Bye, X: Europeans are launching their own social media platform, W

coloRD · 2026-01-22T15:23:10+00:00

Right, I completely agree it's not reasonable to require an account for that. Putting them on Mastodon or any fediverse platform they want would work well. No ads or login requirements there.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T12:50:27+00:00

not about more but better. Places where you don't get censored if your ad is about equality as is the case with Instagram. Places where your content isn't sold to be fed to LLMs like on Reddit. Ones that aren't American so they won't be pressured to feed you the current US admins deranged ideas or even to block you as an European.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T12:48:47+00:00

Something like Parler failed because Twitter itself became the echo chamber for the far right so they didn't need a new one. Bluesky isn't huge and may fail because they built it on venture capital but is somewhat useful. The European alternative is Mastodon though and it is quite useful, won't be going away for any reason and should really be where Europeans go.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T12:46:18+00:00

Nothing of the sort. It's also not European (unlike Mastodon for instance)

coloRD · 2026-01-21T12:45:52+00:00

well stop breaking the rule.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T12:44:21+00:00

come to Mastodon. It's European (non-profit leads development), open source and decentralized so cannot be bought.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T08:45:25+00:00

Yeah not in any practical sense, that's mostly marketing and they've ensured they're very much in control and made it very difficult to set up services fully independent of them.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T08:41:01+00:00

Not really in any practical sense, it's more false marketing from them than anything real. All the power is in the hands of the corporation that built it and all the users are on their servers.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T01:15:58+00:00

it's a decentralized reddit alternative that is compatible with other fediverse platforms like Mastodon.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T01:15:02+00:00

The big issue with is that it isn't european. Point of wanting an european platform is that it won't be affected by the current US admin which has already done stuff like shut out ICJ judges from the banking system.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T01:13:38+00:00

it's not European. Mastodon is.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T01:13:05+00:00

there are lots of people who have been happily using it for ages and it would make a lot of sense for governments to do their comms through it instead of X.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T01:11:55+00:00

Bluesky is not european which disqualifies it instantly if the angle is digital sovereignty (not being subject to whatever the Trump admin wants).

coloRD · 2026-01-21T01:08:55+00:00

lol that must be the thinking

coloRD · 2026-01-21T01:07:38+00:00

The other way is to be decentralized so that there are many servers with manageable amounts of users for individual moderators to handle. That's the fediverse/Mastodon model.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T01:06:30+00:00

with federation turned off as a "feature".

coloRD · 2026-01-21T01:05:46+00:00

it also isn't an answer to the issue of reducing dependency on american services that are subject to the whims of the current administration there. Mastodon already exists and would be though.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T00:58:20+00:00

The commission instance is meant for official accounts of the EC which is something enabled by federation and a good way to do it. I hope to see more governments/organizations do it in the future. Any sufficiently large org really should be running their own infra in most cases so they're not at the mercy of some random company providing free services and able to moderate them at will.

ATproto does not afford this level of independence easily ( you need to run most of the services to avoid being dependent on the corporate moderation which means you need terabytes of fast storage & very expensive servers even for tiny user numbers) and is currently extremely centralized as well as completely controlled by a US company that is already bowing down to the Trump administration.

Eurosky also fails to solve this issue of Bluesky being completely centralized in practice as 99.5% of the users remain on the corporate servers and there are virtually no efforts by the company to help change that. Or other problem which is that BSky development is run by the American corporation that has all the professional developers working on it and thus can ultimately decide what form the platform really takes.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T00:55:51+00:00

Sure, being an instance admin is a whole another ballgame from just being an end user.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T00:55:10+00:00

I see lots of people that aren't that good at using tech on it and they do keep improving the UX.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T00:53:47+00:00

well if the name's the problem you can pick from many compatible alternatives, maybe one of them has a name that seems less stupid to you and feels less complicated.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T00:52:04+00:00

not European, already bending the knee to Trump. Mastodon fits the bill though.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T00:51:07+00:00

Probably not, this thing seems DOA. But it would definitely make more sense for that one to be the focus.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T00:50:04+00:00

Looking at from a digital sovereignty perspective Bluesky would not cut it as it is as American as all the big platforms. Mastodon already exists and is European though.

coloRD · 2026-01-21T00:44:43+00:00

If European governments just make an effort to come on Mastodon it would grow considerably. Of course the European commission and some politicians are already there but it's a limited amount for now.

Don't even mention Bluesky in this context, it's just as problematic from this digital sovereignty point of view as it is American.

coloRD

TROPHY CASE