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EU Social Networks

EU Joins Mastodon Social Network, Sets Up Its Own Server (pcmag.com) 75

Posted by BeauHD from the decentralized-platforms dept.
The European Union has joined the social network Mastodon, which has seen a staggering 30,000 new users after Elon Musk's bid for Twitter was accepted. PC Magazine reports: On Thursday, the European Commission said it had set up its own server, dubbed EU Voice, to join Mastodon's decentralized social network, also known as a "Fediverse." The effort is currently only a pilot, but it represents the EU's goal of supporting private and open-source software capable of rivaling mainstream social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. On the same day, the European Commission also launched an account for PeerTube, another decentralized platform that revolves around video sharing. "With the pilot launch of EU Voice and EU Video, we aim to offer alternative social media platforms that prioritize individuals and their rights to privacy and data protection," said European Data Protection Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiorowski.

"In concrete terms this means, for example, that EU Voice and EU Video do not rely on transfers of personal data to countries outside the European Union and the European Economic Area; there are no advertisements on the platforms; and there is no profiling of individuals that may use the platforms," he added. "These measures, amongst others, give individuals the choice on and control over how their personal data is used."
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EU Joins Mastodon Social Network, Sets Up Its Own Server More

EU Joins Mastodon Social Network, Sets Up Its Own Server

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  • 30,000 is staggering? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Albinoman ( 584294 ) on Thursday April 28, 2022 @09:30PM (#62488188)
    Maybe staggeringly low? Staggeringly insignificant? 30,000 is a drop in the bucket.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday April 28, 2022 @09:44PM (#62488206)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        That is a staggeringly dumb thing to get excited about.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by t0qer ( 230538 )

        Everytime I see the word obtuse I think of the Shawshank Redemption. Anyways, 30k of twitters 229,000,000 userbase 0.013100437%.

        I guess it all really depends on what you're comparing to, twitter or mastadons existing userbase. 30k is a fart in the wind for Twitter.

        • I guess it all really depends on what you're comparing to, twitter or mastadons existing userbase. 30k is a fart in the wind for Twitter.

          I mean, if you ignore the overwhelming majority of twitter users aren't real, just sockpuppet bots and abandoned accounts.

          • I guess it all really depends on what you're comparing to, twitter or mastadons existing userbase. 30k is a fart in the wind for Twitter.

            I mean, if you ignore the overwhelming majority of twitter users aren't real, just sockpuppet bots and abandoned accounts.

            And also if you ignore the fact that likely 90% of those new Mastodon users just made a new account, logged in, looked around, went "meh there's nothing there", and went back.

          • I guess it all really depends on what you're comparing to, twitter or mastadons existing userbase. 30k is a fart in the wind for Twitter.

            I mean, if you ignore the overwhelming majority of twitter users aren't real, just sockpuppet bots and abandoned accounts.

            I mean, if you ignore the fact that that applies to ALL free online accounts...

    • 30k new users were staggering away from Twitter and into Mastadon.

    • Re:30,000 is staggering? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by techsoldaten ( 309296 ) on Friday April 29, 2022 @01:56AM (#62488506) Journal

      Futile gesture, these numbers are meaningless.

      Mastodon / Matrix are conceptually defective. Chronological timelines are not what drive people to social media. Network theory, especially Triadic Closure, drives people to them.

      https://wikiless.org/wiki/Tria... [wikiless.org]

      People have lots of reasons for hating social media, but it's nature as a emotionally manipulative and coercive medium is what attracts large audiences.

      Decentralized social networks apps, by their nature, lack similar capabilities. While you might regularly visit a Mastodon instance, the likelihood of experiencing a craving to be there all day is slim.

      The difference between these platforms is like heroin and aspirin. One compels attention, one relives pain. You don't always need pain relief, but you always need to feed the dragon.

      • Yeah, but no advertising? That alone sounds pretty attractive, i.e. you mostly only see Tweets from people you follow & maybe people they follow. You see interactions & conversations between engaged & interested groups of people. If a Mastodon node is neglected & gets overrun with advertising, fake news, cryptocurrency pyramid schemes, populist extremists, &/or other nasty people, you can just block it. I don't want to follow or be followed by millions of users, that are most likely crea

        • Yeah, but no advertising? That alone sounds pretty attractive,

          Almost all companies that put "promoted" tweets in my face get BLOCKed instantly. Occasionally, I will MUTE them, in order to make a comment about how the company's Advertising Manager has just blown a lot of his budget to annoy people who are now "never-customers". After making the comment, I BLOCK them.

          I still don't care if Twitter goes bankrupt. Find a business model that doesn't annoy me.

          I suppose I should do one of my occasional un-BLOCKi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by k2r ( 255754 )

        > Chronological timelines are not what drive people to social media.

        Ehm, it may not be what drives people there, but it is what makes social media useful.

      • Perhaps in the current implementation. But, if I could visit a site that aggregated all the content from the "feeds" in my current favourite social media sites into one place... well, yeah, I could spend time hanging out there (although it remains to be seen how it would really look).

        Just imagine if LinkedIn and Facebook both migrated to Mastodon servers tomorrow. By Monday, you could have your own server which aggregates the two of them and gives far, far less of your personal information to either. If mor

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        While you might regularly visit a Mastodon instance, the likelihood of experiencing a craving to be there all day is slim.

        I fail to see how that's a bad thing.

        Except for the advertisement industry, but we all agree they're a cancer, right?

        The difference between these platforms is like heroin and aspirin. One compels attention, one relives pain. You don't always need pain relief, but you always need to feed the dragon.

        And there's a good reason one is illegal and the other is sold over the counter at every pharmacy.

        So was this a question of which world you'd rather live in? The one of a heroin addict or the one of a person who sometimes needs an aspirin?

        • For real. They're basically saying "It's all the good parts of social media without the ills of being addicted to it, ads, etc." Oh no, how terrible. /s

      • People have lots of reasons for hating social media, but it's nature as a emotionally manipulative and coercive medium is what attracts large audiences... The difference between these platforms is like heroin and aspirin. One compels attention, one relives pain. You don't always need pain relief, but you always need to feed the dragon.

        Insightful and probably true - and thanks for the Triadic Closure reference, that's a gem.

        But it's also true that some addictive substances and activities are far more harmful to body and mind than others. Perhaps the EU embracing Mastodon will evolve into one mega-Mastodon instance that looks like Twitter in reach and universality, but whose addictive qualities have more in common with runner's high than with smack. Removing both advertising, and algorithms directed at multiplying the addictiveness in the

        • The EU's Mastadon instance will average 2k daily visitors who will spend less than a minute on the site. Some of those visitors will be bots. In about a year, those numbers will go down and discussion of the site will be limited to some wonks in Brussels arguing over whether it was a success.

          Mastodon / Diaspora / Matrix - each of these operates with a very different set of incentives. In theory, yes, it's nice to think of social networks in some ideal form, as an expression of a public good. Jack Dorsey see

    • Maybe staggeringly low? Staggeringly insignificant? 30,000 is a drop in the bucket.

      No. It's insignificant for Twitter. It's staggering for a 7 year old social network like Mastodon to have it's user base change by 10% in one week.

      • It staggering that after 7 years they only claim to have 300k users, and there is no mention if those are actually active users or just registered users.

        Also how many of them were registrations for this new thing they heard about only due to it being mentioned in the press as part of their coverage of Twitter but ultimately will never use? Or forced due to the various EU government bodies auto-enrolling or otherwise requiring their staff to register?

      • Maybe staggeringly low? Staggeringly insignificant? 30,000 is a drop in the bucket.

        No. It's insignificant for Twitter. It's staggering for a 7 year old social network like Mastodon to have it's user base change by 10% in one week.

        I hope they're okay with second place [xkcd.com]

  • Isn't it obvious that internet users around the US and the world want something where they are not tracked, served up as bait for advertisers or bombarded with hateful and harassing content?

    • To the contrary - it's obvious they don't care (Score:4, Interesting)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Thursday April 28, 2022 @11:42PM (#62488370) Journal

      > Isn't it obvious that internet users around the US and the world want something where they are not tracked, served up as bait for advertisers or bombarded with hateful and harassing content?

      229 million people are on Twitter.
      Nearly three BILLION are in Facebook.

      Zero million are on Mastadon or any of the other tracking -free or low-ads options.

      What's blatantly obvious is that Americans and users around the world don't give a shit if Facebook and Twitter track them or not. Virtually all users choose the tracking sites, not the tracking-free ones.

      It sounds like you *wish* they would care. Quite clearly they don't.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      From the behavior of most users, it is quite obvious that they do not care...

    • The red states already have their own fork, headed by Trump in cooperation with a Chinese company, in Wuhan of all places!

    • Isn't it obvious that internet users around the US and the world want something where they are not tracked, served up as bait for advertisers or bombarded with hateful and harassing content?

      LOL. And you really believe a *state run* server would be this?

  • Blogs and RSS? (Score:3)

    by schweini ( 607711 ) on Thursday April 28, 2022 @10:53PM (#62488314)
    Why can't we all just go back to having blogs which can syndicate via RSS/Atom?
    Some other companies could then easily build an RSS reader of sorts which aggregates your friend's feeds in a a nice format, applies some filtering and ranking algorithm and maybe adds some jabber messenging feature?
    Different aggregator sites could then compete with other site's algorithms, and the user simply chooses which aggregator he likes best.

    • USENET. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mmell ( 832646 ) on Friday April 29, 2022 @12:12AM (#62488398)
      Just sayin'.

      • I remember Usenet. It turned into a toxic dumpsterfire long before telecom companies stopped providing servers.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Usenet is just as illegal in the EU as mastodon and peertube are.
        The new EU laws require social networks to take down content within two hours of a judge saying to do so.

        This isn't possible on usenet or mastodon without the coordination of tens of thousands of server operators across the world.

        Issuing a takedown to peertube is akin to issuing a takedown to a bittorrent swarm that's has its magnet data hosted over tens of thousands of servers across the world.

        The first time an EU nations court deems some pos

    • That's not far off from what Mastodon does. When you set it up, you can configure it in a sort of "single user mode" which is basically a blog at that point that happens to support ActivityPub.
  • Their real motive is more power and control over speech.
    You'd have to be a moron to use a government controlled platform.

    • Re:Their real motive (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mmell ( 832646 ) on Friday April 29, 2022 @12:10AM (#62488396)
      I'll give you that one. A government run platform is IMHO a great idea for elected officials only. Give the public at large read-only access. Segment it out by Federal, State, County, Municipal. Forbid elected officials from using private social media accounts while in office.

      American fighting men and women surrender considerably more personal freedom when they enter military service. To require a higher level of accountability from our elected officials doesn't seem too onerous a burden to impose upon them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        American fighting men and women surrender considerably more personal freedom when they enter military service. To require a higher level of accountability from our elected officials doesn't seem too onerous a burden to impose upon them.

        You are forgetting who is making those decisions and writing those laws...

        (and they don't need a social media platform. They already have websites.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Meneth ( 872868 )
      Fortunately in this case, they control only their own speech. EU Voice allows only "EU institutions, bodies and agencies" to sign up. The public will have to get their accounts elsewhere.
  • DON'T PANIC.

    (in large, reassuring print)

    First - it'll take the SEC at least six months to clear this one for landing. That's a pretty low-ball estimate, all things considered. This is not coming soon to a theater or drive-in near you.
    Second - once Musk owns it, he owns it. If he bankrupts it adding (or, more likely, trying to add) a revise history (edit) button, that's his loss. If he
    Third - Twitter isn't that important. It wasn't to begin with. Its conversion to a right-wing echo chamber (and sub

    • What am I missing here? Just because it will now have a wider range of users, it will magically turn into a right wing echo chamber? A wider spectrum should reduce the echo chamber propensity, unless woke snowflakes find the idea of being challenged, and subject to the same sorts of twitterstorms that they have handed out, too threatening.

      Beware the irregular verb

      I offer a robust response
      You point their incoherence
      They indulge in hate speech.

      • What am I missing here? Just because it will now have a wider range of users, it will magically turn into a right wing echo chamber?

        I think you're missing the part where it already happened. Even if it hadn't, no one is nearly as loud and obnoxious as an idiot that doesn't know that they are an idiot, and what currently passes for the right wing is flush with that particular demographic. In fact, it's run by their king. Given the choice between leaving or sticking around and tuning out the assholes turning every post about the latest movie into a juvenile bitch session about the star's political beliefs, most normal folks are going to

        • I abandoned our political system years ago because I am unable to tolerate the bullshit from either side anymore. You really nailed it, the GOP has become some sort of anti-truth league where the one who says the most untrue thing has displayed the highest loyalty to the cause. And the Left is a shit show of pseudo-scientific feel good hippies, armchair experts on everything and donothings who are unable to let people think for themselves. The right is going so far right and the left is going so far left, l

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mmell ( 832646 )
        I say there's nothing to worry about here, and you practically lose it trying to . . . confirm my assertion? You're saying there is something here to be worried about?

        Are you sure you're not a liberal?

  • Is faster than Mastodon to run and does not engage in censorship like it.

  • Watching all these folks run around like ants in a disturbed anthill is just too funny. Fear of Elon is real!

    Oh yes, now we must do something about the fetid swamp that is Twitter. What an amazing coinkidink!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mmell ( 832646 )
      Yes, unfortunately. Fear of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter is both real and unwarranted. Once he owns Twitter, Elon Musk will find hiimself subject to the same environment Twitter's board faced. He will either ignore the liability and turn Twitter into an even more extreme outlet for christian, right-wing racism, or he won't. If his choice is the former, he'll discover how the court system in the USA works. If he chooses the latter, nobody will really notice (very few people complain about the status
  • Just a few months ago wasn't there a "mass exodus" of users from Whatsapp to Telegram et al due to a change in ownership? oh, yes- here is an example! [panion.com]. Apparently people have been leaving Whatsapp since 2014! [thenewamerican.com] How did that turn out? Well, looks like continuous growth for Whatsapp despite all the rhetoric online. [backlinko.com] I suspect this will be similar in any case and mastodon will go nowhere. Would love to be wrong about this.
  • "The European Union has joined the social network Mastodon, which has seen a staggering 30,000 new users after Elon Musk's bid for Twitter was accepted."

    @Gargron [mastodon.social]: "What sort of percentage is that vs before the Twitter shenanigans?"

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