links: https://gohug.eu/ (relevant post)
Benefits of Buying Local:
local investment, job creation, innovation, increased competition, more redundancy.
European Instances
Lemmy:
-
Basque Country: https://lemmy.eus/
-
๐ง๐ช Belgium: https://0d.gs/
-
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria: https://feddit.bg/
-
Catalonia: https://lemmy.cat/
-
๐ฉ๐ฐ Denmark, including Greenland (for now): https://feddit.dk/
-
๐ช๐บ Europe: https://europe.pub/
-
๐ซ๐ท๐ง๐ช๐จ๐ญ France, Belgium, Switzerland: https://jlai.lu/
-
๐ฉ๐ช๐ฆ๐น๐จ๐ญ๐ฑ๐ฎ Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein: https://feddit.org/
-
๐ซ๐ฎ Finland: https://sopuli.xyz/ & https://suppo.fi/
-
๐ฎ๐ธ Iceland: https://feddit.is/
-
๐ฎ๐น Italy: https://feddit.it/
-
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania: https://group.lt/
-
๐ณ๐ฑ Netherlands: https://feddit.nl/
-
๐ต๐ฑ Poland: https://fedit.pl/ & https://szmer.info/
-
๐ต๐น Portugal: https://lemmy.pt/
-
๐ธ๐ฎ Slovenia: https://gregtech.eu/
-
๐ธ๐ช Sweden: https://feddit.nu/
-
๐น๐ท Turkey: https://lemmy.com.tr/
-
๐ฌ๐ง UK: https://feddit.uk/
Friendica:
-
๐ฆ๐น Austria: https://friendica.io/
-
๐ฎ๐น Italy: https://poliverso.org/
-
๐ฉ๐ช Germany: https://piratenpartei.social/ & https://anonsys.net/
-
๐ซ๐ท Significant French speaking userbase: https://social.trom.tf/
Matrix:
-
๐ฌ๐ง UK: matrix.org & glasgow.social
-
๐ซ๐ท France: tendomium & imagisphe.re & hadoly.fr
-
๐ฉ๐ช Germany: tchncs.de, catgirl.cloud, pub.solar, yatrix.org, digitalprivacy.diy, oblak.be, nope.chat, envs.net, hot-chilli.im, synod.im & rollenspiel.chat
-
๐ณ๐ฑ Netherlands: bark.lgbt
-
๐ฆ๐น Austria: gemeinsam.jetzt & private.coffee
-
๐ซ๐ฎ Finland: pikaviestin.fi & chat.blahaj.zone
Related Communities:
Buy Local:
Continents:
European:
Buying and Selling:
Boycott:
Countries:
Companies:
-
!deapple@lemm.ee (old)
-
!deapple@piefed.social (new)
-
!deamazon@lemm.ee (old)
-
!deamazon@piefed.social (new)
Stop Publisher Kill Switch in Games Practice:
-
!skg@lemmy.dbzer0.com (new)
Banner credits: BYTEAlliance
founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
242
Yup! It is noted in the highlighted text in red. I've had several people respond that they didn't know about it, and would be making the switch away :)
Never had a good feeling about that one.
It's a shitty "secure" browser to begin with imho
I'm waiting for Servo (I know it's not a browser) & LadyBird.
- Brave is based on Chromium and therefore helps contribute to Google having hegemony over web standards.
Always use a Firefox-based browser, even if you think Mozilla sucks.
What about Vanadium?
If it relies on Chromium as a base in any way, it is still beholden to Google's design decisions.
Also reminder that StartPage is majority-owned by American ad company Sytem1
I wish Kagi was not American. I was pretty happy with it until America became a thread
Me too. Kagi is the best of them all, including Google.
The only downside? It's an American company.
Another downside is that is costs $5 a month to useโฆ
How terrible that you have to pay for a product you use
No one wanting to pay for anything is what got us into this mess in the first place
I was thinking about the aspect of privacy. Not only do you need a user, you also have to give them your payment details.
And donโt get me started on their โ300 searches a monthโ-bullshit. If I pay for 300 searches, I want my 300 searches. Regardless of how long it takes me to use it.
I'm okay with forsaking one avocado toast a month for a search engine that actually works, but if I don't feel good about where my money goes then I'm signficantly less willing.
I like spending money on the things I use. The status of paying customer is an enviable position (minus the paying part).
They're basically all compromised in one way or another. ๐
For Search, it is about finding the least bad option and hope that they will become more independent. Mojeek (fully independent but poor quality) or Qwant (building own index, but dependent on Bing)
Worth noting about Startpage: they're part of System1, an American advertising/marketing company. Sytem1 claims that privacy is one of the biggest focuses though. Make of that what you will.
Yacy. Self hosted p2p ( or local only ) search engine. Crawl the Web yourself.
What kind of storage space does it take up, and how good are the results?
Of course, it depends on how you set the crawler, i.e. how deep because of subdomains and how far links to other domains etc. are.
I crawl 71 pages: My index is currently 4,576,319 documents ( i crawled sites like github too )and occupies just under 14GB
The results depend on several factors. For example, whether you only use local or p2p. But then it also has a number of settings and you can also explicitly control what is responsible for the results down to the smallest detail. But I have to be honest and say that I haven't dealt with this at all (especially since it's a bit complex in some cases) because I want to expand my list of pages to crawl myself first and I only use it locally. I still regularly use duckduckgo to search. However, if you take the time for it you will get what you want in terms of quality of results.
Ah well, depending on how you set up the crawler, it consumes system resources accordingly. However, you can set and limit the utilization of RAM and storage space. The same goes for network utilization, which is pretty important because otherwise no other connections would be possible besides crawling xD
This is exciting, TBH.
I'm going to try it out! Storage space be damned ๐
looks really good, something to rewrite in Rust some day!
For now Iโll stick with SearXNG, itโs among the first things I get up and running when I distro hop, but Iโm glad there are other non-US options to try.
Pretty weak chart to not even include "I care most about porn search"
I changed to Ecosia when I last saw this chart. It's working really well and is my main search engine across all my devices now.
But now I'm considering moving to Mojeek if that's better for privacy.
Ecosia is based in the EU and it's working together with Qwant to build an European index. But Ecosia's mission is planting trees, and in order to do that they need revenue, which comes from targeted advertising.
@Scrollone @cRazi_man But I think itโs contextual advertising. If you search for โlawnmowerโ you get lawnmower ads.
I want to support an EU company and the eco mission, but I also want privacy. I used to use Brave but I want to move away from that and still avoid leaking my data to Google.
I think the difference between "targeted" and "contextual" is an important one to make re: privacy. "Targeted" means they're tracking you and using your characteristics to customize the ads; "contextual" means they're just showing ads related to the search term.
Ecosia is a better balance between experience and independence. Mojeek sadly will be a hit in terms of quality of results.
I've been happy with DDG for so long. Uuugh.
Honestly I shopped around a lot and tried various services for 7 days each. In the end I came back to DDG because it's the most useful engine to me. It delivers results I look for and doesn't get in the way.
As a result I'm not quite satisfied, but it will have to do for now.
Thanks. This I nice little guide, easy to suss and helps me figure my priorities.
Very strange to put Kagi as โless privateโ when itโs the only non-self-hosted option that allows for completely private searches with their Privacy Pass tokens. You can access them with Tor, pay with crypto (not really that private though), and sign up with a fake email. https://kagi.com/privacy#anonymity
It isn't marked as less private. It is grayed out because it is not based in Europe. I personally use them as I find them the best option with what is out there.
The text at the bottom says โkagi doesnโt collect any identifying data, but does require an account, so it is considered less private than the alternativesโ.
With fingerprinting and even just IP tracking, I think the question is more whether they can be trusted to not track you (i.e. whether it makes business sense).
Bitcoin isnโt private at all. Itโs a very transparent cryptocurrency.
I didnโt say bitcoin and I called out not really private in my comment.
I'm just adding extra info to your comment. They take payment in Bitcoin, but crypto like Monero is private, which they don't take.
Oh ok
Is there something like Weebly from Europe?
Sadly I don't have that answer on the top of my head. Maybe ask in !PurchaseWithPurpose@lemmy.world to whether others might be able to help.
I recommend Ecosia!
I really wish Kagi wasn't American. Kagi is such a good product, and I'd be willing to pay for it, but in no universe am I willing to pump more money into silicon valley.
view more: next โบ