His comment did not even mention the US. Only critiquing the authoritarianism going on in the EU. One of the issues with modern politics is everyone wants to deflect.

I need to host my emails somewhere. This means that you can't reject the EU in isolation, you have to compare it to the alternatives. And the most prevalent alternative is the US

Now of course if somebody has a better alternative that's neither in the EU nor US (nor Russia, or China) that'd be interesting to hear about

Switzerland, maybe? I've been a happy migadu.com customer for years already.

Funny enough, they mention moving to ProtonMail which is at least based out of Switzerland. It makes this whole chain a bit funny, but I don't blame the commenter for not breaking down every service the OP talked about and the OP did shorthand it to "Migrating to the EU", so fair enough.

Servers of migadu are in france actually

Yeah, you are right. It's a bit buried in their docs.

Didn't proton fold like a wet napkin when they were asked for information about their users? What I mean is: Switzerland as a whole is probably the wrong metric...

These are also political decisions and the EU is much more powerful politically than Switzerland so if your adversary is the US and they're willing to use lawfare or more than you should probably go with the EU and not Switzerland. Germany is considered one of the most robust legal systems for privacy.

But there is always risk no matter what you do.

Switzerland - as well as EU based providers - have to comply with court orders. And the EU as well as Switzerland issue court orders upon request from friendly foreign states ("Rechtshilfeersuchen" in german) - such as the US.

Wasn't Proton launched as a "your data is encrypted at rest, we could never access it without your consent"? The implication being that even if they received said court orders, they didn't have anything to give. Am I misremembering that?

They encrypt your data insofar as your email, files, etc. but that doesn't mean they don't have information potentially useful to the authorities. See the recent headline where they revealed a user's payment information allowing them to be identified.

Anywhere you can rent a VPS or dedicated server, install exim or mox or mailcow. Configure dns correctly and you're good to go

In email world, this is as far from 'good to go' as you can get. Good luck getting anyone to read your emails this way.

Do you run your email server? I run two, have next to no problems (the key is in setting up DNS correctly, as I mentioned) and keep getting told this by people who have never tried.

More elaboration on what’s involved in “correctly” would probably drive the point home — “this works because” vs “works for me.”

I made sure to include the word correctly in the reply. Mox mailserver tells you exactly what to do. I think mailcow does as well. A lot of people don't do it and then tell others that selfhosting email with good deliverability is impossible. You set it up once and you're good to go

It depends on whether your IP address has good reputation or not. Don't act like we're idiots, we know what SPF, DKIM and DMARC are. We've seen perfect e-mails (rated 100/100 by deliverability services) get rejected by Microsoft because reasons.

You were lucky, congratulations.

> It depends on whether your IP address has good reputation or not

Addressed in another comment "I wouldn't try it from a residential IP but as long as you run a blacklist check on the IP before you start".

> Don't act like we're idiots, we know what SPF, DKIM and DMARC are.

If you read one comment higher in the thread instead of reacting emotionally, I was specifically asked to elaborate on what the correct DNS meant. Please don't act like those who don't know are idiots.

> We've seen perfect e-mails (rated 100/100 by deliverability services) get rejected by Microsoft because reasons.

No, you haven't.

> You were lucky, congratulations.

What do you call consistent luck? In my case 14 years across 6 different sending domains, 4 different servers with four different hosts using two different MTAs?

> No, you haven't.

I mean I have seen 100/100 on https://mail-tester.com/ get rejected by Microsoft, yes, but feel free to call me a liar if that helps you feel better.

I've just noticed you're the guy who said that people were migrating away from US services "because it's trending"; you're obviously a self-satisfied pillock and I won't engage in further discussion with your tedious online personality

Do any of your emails actually make it into an inbox though? I did this for a server and I couldn't even get it to land in spam on gmail.

Yes but you may need the IPs to warm up and build some reputation, depending where you setup your server the IPs may be burned. Check logs and reputation with some of the postmaster tools the major providers offer and with the services that allow looking up an IP. senderscore used to be convenient to use now it displays a stupid contact form when you try to check an IP, there are others.

To be honest I haven't done the setup for sending a handful of emails but IPs sending hundreds/thousands per day it's fine as long as you don't start spamming people and get flagged.

Yes they do. I wouldn't try it from a residential IP but as long as you run a blacklist check on the IP before you start, and configure DNS correctly, it's generally fine.

The post is about moving stuff from US to EU, so it's not like the US is brought up out of nowhere.

The comment does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a thread where the topic is, eminently, migrating away from US services to EU ones.

>The comment does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a thread where the topic is, eminently, migrating away from US services to EU ones.

Even then, there's no interesting conversation to be had unless we pretend it does.

I, and apparently many others in this thread, disagree.

I personally found some interesting comments here, including but not limited to services based off EU that I can use.

If you find it uninteresting, you should stop wasting your time in it and go do something more productive with your time.

Unless, of course, you just want to do some "concern trolling". You know, the "just asking questions" and "just noticing" behavior.

I'll be charitable and presume you are talking in this thread accidentally, and will find your way to more productive activities instead.

> critiquing the authoritarianism going on in the EU

What?

It's happening in the EU too, just not at such a fast pace than in other regions. And it's still far away from authoritarianism.

Currently it's just smaller pieces and no bigger agenda is visible (or even exiting). But there are constantly new regulations that would make an authoritarian coup (like currently in the US) easier.

There's a ton of disinformation in right-wing media in the USA that the EU is either already an authoritarian police state, or rapidly becoming one.

For example: https://www.heritage.org/europe/commentary/europe-wants-be-t...

> the complete 180 in direction the US is taking and descending in to authoritarianism

A similar (though currently a little bit less marked) trend can also be observed for the EU and EU countries.

AFAIK there's no murdering of citizens going on in any EU member country by the same countries government at the moment.

Ofc not!

We learned from the US and outsourced that to third world countries.

Oh, I see, the infamous freedom of speech.

It is ok for parent to make claims, that is not considered politics and those comments remain, but if someone else presents links with view that counter that it gets deleted.

Noted.

for example?

>(though currently a little bit less marked)

Again this is a false equivalence, 'a little less marked' isn't close to imparting the true state of things and to be honest a little disingenuous.

The EU is not in full motion to dismantle democracy across her 27 states. The US should it not turn this around in the midterms is finished as a liberal democracy.

So 'ah yes but Hungary' doesn't persuade me even though I'll concede it's a problem for the EU. If Tisza is elected in April, Hungary will be on course to turn things around. So you're comparing 1 out of 27 to 50 out of 50 states.

> The US should it not turn this around in the midterms is finished as a liberal democracy.

I wish there was an easy way for me to bet against the imminent fall of the United States as predicted by so many internet commenters. I don’t like what the current administration is doing, either, but I would readily bet against all of these “the end is just around the corner” or “the empire is dying” takes in a heartbeat.

I didn't say the US is finished, I said it was finished as a liberal democracy.

It's already slid in to 'electoral democracy' instead of 'liberal democracy' the difference between the two is how 'rule of law' is prioritised and the balance between checks and balances between institutions is enforced.

https://www.v-dem.net/documents/60/V-dem-dr__2025_lowres.pdf

Not quibbling but to be fair that report shows problems in Europe too, not the same speed of change, and its a different situation, but if you care about democracy its not great.

>The EU is not in full motion to dismantle democracy across her 27 states

But it is? They forced Romania to do a re-election because they didn't like the candidate. And they still try to force Chat Control, try to bypass the unanimity rule and the EU commission gives itself more powers every day with authoritian laws like the DSA. As a European, I don't get the USA's EU-fetish. It's not better here than in the US.

EU did not force Romania. Romania itself annulled them because Russian intervention happened.

Sure that happened :)

Yes, it sure did. Read my comment on your original post.

Knowing Russia, it for sure did.

What actually happened was that former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton publicly stated on French TV in January 2025 that if the AfD won in Germany, elections there could also be annulled by the EU "as was done in Romania". That was a stupid thing for him to say, but he is a private citizen, he did not represent the EU in any capacity, and there is no evidence whatsoever that the EU pressured Romania. Of course, post-truth political movements run with a distorted version of this story to play the victim.

Romania's Supreme Court decision was based mainly on illegal campaign financing. The Constitutional Court noted that Georgescu had officially reported zero campaign expenditures, yet had an enormous social media presence. His TikTok account had over 646K followers and 7.2M likes. This was in the context of interconnected declassified intelligence. Around 25000 pro-Georgescu TikTok accounts became highly active in the two weeks before the first-round vote, with nearly 800 accounts created in 2016 that had remained dormant until the election. Activity was coordinated through a Telegram channel. Romania's intelligence service said there were signs of state-sponsored attacks operating in a hybrid manner, targeting critical infrastructure and shaping public opinion through misinformation. The campaign was said to mirror influence operations conducted by Moscow during elections in Ukraine and Moldova.

Romanian prosecutors later charged Georgescu with involvement behind cyberattacks targeting Romanian electoral systems.

Russia has been systematically attempting to interfere with EU elections, and anyone who argues otherwise in the face of mountains of evidence is either being naive or disingenuous. Post-truth political parties such as the AfD are funded and supported by the Kremlin, which is interested in sowing division and wished the collapse of the EU for a long time. Unfortunately, the current US administration is also ideologically aligned with the Kremlin and also wishes the collapse of the EU, as is explicitally stated in the recent strategic document published by the Trump administration. These are the actual facts, that are easy to verify if you are actually interested in the truth.

Yes it's always the evil Russians and the stupid people are influenced by TikTok so we need to tell them what they should vote!

From e.g. Wikipedia:

>At the time of his exclusion, Georgescu was leading in public opinion polls

D'oh!

>That was a stupid thing for him to say, but he is a private citizen

How convenient he got fired, everything is good now, surely the Commission does not hold the same views as him! Are you really this naive?

And don't get me wrong, I support neither Georgescu (a typical conspiracy theorist nut) nor AfD (who only argue that the evil immigrants are at fault). But I support a free and democratic process and these are no longer in place. If you ban leading candidates and try to ban political parties that are in the lead (AfD and CDU constantly switch #1 positions in polls by 1-2 percentagep points) just because they are not on "your side" you are not better than any country that you mark as authoritian.

Hitler and his cronies were so surprised that the system he had vowed to destroy let him in.

  > And don't get me wrong, I support neither 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

It is not about who you support and what your favorite color is.

And there is the Hitler argument!

> Yes it's always the evil Russians and the stupid people are influenced by TikTok so we need to tell them what they should vote!

I didn't call anyone stupid. I have been deceived many times in my life. It happens to all of us and it is happening to you now.

> At the time of his exclusion, Georgescu was leading in public opinion polls

Yes, that is the issue with misinformation, isn't it? It works. Otherwise nobody would care, would they? Misinformation is incredibly destructive, for example it caused Brexit, which was based on mostly lies, some of them famously written on a bus, along with algorithmic manipulation by Cambridge Analytica, that were never properly challenged leading to the referendum. This is all well-known by now and easily verifiable.

> How convenient he got fired

He didn't get fired, you are making things up. This is precisely the sort of misinformation that destroys democracy. He had resigned months before this appearance on French TV because of frictions with von der Leyen, who tried to block him from being reappointed. By the time he gave the interview, he was already a private citizen and his resignation had nothing to do with this incident.

Also, and importantily, he never claimed that the problem was that any party of candidate was "bad" or "not acceptable". Breton framed his remarks around enforcing EU law against foreign interference, specifically in the context of Elon Musk's (a foreign actor, by the way) support for the AfD ahead of Germany's snap elections. He said: "Let's stay calm and enforce the laws in Europe. They did it in Romania and, obviously, it will have to be done, if necessary, in Germany as well".

The misrepresentation that you are repeating was initially posted on X by the account Visegrád 24, a well-known propaganda account that constantly posts lies and disinformation with an anti-EU bias.

> But I support a free and democratic process and these are no longer in place.

Unfortunately there is indeed one European member state that is suffering democratic backsliding and that is Hungary, but this is not the EU's fault. Otherwise, everything you wrote is demonstrably false.

> If you ban leading candidates and try to ban political parties that are in the lead (AfD and CDU constantly switch #1 positions in polls by 1-2 percentagep points) just because they are not on "your side" you are not better than any country that you mark as authoritian.

AfD has not been banned, and the issue is not them being on my side or not. There are plenty of political parties that I dislike in Europe and I don't want them to be banned. I only wish to ban parties and candidates that break the law, namely by receiving illegal funding from out geopolitical enemies because, unlike the "nationalist" post-truth movements, I am actually a patriot and I love Europe, open societies and liberal democracy.

Didn't like the candidate? Half the country (or perhaps more) didn't even know the candidate. He was pushed with the help of Russia/China via Tiktok and that's about it. He declared 0 (z-e-r-o) campaign expenses. Delusional!

Trends are various. You had Poland remove rightwing goverment 2 years ago (yes and elect righwing president few months ago). Romania electing a European centric president.

We can go on. EU is not a single country, not a single community of people.

Lol what does ICE have to do with a local police officer being able to bully a tech worker into providing your private communications?

what example are you talking about? assuming it's non-UK would like to read about it.

> the complete 180 in direction the US is taking and descending in to authoritarianism while moving against the world order

The EU is just one AfD win away from doing the same thing. It's not immune to this issue either, you have the same problem happening right under your noses.

Not really.

Most European countries have parliamentary democracies.

It's not a winner-takes-all system ala presidential and semi-presidential republics where effectively individuals:

1. rule without opposition. There's no opposition it's not represented in that branch.

2. rule without even needing support of their own parties. The Italian prime minister or the German chancellor have to fight every day in parliament to have support of their parties and the other parties coalitions.

3. a single individual can claim popular mandate. In parliamentary systems you vote for parties/coalitions, not individuals

There's a reason why this authoritarian trend goes from the Philippines, Nicaragua, to Belarus, to Turkey, to Russia, to most African countries and now US. They are all presidential republics.

The last parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian has been...Sri Lanka. Almost 50 years ago. Presidential ones? It's basically every year.

Systems with winner-takes-all mechanics do not represent voters, and power is too concentrated.

Parliamentary democracies might be labeled as less efficient, that I can agree, but they have strong antibodies to such people.

See Austria or the Netherlands as examples where strong far right authoritarian-wannabes individuals became prime ministers...and then nothing happened and their governments didn't last.

I agree that presidential systems in particular are problematic, and the EU is lucky that Germany and France use parliamentary systems. But the nasty thing about populism is that it happens in waves and it does overtake parliaments. We need only look at what happened to the UK with Brexit for a recent example. It's not hard to imagine that a wave of far-right populism could one day overtake Germany, or send France's RN, Austria's FPO or Poland's PIS to a majority position.

We can cross our fingers and hope that nobody would work with them (I know that Germany's parties all have a pinky promise not to work with AfD), but it was only 10 years ago that everyone in the US was laughing at the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency – and now here we are, much sobered. These things happen, and AfD, or RN, or whoever, could wreak havoc to the EU from within the EU if they took power and started working with Hungary to block EU legislation, veto sanctions, defund programs and more.

Well nobody has figured out the perfect political system yet.

Except the Swiss.

Europeans are so blind to how they are essentially on the same path as the US, the US just got there first.

Most European countries have functioning legal and electoral systems, and more than two parties. On top of that, constitutional courts aren't political appointments.

So it would be incredibly hard for a political entity like AfD or RN to gain full and absolute power like the orange has achieved. Even in the worst cases, those parties usually only have ~30% popular support at most, which usually translates to at most ~30-40% of seats in parliament. Which means they cannot even get parliamentary majority, and probably can't get head of state either.

Americans just like to pretend things aren't that bad and they aren't the only ones falling into the abyss.

Could you explain to me (non-US and non-EU resident), how people in EU are okay with mandatory photo scanning on your devices(aka CSAM protection)?

Who does this weird proposals like Chat Control?

AFAIK, it is not "alt-right" parties - so it really does not clicking for me, why AfD and others constantly brought in during online privacy discussions?

Can you remind me when those actually passed? I can pull equally up equally ridiculous bills from the US that never came to fruition.

I am not saying passing, but seems there is a large group of politicians(supposedly backed by voters?) who lobby such initiatives who are not some alt-right fascist outliers?

(I am not from US, please keep that strawman out)

I'm not pretending things aren't bad, I'm pointing out that things could be bad for you as well. America had functioning legal and electoral systems too, and we only need to look at Brexit for a shining example of how parliamentary systems can also fail to resist a populist wave. By refusing to acknowledge that, you look no wiser than the Americans who were laughing at the idea of a Donald Trump presidency just ten years ago.

Isn't AfD winning 20% of the vote and increasing, and it already has won some states?

While there is a trend toward the right in many (not all) EU countries, it's a far cry from the shit show on the other side of the Atlantic.

Not every European country, but unfortunately many countries are at risk. Someone like Orban is so deeply and openly corrupt, you have to wonder why anyone besides his cronies vote for him. But as an autocrat, you apparently only have to chase lgbti people and immigrants to cheer people up. Going to CPAC with all your kinky friends doing the Sieg Heils on stage (yes, that happened, even if someone doesn't want to hear that). Conservatism is a depressing view of the world.

And then you have all kinds of charlatans that are basically Orban doubles. You hear the same stupid talking points and bullshit, the same cozying up with Putin. And to top it off, the USA has openly vowed to fuel and fund that fire of self destruction, so the billionaires can eat the corpse. Because that is where the term conservatism came from, to conserve the power of the king and the ruling elites, as a god given construct (the only original moral aspect of conservatism).

I'm not advertising the US here or trying to troll. I'm an European pointing out things about the European system that many here will not have thought about.

>It's a complete false equivalence. ICE agents have straight up murdered two US citizens in broad daylight without consequence and you're querying the nature of some search warrants in the EU.

Maybe keep your US nonsense to yourself?

I’m in the US and generally pretty level-headed. Nothing makes me become a red-blooded patriot nationalist temporarily faster than seeing Europeans completely ignore the similarities in our political ills. It always boils down to, “but it’s the good kind of authoritarianism we have that preserves social order!!!” as if that has never failed to produce desired results. Thanks for being much more rational. We have a concerning political trend here in the US, it can’t be denied, but the EU is following in step.

Yeah, it's really bizarre how this has to be turned into a competition. We have stupid problems in the EU that don't exist in the US and vice-versa.

The way this particular part of our system works is downright horrifying, but it's exotic enough that very few people (even lawyers) will be familiar with it.

Sorry what? While there are right wing idiots in various governments in the EU, the Trump admin is on a completely different level. Also the bosses of big tech are clamouring over each other to s** him off.

I’m not particularly patriotic or bothered about nations in general, but the yanks can go take a hike.

Man this whole article and your comment just makes me picture that meme with the fat guy open-mouth drinking from a pipe labelled "media".

By the way, sex him off? Trying to decipher the number of characters

Exactly.

What the EU fails to realize is that rights have always been dennied due to the "great good". Nazi Germany did it. The USSR did it. China does it today.

So by claiming "there are good reasons" creates no distinction between them an authoritarians. They need to have a better reason.

Just saying, the vast majority of services people are moving from would be US based given it is where all of big tech comes from. So comparing it to the US is relevant?

If you're trying to say the eu isn't a saint either, sure.

>If you're trying to say the eu isn't a saint either, sure.

I'm not trying to say anything about anyone else besides the EU. Therefore I'm certainly not trying to compare EU to anyone else.

I am an European pointing out issues with the local system, issues that many commenters here clearly aren't aware of given how many replies seem to think that they'll be just fine as long as they don't host in Hungary.

What part of this are you disputing?

Is the commenter the "delusionally stupid" one or did you mean something else?

The US is sliding to a place that many EU countries are happily occupying and pontificating from

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/07/06/since-20...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/17/refugees-jew...

What a disingenuous comparison. The wiki article you've linked ("List of killings by law enforcement officers in Germany") sums to 552 people over the last 100 years. In contrast, the corresponding wiki article on the US ("Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States" [1]) estimates more than 900 deaths per year. Indeed, the number of slayings is so great that the article does not tabulate the sum in a single table (as the German article does) but instead links to separate wiki articles with tabulated results by month.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...

>The wiki article you've linked ("List of killings by law enforcement officers in Germany") sums to 552 people over the last 100 years

I think we can probably agree that this number is not very accurate.

Over the last 100 years, almost certainly not. For the most recent decade? Yes, of course I would expect these statistics to be fairly accurate.

Between 2021 and 2025 (inclusive), Wikipedia lists 68 dead in Germany versus 5882 dead in the US, despite the US only being ~4 times larger. More people have been killed by police in the US this year than in Germany in the past ten years, and it's not even April yet.

Per capita vs absolute numbers seems particularly relevant here.

There are four times as many people in the US.

Germany has four cities with around a million people.

The U.S. has at least 15.

Also, absolute numbers don't reflect justified shootings, which is an entirely different and much more nuanced conversation.

No part of this should be taken to mean that I don't think there's a problem in the US, I just object to complex issues being overly simplified.

Per capita vs absolute numbers are not especially relevant in this case. The figures differ by orders of magnitude.

> 552 people over the last 100 years

What a disingenuous comment. Do we really think that is the case?

You ignored my other link. Imagine the outrage EU would have had if US seized immigrants jewelry. Yet, Denmark gleefully does that.

Funnily, I had friends from Europe participate in the No Kings protest here, while coming from countries that have literal kings.

It's your source, not mine; if you have a better one, post it. I won't do your own research for you.

> Funnily, I had friends from Europe participate in the No Kings protest here, while coming from countries that have literal kings.

This is either disingenuous or misunderstands the nature of European constitutional monarchies.

Don't discount that it could be both. It's still early in some parts of the US, they might not have had their coffee yet.

> Imagine the outrage EU would have had if US seized immigrants jewelry

The US literally deports people to concentration camps in countries with no civil liberties. Many have disappeared there. A whole other group have been raped and become pregnant and are being moved around to force births.

And you are concerned about fucking jewelry. Genuinely, are you taking a piss here?

CBP does it too https://holdcbpaccountable.org/abuses/confiscation-of-proper...

And here's the US laws for it, explained https://leppardlaw.com/federal/forfeiture-seizure/federal-se...

Trump issued an executive order that explicitly allows seizure of assets https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/trump-administr...