Yea. Funding fediverse apps and launching official national / continental instances would go a long way and perhaps get there the fastest.
European companies and communities already host decentralized alternatives like Mastodon, a federated network powered by the homegrown Mastodon software. These GDPR-compliant tools allow users to control data and interconnect across servers—a model echoing the EU’s federalist values. However, fragmentation, lack of user-friendly UI and underfunding limit their reach. A unified EU initiative could fund these projects while the alliance of European companies and communities could merge these projects into a public-private platform. It is in the best interest of the European Union to provide funding for European-owned social media platforms to ensure their development and European digital sovereignty.
It would be awesome if the EU started funding the Fediverse.
One thing I am thinking is that things whith such streng network effects like telephone networks, railway networks, messenger applications or the basic protocols of social media should be required to use specified, open standards and protocols, just like IMAP, HTTP or the Matrix protocol. (Actually the Gemini protocol is a good example how it can be done for microblogs).
Did you miss the part where the EU was already talking about that…
Why do we need social media? Can’t we just not have social media?
I know a lot of people are dependant on them now, but substitutes for the really important bits already exists :)
Exactly, all social media managed by a central company turned out to be a cancer.
It works be best to not use any social media, but if Europe must, then embrace fediverse.
