I think “digital sovereignty” is a better phrasing than “Europe need […] own […] platform”. It’s not the same. We don’t need nationalism and an own place… What we need is to emancipate ourselves and not be controlled by external big-tech companies. But I really like the internet for spanning across the globe and enabling me to talk to random people on other continents.
And I’d really question that the big-tech US platforms are “better” than the alternatives. Especially for cyber-security. Doesn’t she omit that we do regulation here in Europe, and American companies are free to sell all data and have other standards? While European companies have far higher standards with what they can collect, sell and even leak by accident? I think it’s the other way around. And I don’t think fragmentation per language is a big deal either. I know a lot of people who use Instagram etc and just speak German and no English. That doesn’t seem an issue for them. I think it’d be the same with an European-sponsored platform. They’d just not look at the French memes and that’s it.
Nail on the head and another reason why Open Source and potentially defederated is so important
Yep, we need our own shit, that’s the thing. A nice message board exclusively for Europe, make it public, have mods only to break up stupid fights and to look into actually suspicious accounts, and that’s it.
Edit: and we’re already on it.
Edit 2: honestly, in terms of social networking, I think most of us aren’t liaising as much as we could. What I mean by this is acting as an intermediary between the various social networks we each use, and the people around us. Found something stupid on Facebook which would beg discourse? Post it on the Lemmy board and start that discourse!
Know a buncha’ Instagram people who don’t get enough news? Spam their WhatsApps with articles! Basically, keep on doing what you’re doing, but bump up those numbers!
I feel your first paragraph is kind of the opposite of what I was trying to convey. I don’t want my own filter-bubble. In fact I really like being connected to American people, people in Asia and Oceania, maybe Africa…
And yes, there are a lot of ideas floating out there. The EU really doesn’t need to start building something from zero. The Fediverse for example is a nice idea.
I’m always a bit unsure about all the re-posting of memes and stuff. I sometimes feel like Lemmy isn’t about genuine connection, but more a place to dump news articles and things someone thinks is funny and they found somewhere else. Sometimes I think we should work on a bit more original content and genuine human conversation/debate. Maybe our own jokes, culture…
Yeah, I expressed myself oddly, sorry=)) More points toward not posting before drinking my first cup=))
I do agree with you in the sense that we need to start detaching ourselves from the US “materially,” both hardware and software, but we need to offer those as alternatives to what there is, open to anyone and everyone, not just us.
My brain then jumbled it up with, precisely, the Fediverse, because that’s something which doesn’t belong to the US, cannot belong to anyone per se, so it’s a really good thing upon which we could build, with the specific intention of nurturing its unown-ability (sorry…).
With America as it is, the world needs a bastion of freedom, and Europe is in the perfect position to start building that.
As for your last point, yeah, I get that. Honestly, I still try to treat it as a public park, or something, but with more interaction. Sure, it’s not like Facebook in terms of interaction depth, but I think what’s there is enough to keep conversations going. We need open conversations, the Greeks were right with their public forums, I think, and we should encourage as many people as possible to join! Be the change you wanna see and all that!
Plus nowadays it isn’t even all that smart to keep social interactions digital, scrapers still gonna scrape. The added layer of anonymity helps, and I find it allows people to speak their mind more often. There’ll always be bad apples, build around them.
Yeah, I just occasionally like to push against using “Buy European” as a means of becoming nationalist ourselves. And content that could be read that way. I think we’re 100% on the same page.
There’s a bunch of Lemmy and mastodon servers in Europe and many places. Great way to have your own and be able to connect globally
I think over the course of the past two decades we have firmly established that nobody not actively trying to take advantage of others needs a social media platform.