How do Americans feel about these regionalistic sentiment based posts here on hacker news?. Trump kind helped accelerate this trend but is this generally good for the collective west?
[−]JumpCrisscross · 2026-10-11 Sun 08:36 UTC ·
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> How do Americans feel about these regionalistic sentiment based posts here on hacker news?
Mutt here. It’s annoying how feckless the European pushback is. Half of these alternatives either run significant rails through America or are insignificantly small. Meanwhile, our ambassador to Greece is busy selling her sugar daddy’s natural gas to Albania and Bulgaria [1]. (Nobody is even pretending the folks buying her corruption will be prosecuted. Athens held up Russian sanctions to get one of their tycoons a carve-out.)
I’d bet most of those comments are from self-hating American leftists.
[−]SpicyLemonZest · 2026-10-11 Sun 09:05 UTC ·
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I wish the guy motivating this didn't exist, but I would love for Europe to develop genuinely competitive software products. I don't think it's good even for us Americans that so much software is developed by an American monoculture; we benefit greatly from the existence of Ikea and Toyota.
It's a shame you guys can't benefit from Chinese auto competition. Here in the Philippines there are great choices from BYD, Geely, Chery, GWM, MG, and probably more I'm forgetting. Even the big legacy brands here have had to lower prices to compete.
[−]SpicyLemonZest · 2026-10-11 Sun 11:30 UTC ·
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It is a shame, although I would emphasize that confused thinking on this is not a US-exclusive problem. The EU recently negotiated a trade deal to cut Chinese car sales by 50%.
<insert "European right-wing is actually further left than America's left wing" comment here>
[−]trimethylpurine · 2026-10-11 Sun 10:33 UTC ·
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Huh. I haven't seen that to be the case. But I suppose you can put whatever you like in arrow brackets and it might execute in some people's brains like it does in the browser.
[−]heresie-dabord · 2026-10-11 Sun 11:12 UTC ·
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> we elected him, twice.
Those watching can see that the oligarchs, the economic platform, and the propaganda delivery system are in position to groom the selected voter base for the long term.
The opposition to this open corruption and mayhem (gerrymandering, voter bribery) is only leading nationally by ... 8 points.
Sure got more visible the recent years but the "trend" isn't new.
When sensitive data was a topic even 15 years ago we built European only solutions because America and it's barely existing privacy laws were not to trust. (Built software for government, universities and other companies back then)
From my POV this has nothing to do with orange guy but it's an ongoing trend of benefiting from our customer and data protection laws.
It was always a thing, but Trump made it very clear that he doesn't consider anybody of the western world an ally. So the intensity is quite new.
[−]trimethylpurine · 2026-10-11 Sun 09:34 UTC ·
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Google's, Apple's, and Microsoft's profit first attitude has garnered the same resentment in Europe that they enjoy in the US. There's nothing surprising here. What will be surprising is if the push to move away works in Europe, where it hasn't worked in the US, so far.
I think you're attributing Big Tech's bad behavior to politicians where you should be attributing politicians' bad behavior to Big Tech's lobbying.
That doesn't make sense. If the "profit-first" attitude of the company problem, why is booking.com, with it's non-existent fraud-prevention and useless support, recommended as an alternative to Airbnb?
[−]trimethylpurine · 2026-10-11 Sun 10:08 UTC ·
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Because it's assumed that booking.com isn't hosted in the US where privacy and data protection laws are looser. Does that make sense?
You can also read the website. It lists reasons why people should move. No mention of Donald Trump.
That makes perfect sense. Half of Europeans vote right, just like Americans. There's no need for injecting super villains and otherism into the conversation.
It's pretty dumb! I want the best software and the best hardware, no matter where it's made. Outside of extremely niche situations (e.g. military hardware) international trade is a positive good for all those involved. If you sleep on mattress from China, wear clothes from Vietnam, drink coffee from Ethiopia, eat food from Mexico, and use software from the United States, everyone involved in all of those countries wins: you win because you get the best product, and the companies win because they are financially rewarded for making the best product -- not for their postal address. C'mon people, this is basic economics.
We all wanted that! But than we feared that the USA will just cut our payment systems, government emails and basically every online service we have as it tries to take over Greenland.
I don't feel anything yet because these efforts rarely go anywhere. The average person makes decisions on a multitude of factors but price, availability and convenience are the most important.
However, if this ever got big enough to hurt America's economy in a measurable way, the press would be all over it and Americans would retaliate. Considering how our trade is structured, Europe would experience a lot more pain.
In other words, I think it's cool that you raise visibility to your products. I think you should do it. But you'll lose more than we will if this gets too serious at America's expense.
Optimally we should all develop specialities and maintain a local reserve in most key industries. But all out of war isn't in our interest.
The only thing that would achieve is that the rest of the world would decouple even faster from the USA. Incidentally, there are also a lot of things that the USA does not have backups for and this whole isolationism mindset always ends up with the rude awakening that no single party is larger than the rest of the world.
It would seem to me that you are willfully or accidentally commenting in a thread without awareness of the context. You retaliate because you think you have been wronged. If you believe the US is being wronged by Europe aiming to decouple from US tech because it is seen as a threat then I really wonder what playbook you are using.
Neither. You are assuming we haven't been wronged by Europe. I assume you're European. I understand why you feel what you feel, but many people here also feel we've been abused for decades.
I'm not saying you have abused us, but maybe you should try to understand the perspectives that brought us to the current situation. Americans have complaints too.
I won't respond further messages on this thread because I think we should stop fighting. Maybe we aren't brothers but we are cousins. The real threats are elsewhere.
> I understand why you feel what you feel, but many people here also feel we've been abused for decades.
That's on them. If people allow themselves to be misled that is not something that other countries should take into account when determining their foreign policy. If there is an abuser here then it is perfectly clear where that abuser is located.
> I'm not saying you have abused us, but maybe you should try to understand the perspectives that brought us to the current situation. Americans have complaints too.
And that's fine. But then you should do something about the root cause of those complaints and if and when you do you will find that maybe Europe and the bulk of the population of the USA have a lot in common.
> I won't respond further messages on this thread because I think we should stop fighting.
You are the one promoting that attitude with your original comment.
> but many people here also feel we've been abused for decades
These delusional beliefs have already lead to aggression and animosity towards the EU and the rest of the world, which is why this is happening in the first place.
What should the EU do? The current US administration is destroying every partnership you've built, giving up all of its soft power, it's single-handedly driving the world off a proverbial cliff with the war in Iran which will lead to yet another once-in-a-generation economic crisis and a new wave of totally preventable human suffering.
And for what? To persecute a mythical enemy of the Great American Prosperity? To divert attention away from domestic economic failures, unbelievable wealth disparity, from the fact the your country is ran by sadistic pedophiles? To intentionally weaken the rest of the world? To perpetuate a genocide?
The only sensible thing for the EU to do is to get off the damn ride. There's nothing we can do, short of becoming a vassal state of the US, that would appease the current US administration.
Framing this as an attack on the US is just typical DARVO tactics (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) and it's exactly why the EU needs to get away.
Starting WHAT. Seriously, is there something in the water?
The US has gone out of its way to prove that it is an unreliable partner. To Europe, to Canada, to its allies all over the world. It is obvious that that would result in re-evaluation of the relationship. You can't just upend 80 years of building up a relationship and expect that it will be without consequences. Just like your spouse would have a right to re-evaluate their relationship with you if you punched them in the face to remind them that 'you hold all the cards'.
If you believe that the EU is 'starting it' you are exemplifying the mentality that lead us to where we are today: that might makes right and that if you're abused you should just take it and that even an attempt to leave is considered betrayal.
I'd love to see the Europeans roll their own HN equivalent and region block it (and themselves), but asking them to actually make something instead of complaining or virtue signalling their distaste for American goods is too tall an order.
The irony that they're all on an American website crying about American stuff because they have no alternative really never gets old, though.
I'm sure there's have been startups (even funded with public tax money) that do just that, and they probably fared just as "well" as those "European search engines" and similar startups.
I don't think a good idea to limit yourself to solutions only from your geographical area, but it's also a very ingrained " not from my tribe" human sentiment. It's hard to fight it.
Mutt here. It’s annoying how feckless the European pushback is. Half of these alternatives either run significant rails through America or are insignificantly small. Meanwhile, our ambassador to Greece is busy selling her sugar daddy’s natural gas to Albania and Bulgaria [1]. (Nobody is even pretending the folks buying her corruption will be prosecuted. Athens held up Russian sanctions to get one of their tycoons a carve-out.)
[1] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/at-davos-kimberly-guilfo...
But I don't blame any country for disassociating with the US. Not just because Trump is our president, but more so that we elected him, twice.
This is about privacy and annoying ads everywhere. Europeans hate Google for the same reasons we do. Is that so hard to believe?
People everywhere want the same things you do.
<insert "European right-wing is actually further left than America's left wing" comment here>
Those watching can see that the oligarchs, the economic platform, and the propaganda delivery system are in position to groom the selected voter base for the long term.
The opposition to this open corruption and mayhem (gerrymandering, voter bribery) is only leading nationally by ... 8 points.
When sensitive data was a topic even 15 years ago we built European only solutions because America and it's barely existing privacy laws were not to trust. (Built software for government, universities and other companies back then)
From my POV this has nothing to do with orange guy but it's an ongoing trend of benefiting from our customer and data protection laws.
I think you're attributing Big Tech's bad behavior to politicians where you should be attributing politicians' bad behavior to Big Tech's lobbying.
You can also read the website. It lists reasons why people should move. No mention of Donald Trump.
That makes perfect sense. Half of Europeans vote right, just like Americans. There's no need for injecting super villains and otherism into the conversation.
However, if this ever got big enough to hurt America's economy in a measurable way, the press would be all over it and Americans would retaliate. Considering how our trade is structured, Europe would experience a lot more pain.
In other words, I think it's cool that you raise visibility to your products. I think you should do it. But you'll lose more than we will if this gets too serious at America's expense.
Optimally we should all develop specialities and maintain a local reserve in most key industries. But all out of war isn't in our interest.
There’s a lot of things the rest of the world has no or bad backups for.
I'm not saying you have abused us, but maybe you should try to understand the perspectives that brought us to the current situation. Americans have complaints too.
I won't respond further messages on this thread because I think we should stop fighting. Maybe we aren't brothers but we are cousins. The real threats are elsewhere.
> I understand why you feel what you feel, but many people here also feel we've been abused for decades.
That's on them. If people allow themselves to be misled that is not something that other countries should take into account when determining their foreign policy. If there is an abuser here then it is perfectly clear where that abuser is located.
> I'm not saying you have abused us, but maybe you should try to understand the perspectives that brought us to the current situation. Americans have complaints too.
And that's fine. But then you should do something about the root cause of those complaints and if and when you do you will find that maybe Europe and the bulk of the population of the USA have a lot in common.
> I won't respond further messages on this thread because I think we should stop fighting.
You are the one promoting that attitude with your original comment.
These delusional beliefs have already lead to aggression and animosity towards the EU and the rest of the world, which is why this is happening in the first place.
What should the EU do? The current US administration is destroying every partnership you've built, giving up all of its soft power, it's single-handedly driving the world off a proverbial cliff with the war in Iran which will lead to yet another once-in-a-generation economic crisis and a new wave of totally preventable human suffering.
And for what? To persecute a mythical enemy of the Great American Prosperity? To divert attention away from domestic economic failures, unbelievable wealth disparity, from the fact the your country is ran by sadistic pedophiles? To intentionally weaken the rest of the world? To perpetuate a genocide?
The only sensible thing for the EU to do is to get off the damn ride. There's nothing we can do, short of becoming a vassal state of the US, that would appease the current US administration.
Framing this as an attack on the US is just typical DARVO tactics (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) and it's exactly why the EU needs to get away.
The US has gone out of its way to prove that it is an unreliable partner. To Europe, to Canada, to its allies all over the world. It is obvious that that would result in re-evaluation of the relationship. You can't just upend 80 years of building up a relationship and expect that it will be without consequences. Just like your spouse would have a right to re-evaluate their relationship with you if you punched them in the face to remind them that 'you hold all the cards'.
If you believe that the EU is 'starting it' you are exemplifying the mentality that lead us to where we are today: that might makes right and that if you're abused you should just take it and that even an attempt to leave is considered betrayal.
The irony that they're all on an American website crying about American stuff because they have no alternative really never gets old, though.
It seems like a provincial mindset.