A broad coalition of organisations is calling for the first ever Digital Independence Day, or ‘DI.DAY’ for short, on 4 January 2026. The coalition’s future aim is to encourage people to switch to digital services that protect independence, data privacy, resilience and, by extension, democracy on the first Sunday of every month.
At the official launch of DI.DAY as part of the Chaos Communication Congress today (27 December) in Hamburg, author Marc-Uwe Kling criticised the fact that “our digital lives are in the hands of a few super-rich individuals”.
Thanks to their companies’ monopoly position, people such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg dictate how we access information online, how we debate, communicate and interact on a global scale. No individual or company should have such unchecked influence because it would mean we could no longer live freely.
On the central DI.DAY website, the alliance offers ‘switch guides’: simple instructions enabling people to switch, for example, to privacy-friendly email providers, independent messaging apps such as Signal, or browsers such as Firefox. The illustrator Florian Biege has created exclusive illustrations for the DI.DAY guides.
Voices from the coalition
DI.DAY is coordinated by the Save Social initiative. Some of the participating organisations also offer online or in-person events to support people in making the switch.
The major platforms deliberately make it difficult to switch. At the same time, the network effect works against us. Will we lose our contacts if we switch? Will we be able to find our sources of information again? And how do we go about switching in the first place? To help answer these questions, CCC experts will be offering advice and practical support in many cities on Digital Independence Day. We’ll help you choose the right alternative, make the switch and settle in comfortably. This way, the move will be a success and sustainable.
Franziska Heine, Chair of Wikimedia Germany, has criticised the fact that the German Government is still using the X network in connection with the launch of DI.DAY:
Digital independence is more important than ever for everyone, so we gave the Chancellor a Mastodon account for Christmas! You can do the same: treat a loved one – or even yourself – to a bit of freedom and digital self-determination!
More than 140,000 people recently signed a petition launched by Save Social, calling on the German government to abandon X. Accordingly, DI.DAY also features a guide on how to leave X and switch to Mastodon, an algorithm-free, decentralised service.
Björn Staschen, co-founder of Save Social, adds:
With Digital Independence Day, we aim to promote diversity and freedom because they are urgently needed! It’s not about purism; it’s about relaxed rebellion. We’re reclaiming our free digital lives, stopping the erosion of democracy and switching to digital alternatives that support democracy.
Supported by
DI.DAY is supported by a broad coalition of organisations that continues to grow. Current supporters include Bonn.digital, the Chaos Computer Club, Digitale Gesellschaft, Ecosia, Epicenter.works, fairkom, FediVariety, freiburg. social, Independent Federated Trust & Safety (IFTAS), King Consult, Mastodon, Nextcloud, Ossrox, the Presidium Working Group on Digital Sovereignty of the German Informatics Society (GI), Robin Wood, Save Social – Networks For Democracy, Social Social, the Schöpflin Foundation, Topio, ver.di Hamburg, Wechange and Wikimedia Germany,
The DI.DAY website is now live (27 December 2025).
Press images
The illustrations by Florian Biege may be used for reporting on DI.DAY, provided the credit ‘Florian Biege for DI.DAY’ (with ‘DI.DAY’ as a link to the website) is included.
Press contact
For enquiries:
- Save Social – Networks for Democracy gUG Björn Staschen presse@savesocial.eu
