Time to unplug America? Website lists Canadian alternatives to US tech
The renaming of Lake Ontario was the last straw.
Image by Cybernews
- Canadian activists launched Unplug America to help users find non-US apps and online services.
- The site labels products by Canadian ownership and explains each listing’s background and funding.
- Its creators cite privacy concerns under US laws that can compel companies to hand over data.
- US companies own over 60% of Canada’s cloud market, raising data sovereignty concerns.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Canadian activists have launched a website that lists local alternatives to American technologies as the countries fall out with each other.
The growing tensions between the US and Canada reached new heights after Donald Trump ordered the renaming of Lake Ontario to Lake America on August 27th, 2026, following failed trade talks.
US tech giants Apple and Google sided with the government and changed the lake’s name in their map apps, sparking user backlash and prompting Canadians to delete the apps from their phones.
The decision to cave in to the Trump administration's demands is yet another example of risky dependence on American technologies, a pattern widely discussed across Europe and Canada.
To make the transition smoother, Canadian tech activists Tod and Jocelyn Maffin have launched a website, Unplug America, which provides a list of alternatives to American technologies.
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“There are good alternatives to almost everything that you have on your phone and computer right now. Many of them are cheaper. All of them keep your data out of reach of a government that’s already shown you what it thinks of our borders,” Maffin said in a YouTube video.
Since then, the website has been experiencing “an overwhelming amount of traffic,” according to its creators.
What is the Unplug America website?
The free website lists a wide range of Canadian digital products and services across categories such as cloud storage, productivity suites, e-commerce, email services, food delivery, and search engines.
The website doesn’t contain ads, and companies don’t pay to be listed on the site, though businesses can request inclusion.
Maffin says that companies are rarely fully Canadian or don’t have Canadian roots at all, adding that many “are somewhere in between.”
Managed here, data stored here, but ownership is somewhere else. So we built a way for you to judge by yourself,Tod Maffin, a creator of Unplug America
As a result, every product and service is assigned one of 3 labels indicating its ownership status: “Canadian,” “Canadian with caveats,” and “Not Canadian,” with the latter often including European companies.
Moreover, clicking on the listing allows users to see the company’s owner, history, and funding source, as well as an explanation of why it was included.
“Then you can decide what passes your bar,” Maffin says.
Some listings include videos that explain how to use the platform step by step, with more coming soon.
The promise of data sovereignty
The Unplug America website was launched after Europeans had already made multiple directories of alternatives to US tech, such as European Alternatives and European Tech Map.
Concerns are similar on both sides of the Atlantic, primarily focusing on data privacy and sovereignty. For example, the 2018 Cloud Act compels American companies to provide data requested by its law enforcement agencies regardless of where it is stored.
When you use a company in the US, your data can be handed over to the American government whenever it wants. The major tech companies admitted that even if your data is stored on Canadian soil, they will still hand it over.Tod Maffin, a creator of Unplug America
Three American cloud providers – Amazon, Google, and Microsoft – account for approximately 70% of the European market. In Canada, over 60% of the cloud market is owned by American companies.
Microsoft was recently accused of leaking the data of Dutch civil servants working on tech regulations to the US House of Representatives, further fueling privacy concerns.
There are also fears for the “kill switch,” a scenario in which the US government would order American companies to disable their services to European or Canadian users.
Although it was long considered highly unlikely, the scenario materialized in June 2026, when the Trump administration ordered the AI lab Anthropic to temporarily block foreign nationals from accessing its advanced Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models.