The why

This project didn’t start as a technical experiment. It started as a gradual loss of trust.

For too long, I tolerated the current realities of modern digital life, such as the idea that big platforms were unavoidable. I hoped that regulation would improve over time, and that privacy violations would eventually be constrained by oversight and law, and if not, that consumers would get fed up and move to alternative solutions. The problems were obvious, such as surveillance capitalism, data extraction, and platform monopolies, but they felt distant and abstract, more theoretical than personal.

That changed.

Not because of one scandal or one breach, but because of a pattern: repeated violations, symbolic fines, and no meaningful structural change. The same companies collect the data, control the infrastructure, shape the standards, and influence the regulations meant to constrain them. At some point, convenience stopped feeling neutral and started feeling like dependency.

It also became impossible to ignore the political layer.

American tech companies operate inside American law, American surveillance frameworks, and American political power structures. Oversight is weak. Enforcement is inconsistent. Lobbying power is massive. Privacy protections exist, but they are fragile and easily subordinated to national security and political priorities.

Recently, this stopped being abstract for me.

When the US president publicly dismisses democratic principles, mocks European countries, portrays them as adversaries, and frames allies as enemies, as he recently did during the World Economic Forum in Davos, that rhetoric becomes a risk factor when your data, identity, communication, and work are hosted inside that jurisdiction.

This is a structural problem; because data lives in legal systems, infrastructure, and jurisdiction.

Where your data lives determines which laws apply, who can access it, who can compel disclosure, what rights you actually have, and what recourse exists.

For Europeans, this has already been tested.

The Safe Harbour agreement failed.
The Privacy Shield agreement failed.

Both were political compromises that promised protection while leaving US surveillance law untouched.

The CLOUD Act made the reality explicit: US companies can be compelled to provide access to data regardless of where it is physically stored.

And the Schrems I and Schrems II rulings confirmed what many suspected — that high-level agreements between the EU and the US are not sufficient to protect European citizens’ data when the underlying legal systems are incompatible.

In other words, diplomatic agreements don’t override legal architecture.

It also isn’t abstract.

Over time, I’ve realised how much of my life is effectively hosted by a foreign jurisdiction.

My communication.
My identity.
My files.
My work.
My memories.

All dependent on companies I can’t vote for, governments I can’t influence, and legal systems where I have limited standing.

That’s not paranoia. It’s infrastructure.

Most large platforms are not neutral services. They are extraction systems. Data is the product. Behaviour is the product. Prediction is the product. Privacy violations aren’t accidents; they are business logic.

This series isn’t about purity or total disconnection. It’s not about digital isolation or ideological statements.

It’s about reducing structural risk, limiting jurisdictional exposure, breaking dependency, diversifying infrastructure, and regaining control.

Over the following posts, I’ll try to document the process of auditing my digital life, identifying jurisdictional risks, migrating services, replacing platforms, and accepting the trade-offs that come with that.

I’m not really writing this series as a guide for others, but mostly as a log for myself, and hopefully someone else can find it useful. If not, at least I have somewhere to point to when someone asks, “Why the heck are you putting yourself through all this hassle!?” 🙂

An honest record of what it actually takes to reclaim some digital autonomy and what it costs in convenience to do it, if you will.

Phew, let’s get on with it.