Social media has emerged as the central nervous system of global communication, shaping politics, culture, and identity. Yet, Europe’s digital public square is not its own. Over 80% of the continent’s social media activity flows through platforms headquartered in the United States—Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Alphabet (YouTube), and X (Twitter)—creating a dependency that undermines Europe’s autonomy.
Recently, it has become increasingly clear that European companies urgently need to build Europe’s own sovereign social media ecosystem to counter disinformation, protect democratic integrity, preserve cultural diversity, and reclaim control from US corporate and geopolitical interests. Europe’s sovereignty in the 21st century is at stake.
The threat of US interference: Disinformation as a geopolitical weapon
The 2016 Brexit referendum exposed how US-based actors exploited European vulnerabilities. For example, Cambridge Analytica harvested data from 87 million Facebook users—including millions of Europeans—to micro-target voters with divisive ads. Leaked documents revealed campaigns designed to inflame anti-EU sentiment, demonstrating how US corporate tools can destabilize European unity.
Moreover, false narratives about voter fraud propagated by US politicians on Twitter and Facebook flooded European networks, bolstering extreme movements. In Germany, the “Querdenker” movement leveraged these claims to protest COVID-19 measures, while in other countries, several disinformation groups backed by US billionaires amplified baseless accusations about election rigging.
It is important to understand that US platforms optimize for engagement and their owners interests, not truth. During France’s 2022 presidential race, YouTube’s algorithm disproportionately recommended far-right candidate Éric Zemmour, boosting his visibility despite his marginal polling. Researchers found that 60% of French-language election content on YouTube contained misinformation, much of it algorithmically amplified.
US billionaire oligarchy problem
American billionaires, including tech billionaires, wield outsized in
32 Comments
fsflover
There is Mastodon already, with the servers in the EU.
LargoLasskhyfv
Nobody needs social media. It's a fad. There were times without it. While we didn't live in caves. Now the smombies don't even see the shadows on the wall, because they are in another thrall. Both aren't needed. Maybe a solar-storm will reset that shit. Maybe something else. One way or another, I don't bother.
gizajob
Would have been useful thinking if realised some 20 years ago
teekert
We have plenty of foss stuff ready to go and deployed. But we don’t want it. We want free ad supported American platforms. No one cares. It’s pretty annoying for the people that do, but alas.
marsven_422
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seydor
Social media is a misnomer. We should be calling them personal advertising services. The commercial part just makes the money.
haunter
The article is using Europe and the European Union interchangeably so I’m not sure who the subject is.
If the 27 EU members than backdoor actors like Hungary are a bigger problem.
briandear
So if Romania launches a wildly popular social media site, that’s good for Spanish sovereignty?
jart
I've never seen Europe flex as much as they have over the past few weeks.
Trump has really encouraged Europe to spread their wings.
varjag
Taxpayer-funded public television that's already a thing in many European countries could be a decent model. No ads and much better incentive alignment. When you pay for it you are the customer not the goods.
bloqs
Nerds mostly lack empathy so they cant understand why distributed tech/mastodon doesnt get adopted by non technical people
nottorp
Europe needs multiple competing social media platforms.
And to achieve that they need to realize that all the regulation they aimed at facebook can only be satisfied by entities that have facebook's money.
And thus, they're adding barriers to entry that ensure they won't have multiple competing social media platforms.
franczesko
The World needs decentralized internet independent from big tech
kburman
Same is true for every country.
skwee357
The world doesn't need any more social platforms that detach people from touching grass and making real human connection, and at the same time act as a means to spread the current flavor of propaganda
qwertox
I've been thinking about this some time now. But not from the aspect of sovereignty.
Assume a group builds a social network just like Twitter, but with verified users, actually verified, possibly via personal ID / passport maybe at the town hall, no alias allowed, but the legal name, people will know who you are. All publicly readable without account.
This would give politicians, companies, journalists and citizens a way to have public "conversations", near real-time news updates just like on Twitter, but without the huge amount of garbage that comes from bots and people eagerly destroying the public discourse. Illegal comments (my mistake, criminal content) lead to direct consequences, maybe also with the one of setting the account to read-only mode.
emigre
The European Union should develop a technology sector of its own to compete with those of China and the USA, but its fragmentation makes it harder for the continent to gather the capital and the consumers to make it possible for big tech companies to be created and thrive. We'll see in the future if there is political will to change this.
dankle
Yes but how?
ashvardanian
This should be the perfect time for decentralized social media platforms, and people might be increasingly open to trying them. What do you think is the biggest roadblock? Is it poor UI and app availability? Deficient UX and content discovery?
banqjls
The article talks about manipulation from the US, but the examples are: Cambridge Analytica (which was British, not American), Querdenkers (who were German), and Éric Zemmour (who is French). I mean is this seriously advocating for the censorship of protests coming from the German public?
What these people want is censorship that only allows progressive arguments to flourish. They already have all the laws that make non-progressive speech forbidden, but they are struggling to apply them to companies that are the other side of the pond. Having social networks here would allow them do to so easily. To that I have to say no thanks.
briandear
The average person doesn’t care about this. The ones complaining about “influence” are the ones in power who don’t want that power threatened. Our motorcycle racing group in Spain — they’re all on Insta and WhatsApp and perfectly fine about it. They aren’t saying “we need to get off these platforms because of Brexit or whatever.” They use these platforms to talk about and coordinate among people with shared interests. X works very well in Catalonia as well — usually where people get breaking alerts and information on freeway closures, weather alerts, etc. it works great — most people don’t care about the politics.
dylanmulvaney
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sureIy
Here's the thing. You can't force people to use a social network. Literally no one cares about this stuff.
There's a reason why there are like 5 social networks while thousands of people want to "make the next Facebook."
If Meta is a threat, then ban it. People will cry and maybe then new alternatives may emerge. But you still need skilled people who'd rather work for you than accept Facebook's $400k offers. Good luck with EU funding.
mediumsmart
Europe needs sovereign, authentic and non selfcensoring citizens.
thinkingemote
There seems to be two kinds of irony here going in two ways, I feel.
The anti-globalists by their actions seem to be creating a reaction which is leading to less global collaborations. Note the title uses the word "Sovereignty". Sovereignty is becoming more important as a reaction against the anti-globalism movement by those who want to support everyone anywhere working together over thin borders between peoples. In other words, isolationism breeds an isolationist reaction. We might see a stronger European identity versus others as a reaction against America's declaration of their identity over others.
Secondly, on an environmental front, we are seeing a move towards the reduction in global trade and travel between nations, and a reduction in developing world pollution as developed nations manufacture more things closer to home. So there's an irony in that the anti-environmentalists are causing a reaction that will help the global environment!
beloch
Facebook's engagement algorithms directly contributed to the Rohingya massacre in Myanmar[1]. Meta refused to take responsibility and argued that it's up to governments to regulate social media, not Meta. Then they opposed all efforts to regulate them.
People didn't care.
However, the current poop-storm the U.S. has caused is making a lot of people wake up care about precisely this sort of thing. e.g. Canadians have finally realized that being more economically engaged North-South with the U.S. than East-West with other Canadian provinces is a very dumb thing that makes Canada extremely vulnerable to a foreign power that can no longer be relied upon. Measures that have been long viewed as "good ideas" are finally being enacted.
Don't say, "Nobody cares about FOSS alternatives to American social media." They haven't, until now. Now is a unique moment in history and the perfect time to switch.
Social media platforms are online communities. Their biggest asset is not algorithms or servers, but the people using them. What is Facebook or Twitter or Reddit without the users? Nothing. Invest your time and effort in the alternatives now. This is a rare opportunity.
[1]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb…
Helmut10001
My Mastodon server (n=1) is hosted in Frankfurt on a free VM and doing good since 2 years. Automatic updates via docker compose and crontab. I can recommend this solution.
pipes
"counter disinformation, protect democratic integrity, preserve cultural diversity"
So we need a way to censor things we disagree with.
no_throwaway
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Zr01
EU has almost no AI, yet is the world leader in AI …. regulation. No upstart social network would have the funds to ensure GDPR compliance and all the other rules that get added along the way. If someone has a business idea for one, they move to the US cause it's easier to start. Mistral AI is expanding to California. The solution would be less bureaucracy and regulation.
john_texas
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throwaway802
It seems to me, this is less a technical challenge, but more of a cost challenge. Bandwidth and storage is not free. Freemium works for private business communities (Slack, Discord, Teams, etc.), yet public communication is monetized by attention (FB, IG, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit etc.).
Has someone done work on finding viable alternatives to the attention-based business models? As long as it's free, users will switch, but costs need to be managed somehow.