This weekend, I shared a small update about my homelab and gaming setup - just a calm note on keeping things running, from Portainer to Prometheus. But I ended that post with a quiet goodbye to PayPal. And a few people reached out asking: “Why?”
Here is a bit more.
Over the years, I have relied on American tools and platforms for a few things from payments to infrastructure. Like many others, I have admired the innovation - early PayPal, GitHub, Google, AWS. The U.S. positioned itself as a symbol of freedom, open internet, privacy rights (at least in theory), and the kind of digital landscape you wanted to build in. But something has changed.
This is not just about tech anymore - it is about direction.
Elon Musk has turned once-promising platforms into playgrounds for misinformation and ego. Trump, once again in the spotlight, is pushing rhetoric that openly undermines democracy, inclusion, and global cooperation. And all the while, companies once associated with innovation are doubling down on policies that are anything but humane. PayPal, specifically, has been at the center of several stories involving unjust account freezes, lack of transparency, and heavy-handed control over users' funds. That is not a service I want to support anymore.
So yes, it’s personal. It’s political. And it’s practical.
I have started cutting back on American service providers - not because I think Europe or anyone else is perfect, but because I want to align my digital life a little better with my values. Less centralization. More privacy. More open source. More sovereignty over my own data.
Goodbye PayPal. Hello alternatives.
Self-hosted whenever I can. European where it makes sense. Open source by default.
And yeah… still gaming on weekends 😄