title: Happy Digital Independence Day
published: 2026-05-03previous [‘I quit everything’] parent directory
I assume that every one at least in my bubble has thought about it quite a bit. How can we manage to get rid of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and all those big tech creeps that are so greedy for our personal data and that got us locked-in so tightly into their services and hardware in our daily lives?
When I quit Facebook there were two immediate results from that action:
However, that was some years ago and one thing has notably changed since then; people started to care a lot more. Since the US has gone completely out of control (or is being controlled by an orange, blabbering maniac, which sounds just the same to me), people started to wonder if it may have been not the best idea to entrust their whole private and work lives to some US data traders with a kill switch.
So last year Marc-Uwe Kling, a famous author in Germany, pitched an idea that with the potential to make a change, and to make the change easy, fun, and applicable for the broad masses, not just for tech nerds:
Idea of the Digital Independence Day (German)
The idea is to go in small steps, to take these steps together and to keep going.
Every first Sunday of the month, people are encouraged to think about there digital dependencies. If you’re still stuck with WhatsApp and you feel like exploring an alternative, simply install e.g. Signal as an alternative on your phone ALONG with WhatsApp. No need to switch now and to switch hard and to push others to do so. Simply check out the alternative, maybe use it in parallel to your existing app and find out how it works for you.
It’s just a matter of few minutes to install an additional app, or to switch your default search engine from Google to e.g. Startpage. Small steps. See how it goes, and continue next month. And the most important of all: Share your success :D post it on your social media or in your status or wherever you like to let people know.
The official website provides recipes to make these small changes; may it be messaging, email, social networks, office or whatever you hack away with on your digital devices.
(pronounced “dee day” in “German English”, as in Dooms Day, pun intended)
Absolutely. It’s easy, too. You can just do it; every first Sunday in the month, look at your service stack. Are you still using that Gmail address to let Google read your private communication? Do you really still hang around on this puddle of Nazi-AIslop X? Maybe it’s time to try and test an alternative!
Check out our hashtags on Mastodon to get an idea what’s currently going on here:
#DUTgemacht for “Digital Unabhängigkeitstag done” which sounds like “gut gemacht” (‘well done’ in German).
And the community has gone wild, it’s a movement happening here. Find a community online or in your vicinity. Maybe your local community is even giving workshops and advice for people who need some assistance and they need your help. If not, maybe you’ll just be the one to initiate it!
We’ve been offering support for all interested people in our local hackspace in Münster since January this year and it’s awesome. Without even much of publicity there have been more visitors than I’d have expected; people that have had enough of being bossed around and exploited by tech oligarchs but just didn’t know where or how to start to make a change. We’ve had quite some people who were interested in installing Linux on their machines and just needed a little guidance.
If I had to ditch Facebook once again, I’d do it that way. Let people know where to find me next, invite my bubble to check out the new place together with me. Making the change together is much easier and much more fun!
For today there are 103 di.day events in 5 countries announced. I admit the vast majority is still in Germany, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. It’s a digital problem and it’s a global problem, so borders will not matter at all.
We celebrate our digital independence day, growing more independent every month with a growing community every month. Today it’s DIDAY again; check it out, participate, share it!