03/12/2026, 15:49
Dear petitioners,
The last two or three days have been a real rollercoaster ride: on Monday, the petition was trickling towards its end with around 4,600 signatures and only a few signatures per day. On March 8, I mentioned to a supporter that it was very unlikely that we would reach our goal of 5,000 signatures.
On Tuesday, the picture changed completely: At 4:56 p.m., the well-known German IT news magazine Heise Online posted an article referring to this petition and featured it prominently on its homepage for a while.
The number of signatures immediately skyrocketed. On March 11, the last day of the signature collection, we recorded 469 signatures. The last day was by far the strongest day of all. Even though we could certainly have collected several hundred more signatures, I finally decided that this would be a good end to the petition—and did NOT extend the signing period.
But what happened next was bizarre: Heise Online has such a wide reach that a huge wave rolled towards us: On the one hand, media attention increased significantly: After Heise, at least Golem, Giga, Der Standard (Austria), and SmartHomeAssistent also reported on the story.
In addition, countless people who know me personally have written to me because they read about me in the Heise news. It's been a blast from the past for me.
The highlight of the wave so far came today when the editorial team of a German TV station tracked me down through my employer and contacted me—they want to do a report on the cloud shutdown.
Wow. And none of this would have been possible without all of you. If the petition hadn't been so successful, the media would certainly not have been interested. This is YOUR success.
And I still need YOU. I will send two more messages with two calls for help. They will only go to those who have indicated that they want to participate in joint actions. Everyone else can read the message in the news section.
Thanks again to everyone who is helping and has helped. With signatures, by sharing, or with future actions. Together, we have achieved more here than I ever dared to dream. The journey is not over yet.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
