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:
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.
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.
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.
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Over the past few months in particular, the Social Web Community Group has seen an increase in heated discussions online that have been arguing protocol superiority and creating conflict between ActivityPub and AT Protocol, or trying to promote one over the…
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Björn Staschen bjoern@savesocial.eu