Personal Digital Sovereignty: How I'm moving out of Big Tech.

January 19, 2026

I'm happy to see the trend of moving out of Big Tech to more open and sovereign solutions. Personally, I could share that it is not as difficult as people might think. Some of my experience:

  1. For my phone: almost 4 years ago I bought a Fairphone with /e/OS (a de-googled Android) and I'm more than happy with the choice. The only big difference I noticed is the amount of tracking that it blocks by default (one app tried to track more than 100 times per day!) For the rest, everything works as a normal phone.
  2. For my email: I have moved to Proton almost a year ago. It doesn't need to be an all-in change. I have slowly moved everything and I am more than happy with all the products (VPN and Password Managers are great!). I have only a couple of spreadsheets in my Google account and some subscriptions but my usage of GMail has decreased drastically. It's not my default anymore. I'll probably ditch it completely this year.
  3. Personal Computer: A Lenovo with Debian. I have been using GNU/Linux as my main OS since I was a teenager. Now, it's been 7 years since I do not own a Windows machine (I use to have dual boot for gaming, but not anymore). My mom has been using Ubuntu since 15 years ago, her laptop has been 100% Linux and she never even noticed any difference.
  4. Social Media: I no longer use Twitter, I haven't open Instagram in almost 3 years. I still use LinkedIn of course. I don't miss Twitter at all, Instagram a little bit (but it was really bad for my mental health). I use Bluesky with a very limited timeline and RSS a lot.

I hope this helps anyone thinking about doing a move to more ethical tech! Happy to answer any more questions.