Provide free, ethical, and decentralized online services and software

CHATONS is the Collective of Alternative, Transparent, Open, Neutral, and Solidarity-Based Hosting Providers. This collective aims to bring together organizations offering free, ethical, and decentralized online services to enable users to quickly find alternatives that respect their data and privacy to the services offered by GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft). CHATONS is a collective launched by the Framasoft association in 2016 following the success of its “Dégooglisons Internet” campaign.

CHATONS is a collective of small organizations offering online services (such as email, website hosting, collaborative tools, communication tools, etc.).

These organizations are called "hosting providers" for several reasons:

• they manage servers (computers on which programs are installed to run online services),
• they offer internet users the ability to store their data and share it online.

What sets CHATONS apart is that the members of this collective commit, in particular, to:

• to use only free software;
• not to exploit the data of the users of their services (= not to transmit or exploit your data);
• not to use ad networks (or other tracking services);
• to regularly organize in-person meetings with their users, in order to bridge the digital divide.