BuyFromEU

6667 readers

67 users here now

Welcome to BuyFromEU - A community dedicated to supporting European-made goods and services!

Feel free to post, comment and vote, be excellent to each other and follow the rules.

We also invite you to subscribe to:

Logo generated with mistral le chat Banner by Christian Lue on unsplash.com

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Soggy_Commission_934@feddit.org

The BuyFromEU movement needs to be careful to not become protectionist (feddit.org)

submitted 2 weeks ago by pantherina@feddit.org to c/buyfromeu@feddit.org

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

While "buy from EU" sounds reasonable (and it is, in terms of physical goods that shouldnt rely on huge travels around the world), it is dangerously intertwined with protectionism.

Politicians really like the idea of protectionism, but it doesnt help in terms of software, which is a big topic in here.

Open Source / Free Software is always global, doesnt discriminate against contributors from any country (may it be sanctioned or not).

I know a lot of really shitty proprietary software from the EU that I would always trade for free software from a global community.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ShiftAlfa@feddit.org 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Not protectionist but it's fair to start using more eu brands when reasonable.

I always try to buy local products while shopping but if the best alternative is a product made somewere else, i'll take that. I tend to use local brands because they're more regulated and fair, but if that's not the case, and they're just more expensive, then it's not worth it.

For exemple, I used telegram for years( since 2017) instead of WhatsApp because it was more secure and offered me alternatives and customization. Then I saw it's founder's messages on x about France and about romanian elections so I started to dig up stuff about him and I closed my account. I never stopped using WhatsApp but in paralel I used telegram with my wife (that is 90% of messages I send/receive).

I'll switch to something else that I still have to find as soon as possible.

[–] pantherina@feddit.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yes but this ignores open source which is most of the time just good, and doesnt need to be forced to it through regulation

Xmpp or matrix are good Messaging protocols, and both are international projects.