Where to land – Workshop #6 Digital Sustainability in Strasbourg [en]

Hi 👋 I was in Strasbourg from 4-6th of october and had the opportunity to facilitate a workshop about digital sustainability for the performing arts sector in europe. The focus was on how the sector can exchange, network and ultimately act on an European level to help meet the 1.5 degree target. Here below is the ARTE video, which gives a general overview of the two-day forum. I will then go into the details of my workshop below.

Why is this topic important?

Digitalisation and sustainability, as two mega-trends of the 21st century, unfortunately are rarely thought together. Their relationship is ambivalent: current public policies, the digital transition and the dematerialisation that is associated with it, are often presented as one of the levers of the climate transition. The material reality of digital technology is quite different from the utopian hopes: A report published in December 2021 indicates that current digital uses in Europe represent 40% of a European’s total sustainable GHG budget by 2050 – and the trend is strongly increasing. The rapid renewal of equipment is still the biggest contributor to emissions, while the impact of data consumption, network usage and online storage is growing exponentially. And it is not even taken into account, that the emissions of our digital activities are often missed out in those calculations. Generally, we view the energy consumption and emissions which are „behind the screen“, as the emissions of third parties, often those of the BigTech companies. Nevertheless, users of digital tools, for example cultural organisations, cause emissions with their content creation, not only by the creation itself, but also through the engagement and content consumption they provoke from other users.

So what’s the Problem?

Right now digitalisation is often seen as tool for achieving business goals. Because of the immaterial nature of the digital world, the use of resources, like energy, rare earths elements and water, are difficult to perceive for us. Similarly, this also applies for other sustainability issues, like the concentration of power at BigTech, surveillance capitalism and the missing of truly free spaces in the digital world. Measuring digital footprints is hard because of the complex digital infrastructure: One have to consider the data transfer over the wire, the energy intensity of web data, the energy source used by the data centre, the carbon intensity of electricity, the data traffic of the product/service and so on. About 0,85t of the 12t of our total carbon footprint refer to our digital life. Within the 1,5°C goal, each person could only emit about 2t in total, so we need half of what we could for our digital life, without having our physical needs (housing, food, heating, etc.) fulfilled.

Indeed a cultural sector issue

Though, broadly speaking, 70% of web content is cultural content, the cultural sector currently lacks the power to take the same influence at the same proportion. Their provision presupposes editorialisation, which today is still the sole responsibility of the algorithms of BigTech. A public digital policy requires the possibility to regain the control over these algorithms in order to prioritise the content offered. Furthermore, in the context of sustainability we often only have the reduction of emissions in mind, as in the ecological dimension of sustainability. However, it is also important to also be aware of the other dimensions of sustainability. To reclaim the digital world from BigTech, which is mostly owned by private businesses, is essential to that. The cultural sector with its power of creation and responsibility for cultural and societal change is a crucial actor to create new public spaces in the digital world.

Controversial issues during the workshop

During the workshops we discovered value tensions. For example it’s hard to find the balance between being radical enough, as in no data intensive things like streaming, high resolution video or no surveillance capitalistic business models like instagram etc. on the on hand and on the other hand the value of reaching out to as many people as possible with your own content for the sake of the content itself. Many participants stated that they don’t have the power to make the relevant decisions, for example about what hardware or which software licences their organisations buy.

The methodology of the forum was also critiqued by some participants. They would have liked to be involved in creating the commitments from the scratch and not just revise them. Additionally, it wasn’t clear what exactly the commitments were, or how they will apply. The participants also thought that they had no mandate to make commitments for the sector since they were not diverse and representative enough.

Commitments & Action Plan

1. Reduce the amount of Data Traffic we produce or contribute too.

2. Add ecological criteria for call of public bids.
Individual Sectoral/Systemic Political Advocacy

3. Inform people about the impact of our digital footprint and alternatives you offer.

4. Extend the life of existing equipment and purchase refurbished equipment whenever possible or push the demand for it

5. Establish a process of digital infrastructure retrospective (check if it’s in alignment with your own values or the SDGs)

6. Check if your digital infrastructure is in compliance with the GDPR and other regulations.

7. Choose a digital product or service online if it meets most of the following criteria

• offers options to control the amount of data being transferred and/or stored for any medium (e.g. abandoning data-intensive streaming)
• is open source software
• provides strict data protection
• has no business model which is based on user data and user behaviour (no surveillance capitalism)
• supports longevity of use (runs on old devices, operating systems etc.)

8. Use only renewable energy for the own digital infrastructure of your organisation.

9. Only use as much digitalisation as necessary and as little as possible.

10. View the entire communication of cultural entities through the lens of digital responsibility.

11. Advocate for a decentralised European digital platform under the control of different public authorities responsible for editorialising and concentrating data consumptions and quality digital content

Next steps

During the workshops we drafted an action plan which should be completed. Also, every individual person and organisation in the sector should try to act according to the commitments as much as they can, since every small step counts and daily actions are the basis for major changes. Furthermore, the sector could use its power and make the reclaiming of the digital world part of program and formats, connecting with digital activists and embrace their counterculture against mainstream BigTech. Experts on digital sustainability can provide material that help to get into action, such as courses for training or further education, they can build knowledge bases, consult during digital heavy projects or provide regular Q&As online meetings. This was a frequently requested measure by the participants and could give orientation in transforming the way they use the digital world in a sustainable way.

Source: https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/109460-047-A/die-klimakatastrophe-in-der-kultur/

THE Input from my workshop

In this section I will sum up some of the Input from my workshop slides.

Understanding digital sustainability

So the topic ist about digitalisation and sustainability – just have a look at the definitions:

digitalisation
noun [mass noun]

• the conversion of analog values into digital formats by representation in finitely many digits, i.e. discrete (graduated) values, see digitization
• the introduction and increased use of digital technology, computers and the Internet
• the development towards a digital society

sustainability

noun [mass noun]

• Concept of using natural systems to maintain their essential properties over the long term.
• Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without risking that future generations will not be able to meet their own needs.“ – Volker Hauff (1987): Our Common Future, p. 46

So sustainability is about „meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.“ So meeting human needs are the basis of sustainable development as a concept.

So we build societal systems to ensure the fulfilment of our needs. Capitalism became the dominant economic system in the industrialized countries. This economic system is very good at generating wealth, but not in distribute it equally = “Performance principle”. The performance of a business or country is measured in economic growth and money. Although the system of neoliberal free markets only works if it continues to grow.

So along the way of meeting need we loose focus on fullfilling basic needs for everybody, instead in the industrial country we thrive for fullfillment of self-fullfiment needs even if people around the globe are suffering because they can’t met ther basic needs.

ASK YOURSELF
What is real development for a society? Getting tech devices with higher resolution, more processing power, more entertainment through social media feeds or ensure the accesibility of drinking water, food and shelter for every person on the planet?

Planetary boundaries and Climate Crisis

• The global annual mean temperature has already risen by 1 °C (relative to annual means between 1850 to 1900) (IPCC 2013, 2018). Half of this temperature increase has occurred during the last 30 years (NASA 2018, IPCC 2014).
• The years 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 were, globally, the warmest years on record (NASA 2019).
• The rapid temperature rise has been caused by human-generated greenhouse gas emissions (U.S. Global Change Research Program 2017, IPCC 2013, 2014)

Source: https://scientists4future.org/we-are/facts/

What about digitalisation and how is it going?

There were three main drivers and therefore interests in digitalisation in the history. The main funding was between 1950 and 1970 from the military for the ARPANET.

Counter-culture

Self-determination, social cooperation, sustainable economy

💡 Some Q&A from the source Atlas of the Digital World, database of Q3/2019.

• What percentage of people in Germany still live in an offline world and do NOT use digital media?
  Answer: 16.7% > 11.7 million people
• What percentage of people in Germany who use digital media use Google services.
  Answer: 99.4%
• What percentage of all online communication between people (e-mail & instant messaging) fall on the WhatsApp service in Germany? So ONLY this app without GMail, any other Mail Provider, Facebook, Instagram, iMessages etc.
  Answer: 54.5% (6:09 h per month per user)
• What is the estimated amount of data available worldwide? (As of 2020)
  Answer: 47 zettabytes (47,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes)
• In Germany from 2010 to 2020, approx. 220 million smartphones sold. about 6.6 tons of gold are installed in it. How much overburden* was created during the mining of gold?
  * Overburden describes the material, e.g. Soil and rock that is cleared out of the way to get the material you really want.
  Answer: 8.3 million tons

With regard to energy and resource consumption, digitization has so far been anything but sustainable. We have to become more sufficiency here and must not actually digitize even more things, we must be aware of our resource limits.
We always have to check if a digitization projects could lead to new behavior patterns of people, which then lead to rebound effects. So in summary we don’t reduce resource consumption like we intended to do.

• Greenhouse gas emissions from digital activities 0.85 tons of CO2e per year per person Trend is rising exponentially
• Greenhouse gas emissions for life are currently 12 tons in Germany 2 tons of CO2e for the whole life would be climate-friendly on a global scale!!!
• We can’t use nearly half of our CO2 Budget

Source (translated): https://blog.oeko.de/digitaler-co2-fussabdruck

Source: Lange & Santarius: Smart Green World 2020

Video – the heavyweight of the digital world

According to the „The Shift Project – Digital Reset“ Product and Services of BigTech are a major reason for the ressource usage:

• Energy use of digital industry is growing by 6% per year
• 57% of the data traffic growths comes from Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta(former Facebook), Microsoft & Netflix
• About 80% of the entire data traffic comes from the biggest 8 companies
→ no diversity
→ nearly everything is own by private businesses, no public spaces like in the real world
• Sustainability reports say big tech is striving for renewable energy but it’s often misleading
• grow of energy consumption about 25-30% per year
• also huge amounts of water are necessary for cooling data centres

But why is it hard to change the Internet?

Because the civil society or public authorities have nearly no real no lever to change anything, because the Internet is a 98% private business owned place, where the users made uninformed consent to so called „privacy policies“ and „terms and conditions“ which are written with profit in mind and not with the needs of the users. That is why Big Tech can made it so hard to escape their products & services.

Surveillance Capitalism

We have reached a business model called surveillance capitalism which is according to Shishana Zuboff „to collect and analyze technical information about behaviors and prepare it for market economic decision-making in order to generate behavioral predictions from it in order to generate profits:“ That in contrast to market capitalism, undermined democratic norms and fundamental rights are being questioned.

Network Effects

The benefit of the product/service changes when the number of other users changes.

„the demand determines the demand”

Example the telephone, nobody wanted to have one at the beginning, because you can’t call anybody. But fortunately it goes in both directions, like we see it right now with Twitter.

Digital Monopolies

Are the few dominant digital corporations. A monopoly is when there is only one serious provider for many demanders.
In the digital world it is hard to become a competitor with an ethical stance because it is to expensive to develop products and services at a competitive price. And what is the competitive price? – free of charge – at least most people think it is free because you don’t have to pay money, but you are paying with your personal and behavioural data.

🎲 GAME: Let’s guess the monopolist!

Messaging → Whatsapp (Facebook)
OS (PC Operating System) → Windows (Microsoft)
Mobile OS → Android (Google)
Office Suite → MS Office (Microsoft)
Online Shopping → Amazon
Mail Provider → GMail (Google)
Online Videos Platform → Youtube (Google)
MusicStreaming → Spotify
Payments → Paypal
Social Media → Facebook / Instagram (Meta)
Gaming Store → Steam
…

Sometimes we are on the edge of oligopolies (few providers) for example with social media is also TikTok (China), Snapchat (USA) but those are not sustainable either.

Digital colonialism

We also have a new form of colonialism because we exploit many uninformed individuals in many ways for the benefit of a few people.

Exploitation of:

• Low-wage / child laborers in countries with rare earths in the global south
• Content creator → create true value of the platform but are not involved in profit
• Communities that do care work on social media (reporting hate speech, online mobbing etc.)

An example is the game Roblox. This game is a construction kit for making games itself. The majority of the players are minors / kids about 12 years old. They create games which then are shared with the community so other players can play their levels. The publishers sell more in app purchases if there is more content which the players create. Is this child labor? The children get no ware or have any other share in the profit.

Also the Internet is not a place accessible to everyone. In the industrialized countries, access to digital media and the internet is possible for almost all people
in developing countries hardly anyone has acces, even if the material basis for the digitalization is mined there
. Only about 54% of the world’s population has access to the Internet.

Digitalisation is not used in a sustainable way

Digitalization is primarily used and seen as a tool for economic growth. Proportionally, there is little public interest tech. But even if digital products and services are developed exclusively for the private market, there are always social and ecological consequences. The products and services can, and are, nevertheless misused militarily and politically. We try to solve our problems through technology. Rather than thinking about social utopias we strive for technological utopias without thinking about ecological/social impacts. Many legal regulations are still missing. At the same time it is up to us as creators of these products and services to exercise our profession responsibly.

Source: https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/109460-047-A/die-klimakatastrophe-in-der-kultur/

Principles of sustainable Digitalisation

In this section we will have a look at the principles for sustainable digitalisation according to Smart Green World? Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability by Steffen Lange, Tilman Santarius.

Focus on the Common Good

🤍

The Internet as commons
Cooperative platforms
Open Source

“Collaborative, not capitalist.”

Digital Sufficiency 🌱

„As much digitalization as necessary and as little as possible.“

Technical sufficiency

Is aimed at designing information and communication systems in such a way that only a few devices are needed and they rarely need to be renewed. Hardware and software usually have to be considered together, because the introduction of increasingly data-intensive software means that still perfectly functioning hardware (laptops, smartphones, etc.) has to be replaced.

What really brings added value, carries hardly any risks and „must“ be made digital? Just don’t hop on hypes like blockchain, AI and so on before you researched how the digital counterculture asseses those technologies. Often there are already established and more efficient solutions for the problems people want to solve with hype technologies.

Data sufficiency

Refers to the design of digital applications. More traffic requires more server capacity and IT infrastructure. Software is often further developed over the years in such a way that it causes increasing data traffic, often solely through incidental and dispensable background services. Many apps are constantly using clouds, but would work similarly well offline and by occasionally updating the database.

User/Usage sufficiency

Tech alone won’t save us – we need to change mindsets, user behavior as well and totally reconfigure our digital media consumption.

Strict Data Protection 🔐

“Whose Data? Our Data!“

Data sufficiency

It’s a matter of ensuring that as little user or usage data and information as possible is generated and uploaded to services, product and their providers.
Data sufficiency not only conserves natural resources and saves energy, but also serves data protection; here the principle of data sufficiency overlaps with the established principle of „data economy“

The less data is generated and transferred, the fewer opportunities arise to miss use of the data, encroach on privacy, influence consumers and subject citizens to surveillance.

Privacy by design

Is an design approach that emphasizes that devices and applications always ensure maximum protection of privacy. It has 7 principles:

1. Proactive not reactive; preventive not remedial
2. Privacy as the default setting
3. Privacy embedded into design
4. Full functionality – positive-sum, not zero-sum
5. End-to-end security – full lifecycle protection
6. Visibility and transparency – keep it open
7. Respect for user privacy – keep it user-centric

No data commerce

The data protection rules are extended to private sector actors and are consistently adhered to them. It is considered an urgent matter that there is a gap between, on the one hand, quite extensive data protection rules for public institutions such as governments or intelligence services and, on the other hand, far less strict data protection rules for private companies.

Focus on the Common Good 🤍

“Collaborative, not capitalist.”

The Internet as commons

The Internet should actually be a public place accessible to everyone, just like a marketplace / park in the city.
The Internet has all the central characteristics of such a place:

• It only exists because its users have produced it themselves – and are constantly re-shaping it.
• The content on the Internet is open to everyone and does not exclude anyone from use.
• In principle, there is no competition of the content – every information is treated equally.
• And perhaps most importantly: The Internet does not „belong“ to anyone and thrives best when no individual private interests dominate.

But as we have described, today a few monopolists „colonize“ both the users and the content of the network for their purposes. Therefore Internet is mutating to a capitalist, even almost neo-feudalistic marketplace strongly dominated by individual actors which can define the rules because of their power.

Cooperative platforms

Ths principle is related to the decision-making processes as well as the distribution of profits in the digital economy fair. Users who are often making the content and therefore are the real creators of the value a platform has should be integrated in decisions related to the direction in which a platform is developing. Moreover they should be treated ethical and be paid fairly or at least their data and behaviour shouldn’t be selled to third parties.

Open Source

Is a concept that ressources, for example knowledge or software should be shared accross humanity and that all people can benefit from it. Open source is also deeply rooted in the history of digitization and the Internet. Most Open Source Software is highly sustainable in every sustainability dimension.

„Technology doesn’t have to be fought, it has to be mastered.“
– Wau Holland, Co-Founder of the Chaos Computer Club

Digital Sustainable Public Relations

What does EEA usually look like?
 Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Youtube, Newsletter, and hopefully your own Website. That means that 99% of the content is located in other EU countries and therefore other laws / special agreements apply (Cloud Act, Privacy Shield / soon Digital Service / Market Act).

So you or your organizsation is forcing people into deliberately misleading user contracts and into selling their behaviour and personal data which is often biometric data when it comes to media. Why is this not ethical? Because you can change your phone number, social media handle and so on, but you cant change the geometry of your face, your voice , handwriting or rainbow skin of your eyes (iris) – these are NOT changeable and people can be clearly identified by them.

So WHAT SHOULD WE DO? Conduct public relations also in non-privatized digital space. Use your own website as place for most content  and post links only as anchors on unsustainable social media.
In BigTech social media, always post disclaimer, so prepare a text or video snippet once and resuse it whith every post there to raise awareness of unsustainable / morally questionable business models vs. your desire for reach. Also point to alternatives like fediverse services of your organisation. There are tools for cross-posting which reduces effort at the beginning. At last don’t forget the old-school e-mail newsletter, which are often a great way to get in touch with people outside specific social media bubbles.

Working with Videos – the greatest Impact on emissions!

I know sometimes it’s hard to skip posting videos or don’t have recordings of performances online for your audience or for reasons of archieving.

But in most cases you can reduce data traffic and therefore emissions by 80-90% through a conscious use and editing of video content.

There are three major things you can manipulate are the Resolution of the Video which should be obvious, the Audio Bitrate means the „the resolution of the sound“ and the Framerate (FPS) which means the images per second the video data contains. Here is a guide how to reduce video data usage while maintaining enough quality: https://theshiftproject.org/en/guide-reduce-weight-video-5-minutes/

I reccomend using Handbrake an Open-Source Video Transcoder. You can setup a preset once with reduced resolution for example 720p max, reduced audio bitrate and reduced framerates and then you can use this setup with just one click. Just try it out if the quality is enough for you. This depends heavily on the content of the video.

Some Examples

For example with much motion in the content you will need a normal framerate of at least 25 frames/per second (FPS) but content with less motion you can go down to 10 or even 5. Which means simply you have lesser images which needs to be stored and going down from from 25 to 12 FPS means 50% less amount of data in total.

The same with the Resoution of the video going from 4k to 1080p saves 75% of data amount and going down from 1080p to 720p saves 50% data amount.

Reducing the audio bitrate from 256 kbit/s (a commonly used high-quality bitrate) to 128 kbit/s ( mid-range bitrate quality) will also save half amount of data. If the music isn’t the focus of your content and most people will not use high quality speakers or headphones to listen to they won’t really notice the difference.

So make your video files smaller and every single person who will watch your video can save that amount of data and therefore emissions. This scales totally great and has a high impact if you have high numbers of video views.

Fediverse

The Fediverse is a network of different software and services that can communicate with each other and are interoperable.
Is is decentralized like email so it belongs to no one or everyone – and therefore couldn’t be sold like Twitter in the past.
Each service can be self-hosted, you could use public instances/servers or be self-paid via a hosting provider.
There are services specially designed for podcasts, video tube platforms, picture sharing, events, micro-blogging, social network and much more…

Source: https://www.kuketz-blog.de/das-fediverse-unendliche-weiten-als-schaubild-diagramm/

Analyse Carbon / Tracking of Websites

Assessment of known products/services

Of course, I do not know everything there is and can not write down everything I know, but I try times to draw a complete picture, which includes most products. I do this in order from highly recommended to better keep your hands off 🙂

This is a sustainable classification so the attempt to include digital sufficiency, strict data-protection and focus on the common goood into an evaluation of common products/services.

The following emojis are awarded for special good quality criteria:

• ⚡️ Renewable electricity for services & servers
• 🤝 Sustainable business model e.g. cooperative or post-growth approach
• 🔏 End-to-end encryption
• 0️⃣ privacy by design / zero knowledge principle
• 📖 OpenSource (can usually be self-hosted)
• 🇪🇺 EU economic and legal area
• ⛔️ No tracking of user behavior / sale of user data/behaviour to third-parties

Most instant messengers also offer the possibility to make 1:1 or group (video) calls and are therefore not also called a video conferencing tool. I have researched all the information as best I can or from my own experience together do not give emojis if I do not know something for sure. The links to the services are linked to the names. If someone has comments or hints for corrections, please send me an email.

👍 Recommended

• Signal [Instant Messenger, Groups with link invitation, VideoChat up to 40 people, Screensharing, Stories] 📖🔏🤝⛔️0️⃣
• RocketChat [Team Messenger] 📖⛔️
• FairApps [Office Suite, Messenger, entire groups / project processing, Microwebsite] 📖⚡️🤝⛔️
• WeChange [social network for sustainable focussed people and organisations, entire groups / project handling, nextcloud file sharing and online docx,ppt,xls collaboration, calendar, microwebsite and more] 📖⚡️🔏🤝⛔️ – you can geht your own instance as a service
• Mattermost [Team Messenger] 📖🔏⛔️
• Nextcloud – Service provider: windcloud.de or greensta 📖🔏🤝⛔️
• Toffeeshare [Large Filesharing from device to device over the web]📖(⚡️)🔏🤝⛔️0️⃣
• Big Blue Button [Video/telephone conference up to 250 people] – the instance ofFairapps: fairteaching.net or wechange Tagungshaus or hostsharing eG 📖⚡️🤝⛔️
• Jitsi Meet [Video Conferencing small groups] – Preferred fairmeeting.net 📖⚡️🤝⛔️
• Cryptpad  [Web-based OfficeSuite]🤝⛔️0️⃣
• LibreOffice [OfficeSuite]📖🤝
• Non-tracking appointment setting and survey tool [(Appointment) Surveys]
• Posteo [Email Provider] 🔏🤝⛔️
• hostsharing eG [Web Hosting and more services] ⚡️🔏🤝⛔️
• Mastodon /Fediverse [Social Network] (⚡️) 📖🤝⛔️
• Tor / Onion Browser [Webbrowser] 📖🤝⛔️
• Firefox (Security settings strict and install uBlock Origins addon) [Webbrowser] 📖🤝(⛔️)
• Conceptboard [Whiteboard Tool] ⚡️⛔️
• Excalidraw [Whiteboard Tool] 📖🔏🤝⛔️
• Taiga.io [Project management/task management] 📖🤝
• Peertube / Fediverse [Video tube platform] 📖🔏🤝⛔️
• Invidous [alternative youtube frontend] – List of public Invidious Instances – one preferred instance https://invidious.snopyta.org/  📖🤝⛔️0️⃣
• Freetube [Desktop Client für Youtube via Invidious] 📖🤝⛔️0️⃣
• Matrix Server / Riot [Team Messenger] 📖🔏🤝⛔️
• Etherpad bspw. von FairApps [collaborative text editing] 📖⚡️🤝⛔️

👎 Not recommended – maybe as an emergency solution

• IONOS [Hosting Provider] ⚡️
• iMessage/Facetime [InstantMessenger] ⚡️🔏
• Threema [InstantMessenger] 🔏
• Safari (Block all cookies and prevent cross-site tracking) [Webbrowser]⚡️
• Chromium [Webbrowser] 📖
• Vimeo [Video tube platform] ⛔️

🤬 Better keep your hands off 🖕

• WhatsApp [InstantMessenger] (🔏) – Copies entire contact book and merges data with data from Facebook, backdoor possible despite encryption
• Google Hangouts [Video/Telefon Conferencing]
• Zoom [Video/Telefon Konferenz]
• Facebook [Soziales Netzwerk]
• Microsoft Teams [Team Messenger, Online Collaboration etc.]
• Google Chrome [Browser]
• YouTube [Videoplattform]
• Instagram [Social Network]
• WeTransfer [CloudStorage]
• Google Drive & Foto [Online Collaboration & Cloud Storage]
• Microsoft OneDrive [CloudStorage]
• Google Docs [Webbased OfficeSuite]
• iCloud Fotos & Drive [CloudStorage]
• Slack [Team Messenger]
• Telegram [Instant Messenger]

More recommended links:

ENGLISH

• Smart Green World? Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability by Steffen Lange, Tilman Santarius
• Bits & Bäume – The movement for digitalisation and sustainability: https://bits-und-baeume.org/en/
• DuckDuckGo Blog on Strict Data Protecion: https://spreadprivacy.com/
• PODCAST: 
Tech Won’t save us
• How to reduce video data usage while maintaining enough quality: https://theshiftproject.org/en/guide-reduce-weight-video-5-minutes/

GERMAN

• Rat für digitale Ökologie Positionspapier:
Deutschland braucht eine nachhaltige Digitalpolitik
(2020)
  https://ratfuerdigitaleoekologie.org/de/
• Höfner, Frick: Was Bits & Bäume verbindet (2019)
  https://www.oekom.de/buch/was-bits-und-baeume-verbindet-9783962381493
• PODCAST: 
Logbuch Netzpolitik
• Santarius, Lange: Smarte Grüne Welt (2018) 
https://www.oekom.de/buch/smarte-gruene-welt-9783962380205

Recommendations for sustainable digital services and providers in Europe mostly germany:

• Hosting, video conferencing at Hostsharing eG https://www.hostsharing.net/
• Extensive online collaboration, video conferencing, networking and entire online meetings at wechange eG https://wechange.de/
• Extensive online collaboration, project management, file storage and much more with Nextcloud – e.g. at https://windcloud.de/produkte/managed-nextcloud
• Simple online collaboration at fairkom https://www.fairkom.eu/fairapps
• Simple online collaboration at Digitalcourage https://cryptpad.digitalcourage.de/  / Software ist www.cryptpad.fr