How to boycott American digital companies

Donald Trump is now imposing 25% tariffs on Canada, changing his mind and rates every day, and will soon be imposing them on Europe.

This is easy enough for everyday consumer goods, much less so for social networks and digital communications, partly because we’re used to it, and partly because we think that, since we don’t pay for it, they don’t make any money from it.

However, digital is the sector for which you should find a substitute, on the one hand because it brings in a lot of money for the parent companies, and on the other because your digital data and communications are at risk.

Once you’re aware of this, it’s up to you to make the decisions to replace them.

The hidden revenues of social networks and video platforms

Social networks and media bring in a lot of money for their owners, so you think “I don’t pay anything, so I don’t bring them anything”, but that’s not true.

We calculate the revenue generated by the number of users multiplied by the average revenue per user, called ARPU, which varies according to geographical area.

Don’t let yourself be controlled

Donald Trump threatens his allies by turns, cuts off satellites helping Ukraine, grounds F16s by disabling remote electronics. He declares Canada’s borders not legal, he may decide to do it for your country tomorrow morning with the following possibilities:

• Capture your digital information
• Data deletion
• System lockout
• Changing information

What seemed unthinkable suddenly became reality.

We’re completely dependent on the big US tech companies, but the good news is that we can start to make ourselves independent of them.

Alternatives to Netflix and Prime video

• Crave : the Canadian channel that competes directly with Netflix and often offers better movies and series than they do.
• Canal Plus : the French channel, excellent but expensive
• NFB: National Film Board of Canada, which has a fine collection of films that it subsidizes.
• Videotron illico: the Quebec channel that offers many Quebec films and local series
• Tou tv: Canadian films, series and documentaries
• CBC gem: (Canada Broadcasting Corporation): Canadian streaming television in English.

• FranceTV: free French application
• TV5 Unis: French channel for the international market, with films from France and abroad.
• Britbox: the British streaming channel
• Sky Go offers live English-language films, series and sports.
• Filmin (Spain) – specializing in auteur and independent cinema, if you want to perfect your Spanish

Social networking

• X – formerly Twitter: Bluesky, which is American but not owned by Elon Musk. It’s the fashionable network, the only one that’s growing very fast at the moment, as Meta networks have gone out of fashion and X is no more popular than Tesla now. Bluesky bears a striking resemblance to X, with subscribers leaving in droves for Bluesky. You’ll find most of the people you used to follow there, and all the major media.
• Facebook by Meta : Minds open source social network
• Instagram: 500px an excellent photo platform based in Canada.

Artificial intelligence

The Chatgpt, Gemini and Copilot chabots now have equivalents, some of them better:

• Deepseek, from China, is almost the same as ChatGPT and it’s free.
• Mistral AI : a French equivalent that has little to envy the others.

CRM

American CRMs: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle. They’re the biggest, but they’re gas factories that all the salespeople I’ve met hate. The French and Canadians have much more flexible and efficient solutions.

• Axaunot: highly versatile and adapted to French companies
• Sellsy : another French CRM focused on customer relations
• Centrix one : adapted for Quebec SMEs
• Actionclient: the simplest, most intuitive and best CRM for freelancers in Quebec and France.

Online courses

Online courses: the best-known is the American Udemy, which can be replaced by French or Quebec sites.

• Skilleos: mainly for subscription-based organizations and companies
• Elephorm: a wide range of training courses
• Challenge Action: limited choice, but highly specialized training adapted from that given to the best companies. Specialties: customer service, sales and management.

Search engines

Forget Google and Microsoft’s Bing, you’ve got something better.

• Qwant: an excellent French search engine that also has the advantage of protecting your identity when searching.
• Firefox is based in San Francisco but has the advantage of being open source, and is my favorite.

Office automation

The office automation sector seems to be monopolized by the Americans, but there’s more to it than that.

• Gmail : Proton
• Microsoft 365: OnlyOffice
• Outlook:Thunderbird. It’s an excellent open-source replacement, it’s been working for 20 years, it’s stable, it has more features, it just takes a few days to adapt to it. Beware, if it’s linked to Gmail, you’ll be dependent on this American company, for which there is a substitute.
• OneNote : Obsidian
• Google Drive: NextCloud

In conclusion

You have substitutions and the means to act, so it’s up to you to choose between taking the risk of being controlled or controlling your digital information.

Jean-Pierre Mercier