Your ethics can still be great, but don't make me feel like your product won't be. If you have to market "Europe" or privacy it probably won't be.
Europe is adopting open source and open protocols, not to promote individual sovereignty, but explicitly to protect European sovereignty from foreign influence. This is not what these technologies were built for; "promoting democracy" does not protect the rights of individuals.
The technology listed is mostly federated, not radically open (like, for example, nostr). In particular, ATProto has provided the EU with the perfect opportunity to signal openness while simultaneously standing up a new walled garden in which dystopian "moderation policies" will be the norm.
Europe should do the one thing it knows how to do: regulate. For once, it is the answer. Do it only there. The rest of the dominos will fall.
Making a european branded humanity poisoner is not the answer.
Specifically, regulating against silent signals like watch time and comment count. Upvotes/likes can serve a purpose and would not cause the situation we're in now.
We need to get specific about the real issue.
Ah yes, there it is. We‘ve learned how to translate this in our heads.
I mean, for a while, I thought something like Substack (and not Fediverse) could disturb things a little, but I suppose it and many others have already been killed by slop. So, if you do verified identity management, which is good for certain purposes but perhaps not for others, I suppose you should also do decentralized trust management, and with an ability to delete nodes from a personal but federated trust chain. (And feel free to adopt the idea also for science; it would be very much needed.)
> want to host infra outside the US
> write a blog post
A 'wish list' is not hugely important to the operational capability of 'doing the thing'.
It's definitely a 'nice to have' and a 'starting point' from a certain angle, but it's a nominal thing really.
Thinking about critical masses, requiring established social networks to have open APIs and local content etc., definitely some regulations around local hosting and even use aka 'gov entities must use European based entities' for certain things, which helps build critical mass.
Etc.
Also - as someone commented 'doing the things' is often 75% of the reality of this, strategic considerations make up the smaller part even if they are critical.
When you start writing something, pick something more believable. It just invalidates anything you write thereafter.
All these companies are just a new way of money laundering with a proud word sovereignty
> Europe is in a hybrid conflict on two fronts; our elections and political life are under direct attack from foreign agents who use social media to manipulate public opinion and centre the political agenda to undermine us. We are deploying systems that have editorial pluralism and FIMI monitoring built in to shield our polity from influence and make our democracy resilient under attack.
I just wish there'd be more of a acknowledgement about the very real democratic deficit in the EU, where multiple elections are overloaded and affect different widely disparate affairs, leading to much of the EU largely able to operate completely without fear of repercussions from its citizenship. Strengthening democracy must start at an institutional level.
As of right now, there is just no real way for a European citizen to hold anyone accountable for something like Chat Control. Parliament, where you get a say, is mostly already opposed to it. The council and comission are de facto untouchable.
Having a competitor here to bumble or hinge that is free and doesn’t care about short term monetisation would be a good thing.
I guess the Swiss, British, Norwegians, Albanians etc etc are not welcome to participate in this project.
EDIT: In any case this whole thing is stupid. Open source and privacy matters, not country of origin.
We need less Social Media, not an inferior clone of TikTok or Instagram. Gaia-X would have been a nifty project, if it weren't a committee designing a framework for designing committee design frameworks by committee. We seem to make this mistake way too often. Don't plan to build Neuschwanstein—start to build a humble wooden cabin, and expand from there.
Especially with 'Social' there are network externalizations like 'critical mass' - that actually compounds across a lot of things.
No European country given size and language is going to be able to create something that resonates as well as the American variation beyond the critical mass needed, at least naturally.
If 'French Facebook' started at one of the 'Grande Ecoles' it would have grown much more slowly, and maybe never moved out of being French centric and therefore not gone beyond borders.
Without the 'momentum' that doesn't attract investors, doesn't make employees want to work 'late nights for the big IPO payoff' etc..
And there are so many other related conventions, such as capitol markets, public markets, so many issues.
So - in order to overcome those limitations there may have to be a lot of strategic thinking and manoeuvring.
Given that Europe took 4 years to adjust to a nation literally invading it ... well ... I wouldn't hold my breath.
There are some winning opportunities: government procurement is powerful but Euros are afraid to negotiate hard with MS Goog etc..
There's a lot of money involved, forcing issues on privacy is entirely possible.
Same for local content, some degree of decentralization.
Requiring government actors to use 'Euro Mastadon' or whatever - it means school, students, parents come abard and then you have 'critical mass'.
Requiring 'open doc format' means you can break the MS Office monopoly.
Requiring 'Linux First' on every IT procurement decision - or even 'Open Soruce First' so local city council must give an excuse for why they are not using 'Approved Euro-Linux Variations' etc..
Lots of things.
good, what's wrong with that? Europe isn't a continent for Ayn Rand reading crypto bros obsessed with their individual sovereignty, collective responsibility has always been the basis of our social contract.
We're not a continent for internet libertarians, if that's what you're going for you might want move to some Peter Thiel VC funded micro-nation somewhere, we don't want nostr or 'radically open' we want social technologies that facilitate democracy, human dignity and being able to defend ourselves from nations that don't care about any of it. In the German constitution we have a concept for this Wehrhafte Demokratie, 'militant democracy', building democratic tools that are able of defeating its enemies, not individual escapism.
I’m thinking about Tik Tok. When it was Chinese, my feed was stuff I actually wanted to watch. A lot of it was Chinese propaganda, but it was stuff that was pleasant, like people cooking in Chinese villages. Now it’s just rage bait and engagement farming.
You would now that if you ever went to a proper school. Those unfortunately are not widely available on your side of the pond.
But on the whole I think you're dreaming, Ray. I can't imagine a single case of a successful luxury software product. (Apple is premium mediocre at best, doesn't count.)
Let me get a cup of the good EU coffee! I like the "privacy" blend the most!
Now let me turn on my EU computer and log-in with my EU id
Check my messages on EU social media and then I have to leave for work
Oh that's a cute girl that messaged me on EU dating
I hope she also likes privacy and democracy
Now into my EU car, let me quickly stop at my EU charging station
Power is cheap, no middleman, all EU for our democracy
And then I'm on my way to my EU employer!Pubs, clubs, general social events where you can find people whose actual interests you share, these all do fine. Even lonely hearts columns in newspapers probably still work, as physical newspapers still get sold here in Europe.
You’re generalizing, DACH != the entire EU.
The early days of Facebook, where I actually saw friends and family posting their thoughts, that was great! It wasn't dominated by people resharing political screeds or random videos from groups I've never even heard of.
Telling big companies to be transparent about their suggestion algorithms would not be hard. I think governments already do this? wasn't that a tiktok thing in the US? Anyway, it's well within government's reach.
Telling companies to only use signals that people consciously give seems like a no-brainer.
Well, I mean, if you believe that a goal of civilization is to respect the free will of individuals up until the point that that free will becomes a problem for other people.
The alternative is something less than respectful of human dignity.
Except back then we had stuff like religion, church, village, common communities etc to bind people.
>even managed it in cities where we live in isolating apartments and only know our neighbours by the music leaking through the walls.
Statistics show urbanites to be lonelier than ever, so that take disagrees with you.
>Pubs, clubs, general social events where you can find people whose actual interests you share, these all do fine.
Massively depends on what the social life is like in the city you live in and what age you age. Some cities are better than others and the older you get the worse it is. While dating apps are more of a sure thing because most people are there to date. Meanwhile you can waste time and money in pubs and clubs for years and never meet a partner.
It's similar to job searching, if you're unemployed and need a job, you go straight to linkedin and apply, you don't go to clubs and pubs hoping you meet a founder who has a job for you. The latter might work every now and then if you're sociable and lucky and live in the right place, but it's not a sure thing for everyone all the time. That's why dating apps will never go away just like linkedin will never go away.
But your link also is only relevant to the university system.
It doesn’t change the fact that the non university part of education is severely financially crippled in major areas of the country in order to hinder black people from getting proper education.
Combined with a burnout introducing system of standardized tests the us educational system is truly world leading. At demonstrating how NOT to do education.
I'm pretty sure most of these are just politics being played.
But my skepticism may be unfounded. Do you have examples of companies that are currently working with regulators to allow full auditing of their content promotion policies? Are they actually auditing these partnerships or are they simply accepting promises from the companies?
Penalizing the successful is also inherently rewarding the unsuccessful. You can’t do one without the other.
And in cities, more pubs, clubs, general social events where you can find people whose actual interests you share.
Most of us didn't go from Renaissance village churches to dating apps in one lifetime, let alone one day.
> Statistics show urbanites to be lonelier than ever, so that take disagrees with you.
Most surveys only started about 10 years ago, i.e. after social media and dating apps were already around, and the few longer surveys disagree with each other, but even they only go back to the 80s AFAICT; we've been living in big dense isolating cities for a lot longer than that.
> Massively depends on what the social life is like in the city you live in and what age you age.
So the focus should be on that, then. As in, not a dating app.
> While dating apps are more of a sure thing because most people are there to date.
Everyone I've heard talking about dating apps since Match Group cornered the market, says the only "sure thing" about them is how mediocre they are, at least for straight couples. Women get all the low-effort displays, men get no responses and spiral into low-effort displays.
An open declaration
Open Social Platforms and Private Messaging
Social media’s impact on society and citizens clearly shows the need for change. Europe has a strong ecosystem of social companies and a deep well of expertise in designing and operating social protocols. We are building on this to move away from large monopolistic platforms with their authoritarian governance and editorial positions, and are joining forces to establish a diverse and resilient information infrastructure in Europe. Together, we will protect people and institutions from interference by these platforms. What’s more, we will bring thousands of jobs and billions of euros that social media generates to our continent, to circulate that revenue in our own thriving business ecosystem.
From this perspective, open European platforms and protocols such as the Fediverse (Mastodon, PeerTube, or Mobilizon), the Atmosphere (Eurosky, Flashes, Tangled, or Web Tiles) and Private Messaging systems (like Matrix or XMPP) are complementary solutions for Europe, with shared common goals.
Here is how we are building the European Social Web:
Common principles
We are governing digital infrastructure in Europe, according to democratic principles, away from the control of foreign companies or governments.
Social media and social networking are an important element of foreign technological dominance and key to foreign political interference in Europe. Therefore, we are building the Social Web as a critical layer of an independent Europe.
Europe is a union of 27 sovereign nations, over 200 languages and dialects, 242 regions, 100,000+ towns and cities and 450M people, united by the idea that collaboration and coordination is best for all Europeans. Decentralised social networks match the European model – diversity and local autonomy connected by transparent, open standards into a robust and resilient whole. As Europeans, we are seizing the opportunity to move to resilient, decentralised social networks and protocols, away from oligarch-owned walled gardens.
We call upon governments, municipalities, public service media, and civic institutions to:
We support a mix of ownership structures for social networks, from community to privately owned, from non-profit to VC-backed, from co-operatives to local companies. We call upon our elected officials to demonstrate political leadership and stop pandering to models that serve no European interest.
With a diversity of ownership comes a diversity of business models. Our systems empower server operators and entrepreneurs to select the business model that best meets their needs, be it ad-supported (including novel privacy-preserving advertising technology developed in Europe), software-as a-service (SaaS), subscriptions, crowdfunding, public funding, and any other methods which they can imagine.
Europe is in a hybrid conflict on two fronts; our elections and political life are under direct attack from foreign agents who use social media to manipulate public opinion and centre the political agenda to undermine us. We are deploying systems that have editorial pluralism and FIMI monitoring built in to shield our polity from influence and make our democracy resilient under attack.
The European social stack is a chance to bring Europe’s open source software strategy to everyday Europeans’ lives in a meaningful way. Open Source servers, infrastructure, and apps make social networking for Europeans more transparent, secure, and reliable. We are adopting open source and open protocol solutions to replace proprietary foreign technology.
Complementary technologies
Networked technologies form institutions that lend themselves to addressing different governance needs for different environments. Putting these three stacks together covers extensive ground:
For Private Messaging in groups, open standards (like Matrix or XMPP) are ideal for instantaneous communication, or sharing between family or friends. Multiple EU member states have successfully adopted these protocols, including for security and defence applications.
The Fediverse, built around ActivityPub, has grown from cohesive grassroots communities that interact with one another, and connects all aspects of a social platform or digital publication into a single deployment. It is exemplified by Mastodon, PeerTube, and Mobilizon.
The Atmosphere, running AT, has its foundations in large-scale public social media systems and correspondingly offers the kind of unbundled governance that should be expected of large democratic systems. It can be seen at work in Eurosky, Flashes, Tangled, or the newer Web Tiles.
Joint developments
The open European platforms and protocols that sign intend to explore working on important areas of joint development. These include:
Support and development of Eurobridge, a European-owned and -operated bridge that connects European Fediverse servers with Eurosky and the Atmosphere (built on Bridgy Fed).
The development of a system for a distributed identity that can be used across networks and beyond (e.g. the European Digital ID Wallet) and protects personal data.
The development of content moderation infrastructure in accordance with the DSA and the DMA in order to support developers and communities to manage illegal content such as CSAM.
Multi-protocol integration such as using Matrix for DMs or stories in social apps that otherwise focus on community or public interactions, so that builders and users get the best of all worlds in a simple, invisible manner.
Representatives of the protocols, networks, platforms, and the communities they support are supportive of each other’s approaches to institutions and funders, collaborate on joint representations, submit joint proposals for funding (where appropriate), or acknowledge the need for dual funding for complementary solutions (where separate funding proposals are made).
Work together to build a full social ecosystem. We are facing incumbents with trillions in valuation and billions of users, the only approach that is bigger than they are is ecosystemic. An ecosystem built on shared infrastructure and protocols empowers small builders to create social apps in no time and users to freely move between them. The network effects we create are shared by all.
Organisations
Individuals
Sign the declaration
Join 67 organisations and 445 individuals. All submissions are reviewed by an editor before appearing on the public list.
Submissions are reviewed by an editor before appearing on the public list. Your email and country are kept private.