Trend

Trials of digital resistance, the anti-big tech niche grows

Apps, smartphones and social alternatives to large ecosystems are multiplying. The goals: privacy and freedom of access to information

by Claudia La Via

13 November 2025

Jörg Wurzer è il fondatore e direttore generale di Volla

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

Economic but also political and cultural power
Increasing interest in open source
Demand for independence and security grows
Bluesky, LibreOffice and Fairbnb

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Easy access, the possibility of always being connected, of having everything at the click of a mouse - photos, files, contacts, memory: the network simplifies our lives and catalogues them, keeps track of our movements, searches, our 'life history'. An irresistibly convenient promise, but also an unsettling one. From this awareness comes a silent flight of those who try to detach themselves from the great digital ecosystems for a claim of freedom: to not be reduced to a profile, an algorithm or, worse, a prediction of behaviour.

Economic but also political and cultural power

According to the document Breaking Up with Big Tech published last August by Amnesty International, the five companies that control the digital market - Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft - "are setting the terms of the digital experience of billions of people". A power that, the document explains, is not only economic, but also political and cultural, because it defines the rules of access to information, orients consumption, conditions the language with which we think about the net and redefines, in fact, the very notion of privacy.

From the smartphone alarm clock to the package tracked in real time, Big Tech's infrastructure runs through every daily gesture. No one is forcing us, but stepping outside their perimeter is increasingly difficult. Yet a small but tenacious countercurrent is growing. There are even ad hoc sites that collect and update the alternatives: a catalogue of micro-disconnections, pieces of a new digital awareness.

Growing interest in open source

According to a 2025 Eurobarometer survey, more than 60% of Europeans believe that Big Tech has "too much power" and more than half fear for their privacy. A figure that explains why it is precisely in Europe that the strictest regulations and a growing interest in open source solutions are concentrated. As Amnesty points out, it is not just a question of competition: profiling and commercial surveillance "limit freedom of expression and access to pluralist information".

In recent years, this sensitivity has been translated into concrete experiments. It is in this wake that we find Volla, a German company that makes smartphones based on free software and a minimalist philosophy: no pre-installed Google apps, no forced synchronisation, no superfluous data collection. The idea is simple and radical: allow the user to decide what to install, to whom to entrust their data and - above all - promise them the 'freedom' of not being tracked. "Big platforms have lost sight of people's real needs," explains Volla founder and CEO Jörg Wurzer.

Demand for independence and security is growing

This philosophy also translates into a different idea of security: not complex, but conscious. Volla's operating system, in fact, allows you to selectively block apps and Internet connections, or filter traffic to avoid tracking and malware. "The niche of users looking for alternatives to the Apple-Google duopoly is growing. We see it too: sales are increasing, a sign that the demand for digital independence and security is becoming concrete,' Wurzer notes.

Alongside projects like Volla, a constellation of services has formed that embody another idea of the network: more transparent, decentralised and privacy-friendly. For messaging, Signal offers end-to-end encryption without collecting metadata; for research, the European Qwant does not track users, while Ecosia allocates profits to reforestation. In e-mail, Proton Mail (Switzerland) and Tuta (Germany) provide integrated encryption and independence from large US providers.

Bluesky, LibreOffice and Fairbnb

The social world is also on the move: Bluesky, born from a rib of Twitter, is experimenting with an advertising-free model with open algorithms. For productivity, LibreOffice, developed in Germany, is the open source alternative to Microsoft Office. And in tourism, where Booking and Airbnb dominate, fairer networks are emerging such as Fairbnb, which donates part of its commissions to local projects, Socialbnb, which links travellers and social initiatives, or Ecobnb and Kindred, which promote sustainable hospitality and exchanges between private individuals.

A mosaic of solutions that shows how the 'divorce' from Big Tech is not isolation, but an attempt to build a different, more human and shared digital ecosystem. Not a crusade, but a change of mentality: choosing interoperable services, deleting an account, installing an alternative app: small gestures that become acts of daily 'digital resistance'.