I moved my digital stack to Europe (monokai.com)

Article summary

The author describes their experience of moving their digital stack to Europe, motivated by a desire for digital sovereignty and control over their data. They replaced various US-based services with European alternatives, such as Matomo for analytics, Proton Mail for email, and Scaleway for compute and object storage. The author found the migration process to be manageable, with some services being easier to replace than others. The goal was to have a digital infrastructure that is more aligned with European values and regulations.

Main themes

• Digital sovereignty
• Data privacy
• European cloud infrastructure
• US vs EU regulations
• Cloud migration
• Data control

What commenters say

• Some commenters question the need for digital sovereignty, arguing that US companies like Amazon follow EU rules and regulations.
• Others argue that choosing a US vendor exposes them to the risk of a capricious US government leveraging control of IT infrastructure for extortion or theft.
• There is disagreement about the trustworthiness of European companies regarding data privacy, with some arguing that they are no better than US companies.
• The use of OVH for backups is criticized due to a past incident where a datacenter burned down and customer data was lost, although some commenters defend OVH's actions and current practices.
• Some commenters argue that the concept of digital sovereignty is not just about the company, but about the jurisdiction and regulations that apply to it.
• There are differing opinions on the importance of keeping data and infrastructure within the EU, with some seeing it as a key factor in trust and security, while others view it as less relevant.