French citizen here. For as long as I can remember, there's been a strong will in the French FLOSS communities to develop local alternatives to the ever-expandi

French citizen here. For as long as I can remember, there's been a strong will in the French FLOSS communities to develop local alternatives to the ever-expanding reach of the FAANG/GAFAM, for many reasons. The obvious one being the export of data outside actionable jurisdiction, but it could also be explained by differences in ideology. As for what else we're doing, there's La Quadrature du Net (LQDN)[1] which took part in the recent Google €50m fine, some projects by concerned citizens to keep a watch on politicians[2] and tracking in mobile apps[3], but one of my favourite things comes from the increasing will to release "OpenData" (public data sets from various sources)[4] to let collectivities, regions and smaller units build tools to solve their local problems. [1] https://www.laquadrature.net/en https://www.laquadrature.net/en [2] https://projetarcadie.com/ https://projetarcadie.com/ (in French) [3] https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/ https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/ [4] https://www.data.gouv.fr/en/ https://www.data.gouv.fr/en/