Second DI Day in the still young year of 2026.1 This time I parted ways with another US-based service: Automattic. Not a Big Tech giant, but still highly relevant on the web. It is the company behind the well-known site builder WordPress and the Gravatar service.2 For nearly 18 years, one of my photos has been tied to my email address across countless forums and websites through Gravatar.
Looking back, that feels like a relic from a more naive phase of the internet, when the idea was to put a face to a name in chats and forums. In the age of surveillance capitalism,3 AI-generated images, and fake identities, that original purpose has largely disappeared. If anything, it has become a disadvantage to lose control over your own image online. Even if someone only uses an avatar, a centralized US provider can still track where and when that avatar is requested. Automattic’s terms explicitly allow broad data sharing with third parties:4
How We Share Information - Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site.
With libravatar.org, there is an alternative that offers the same functionality, based on the open Django/Python software ivatar.5 The API is intentionally similar to Gravatar, including the same email hashing approach.6 The key difference is the decentralized design. Domain owners or companies can host employee images on their own servers while retaining full control over aggregated behavioral data.7
I first came across libravatar.org on Debian’s GitLab instance Salsa, where it is integrated very nicely.8
Screenshot from Debian GitLab instance Salsa
That said, libravatar.org is not entirely free of Big Tech dependencies. It currently runs on an AWS instance in Ireland provided by the Fedora project. As a non-commercial project, Libravatar depends on that kind of sponsorship. On top of that, not all popular online services support this open alternative yet.
Still, it has clear advantages. The service does not share user data, and European law applies. The website is operated by a private individual,9 supported by a small team of developers, judging by the names likely from French and German-speaking regions. The Git repository and project lead are maintained by Oliver Falk.10
The following screenshots document the cancellation of my Gravatar account. This time without the dark patterns I encountered last month with Audible.11 Instead, there is a questionable practice of keeping the data for 30 days after deactivation before final deletion. At least according to their own statements. Whether anything is truly deleted at a US provider remains uncertain and cannot be verified.
The cancellation option is somewhat hidden
Data remains for 30 days before final deletion
With a good feeling about using one less US service and having found a free European alternative, I wish you a great DI Day.
Best regards,
Tomas Jakobs