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- Hacker News
- Time to coin a new term, I think: "openwashing".
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.
by jonstaab - >not to promote individual sovereignty, but explicitly to protect European sovereignty from foreign influence
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.
by Barrin92 - Is it that easy to create a multi billion dollar tech company. The competition is fierce and many have tried.
Huge companies with billions of dollars have tried to compete with Google for years. Google has spent billions to compete with Facebook.
It seems very unlikely that you can just come up with this and win.
by daft_pink - > be Europe
> want to host infra outside the US
> write a blog post
by tonymet - Perhaps relevant context: The EU commission just ignored the "Tech Sovereignty Package" it launched ~3 weeks ago, and explicitly referred open-source as a core element of their strategy, and endorsed W, another ATproto-based social that recently a) closed their code and b) ...had its CEO attend Davos. Make of that what you will.by lou1306
- About open source I think you missed reading the EU Open Source strategy _part_ of Tech Sovereignty Package.by gls2ro
- I've grown to dislike mastodon and similar platforms.
They are a great place to harbor extremists and to let narcisistic instance admins play god.
I'll take Twitter/X any day, where everybody (from one extreme of the political spectrum to the other) can have pretty much the same chance at free speech.
Until Europe can't birth one such platform, I'll stay on old ones.
by znpy - This thesis is undermined by the reality of operational an implementation concerns.
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.
by bluegatty - Keep the Social, ditch the media.by dzink
- "Europe has a strong ecosystem of social companies and a deep well of expertise in designing and operating social protocols." LOL
When you start writing something, pick something more believable. It just invalidates anything you write thereafter.
by storus - Europe should make a dating app. Here’s why: monetising dating apps is really hard and companies don’t seem to be doing well with it.
Having a competitor here to bumble or hinge that is free and doesn’t care about short term monetisation would be a good thing.
by simianwords - Meh. Best thing for dating apps is probably for them to cease to exist. Humanity managed dating fine before these things were created, even managed it in cities where we live in isolating apartments and only know our neighbours by the music leaking through the walls.
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.
by ben_w - Why do you think a government should compete on a market segment? I find it slightly irritating.
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!by fp64 - I'm all in favour of the EU finally emancipating itself from American tech companies, but trying to recreate Social Media, just in a European way, is the worst possible way to go.
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.
by 9dev - Any software engineering done in germany is so bureaucratic. You cannot start small, you have to create the EierlegendeWollmilchSau that handles all edge cases, all security constraints and privacy concerns, use the latest architecture buzzwords and needs to be meticulously documented... Most projects turn into Stuttgart 21 within a yearby mawadev
- I think there's space for less crappy social media.
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.
- Making people less addicted to social media, or creating other versions of social media that are less harmful, might be the "harm reduction" discussion/tradeoff of our modern times, but they're very different goals and ambitions. Sure, I agree, people shouldn't spend hours mindlessly scrolling through TikTok/Instagram/Whatever, but most likely they will, regardless of what we do. So, why not come up with some alternative that kind of gives them that experience, but not as addicting and with maybe more user choice, like Bluesky letting people chose their own recommendation algos they like?
- Engagement metrics fed into recommendations algorithms are the paperclip maximizers that feed humanity's collective poison.
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.
- And the regulation doesn't need to be overly complicated:
* Ban targeted ads or make them opt in;
* Ban targeted content or make it opt in;
* Enforce the use of a do not track header - if the user does not want to be tracked a simple browser or OS setting should be enough.
by heldergg - We europeans can do more than regulate, your statement is just plain offensive.
You would now that if you ever went to a proper school. Those unfortunately are not widely available on your side of the pond.
by Radle - Do you mean regulating "watch time and comment count" at the presentation (to the client) or the server (business/analytics) level? If the later, how would you even enforce that?
- I want to see the ability to opt out of algorithmic feeds regulated. Allow the people to poison themselves, but allow people to opt outby gf263
- Here is an idea for a EU product: Build something that is great, and make it so good, that everyone, including US citizens, will want to use it.
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.
by jstummbillig - Ah but for some reason that was missing from the principles. It is the ONLY thing that matters.
Being European is a nice boost on the feelgood factor, if people even know. Anyone who ranks that above product quality is a minority - that’s why this has ~400 signatures not 4 million.
by cadamsdotcom - Is there room for European companies to be the “Hermes of the Internet?” The American web is ad-optimized slop for the masses. Can the europeans provide higher quality experiences for more discerning buyers?
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.
by rayiner - I don't think making a good product is enough. X is still prevalent despite Musk's actions both as a public person and as X's owner. The alternatives, be it Bluesky or Threads, are fine to use, yet people aren't moving.
There's no way we'll be able to compete against Google or Meta in any meaningful way if we can't even get people out of X. Even more so because I'd argue that a good product is a little more boring than the ones that are currently at the top.
by dutchCourage - That's definitely the main issue. We will end up with a really neat technical stack, a few products built on it for their 100 users each, and it will be forgotten in a few years...by dgellow
- Doesn't work. As soon as something great appears, US VCs immediately buy it and move it to the bay area. A fair few of the products you think are US grown probably aren't. If not, a competitor appears that is less constrained by regulations and can move faster, taking over most of the market instead.by moffkalast
- The problem is impressumspflicht, you have to add your full contact address plus name to a website you host, inviting all sorts of trolls on the internet to ruin your life. No thanks.by mawadev
- Yeah, basically no successful American social media company advertises itself as being American. And its users do not think of it as "an American company," they just think of it as its own thing.by keiferski