The sentiment around buying European/Canadian alternatives to American products and services is a great one, and I can get behind the movement, but there is more to it.
Not all products and services have alternatives that are viable. You can’t get your workplaces to move to libreoffice or get your mom to start using signal messege. Moreover, even when using Europa products and services you still perpetuate the culture of uncontrolled capitalism and enriching tech billionaires. Open Source Alternatives, Piracy, and Ad Blocking are all equally viable.
Keeping this in mind, remember that piracy and ad blocking are great ways to keep using American services without contributing to their bottom line.
There are ad free versions of YouTube, reddit, Instagram and Facebook apps. They’re all patched with revanced and are available on github.
Additionally, pirate media as much as you can and be unapologetic about it. Facebook is doing it, so can you. Pirate music, movies, books they’re all available. Torrents community has never been safer and better organised.
Consume without paying and that does more damage to their bottomlines.
In addition to this, remember that Internet companies took away your privacy. The upcoming AI revolution is being pushed to take away your agency. AI will do the research and buy things for you while you have little choice in the decision. This is why the push for AI, not because of worker productivity gains.
Few years ago, regulations around privacy forced Google into a corner and they had to start phasing out third party cookies. Tech companies came up with ways to continue harvesting user data either from the metaverse or through some other walled gardens online.
AI will make user tracking obsolete. Marketing on reddit doesn’t need cookies, we can already tell what consumers like based on what communities they are part of. This will get worse with AI tools. This is why reddit stock moon’d.