They can just ignore it and if they get caught those fines are just a “cost of doing business”.

I think we won’t have to wait that long to see if they keep on ignoring it or if, like I think they will do, they will coerce the EU into curbing its (probably too) many regulations.

The only way is not to use any of them.

Not that simple when more and more services are not just ‘nice to have’ or for fun but required.

I can not use streaming services (and I don’t), I can not play online. I can not use YT, and so on. But I cannot not use my doctors, right?

Here in France, our medical appointments (and more and more of our medical data) are hosted by the ‘Doctolib’ platform which uses… MSFT servers (note that it would not be much better it they were using AWS or Google). Add to that that almost all doctors are using Doctolib which makes it so you can hardly get an appointment without using that service even when you take said appointment by phone since on their side of the call they will then record said appointment on Doctolib, because it’s what they’ve been taught to use and associate it with the email address you probably have already given them if they need to contact you (email that most of the time will be either Gmail or Msft).

On the same line, for years I used to receive most of my medical analysis and exams (of which I have… quite a few every single year) through snail mail or directly after the examination, as a print out. I stopped to, they’re now all stored on Doctolib and even if I did not have an account, it’s stored on all my doctors accounts…

Last year, the last of the many doctors not using it did not even inform us they had started using Doctolib. One morning, after calling them for my next appointment, I simply received confirmation through Doctolib by email and on their app.

Worse (?), another doctor of mine is using Gmail for all her email with her patients, email that is used to send and receive test results, share intimate informations,… I explained the issue to her, even suggesting a couple EU-based alternatives. She plolitely listened to me and then shrugged telling me Gmail worked fine and was free. She is a good doctor, mind you, but like too many she simply can’t be bothered with changing her habits.

Imho, in the case of services like those and email, thd solution is not to stop using them: even if I don’t use them myself, that doesn’t change much the moment my correspondents keep using them, or even if said email is at one time or another hoisted on US-owned server.

A better solution would be to make it much more obvious that we should use EU-based solutions, because it’s in our best interest, and make it much more rewarding too, maybe, and make it simpler. And then, sometimes make it mandatory as in required by some law to use EU-based solutions but how would that be a thing when most of our elected are just… well, they are what they are, and that’s not a compliment.

A longer term solution should also be to give younger people (it’s too late for the vast majority of the older generations, even more so for mine), to give them a minimal but real (not the usual bullshit) computer education and to also give them some notions on the value of privacy in a democratic society, be it digital privacy or not. But how would that be a thing in the same as education as almost entirely given up on teaching kids even fundamentals skills like doing math, reading and writing?