Submitted 4 days ago by bytesonbike@discuss.online to technology@beehaw.org
https://cybernews.com/tech/europe-social-media-w/
European organizations are about to launch their own social media platform, W, amid rising tensions with the United States.
The new platform, W, will require identification and photo validation to ensure that its users are both humans and who they claim to be, Danish news media outlet Politiken.dk reports.
The new platform, W, will require identification and photo validation to ensure that its users are both humans and who they claim to be
apparently we are now supposed to think that that is a good thing, huh
Not something for general users but, for organisations and public figures, having a platform with only verified entities is valuable.
For general users: Mastodon and the Fediverse.
I am a huge proponent of privacy, anonymity and freedom of information and I also totally support this idea.
A public place where people have to speak as their public selves is useful to have and doesn’t mean other spaces have to be removed. Especially for official communication from public entities, I prefer them to use this than some other sites that are rampant with bots, imposters and the like.
This depends on how the verification is done, in my opinion, as well as whether there is a presence of more anonymous alternatives.
If the EU has a system which does not rely on third parties for verification and allows the platform to verify directly with a government-run service, then the only real issue there is lack of anonymity, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing on a platform if there are also popular anonymous alternatives people can use when they want to.
The article doesn’t go into how ID verification will work though. If it’s through third parties like how the US does it, then that’s disgusting and waiting to be breached.
If the EU has a system which does not rely on third parties for verification and allows the platform to verify directly with a government-run service
The EU has been driving union wide “Digital Identity Wallet” It’s documented here: ec.europa.eu/…/EU+Digital+Identity+Wallet+Home
A government endpoint would also be a very spicy target, even if (and that’s a big IF) they programmed it correctly and didn’t store any verification info outside of RAM and had the internal data references locked down tight.
it will kill the project in the cradle
Y
X is no longer a public square
A group of 54 members of the European Parliament called for European alternatives to the dominant social media platforms on Monday.
IIRC the EC actually paid for some of the development of Kbin (now Mbin) with a grant.
Why would we want another Twitter? Look at the first one. Screw that. Maybe social media should not exist in that format for a reason.
The Threadiverse is also social media. I mean, it’s distributed and not owned by a single company, and much of it is funded by donations, but…
I think they mean microblogging as a format
Hey now. We had W in the early 2000’s. Was just as racist as X. Maybe more.
[The initiative to create the social media platform W] (politiken.dk/…/Danes-consumption-of-ADHD-medicati…) is supported by an advisory board and former ministers and business representatives, primarily from Sweden.
Welp, that URL’s borked.
MoogleMaestro@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
I wish Europe would just embrace the fediverse. The techno oligarchs are not your friends and most of them are invested in the US.
0xtero@beehaw.org 4 days ago
It’s kinda sad.
The European Commission even has their own Mastodon instance (ec.social-network.europa.eu), but it seems they can’t get any of the Commission employees or Parliament MPs to use it. It only has 10 account and from what I can see, only one “real” active user, Veronica Gaffey the Director-General, for Digital Services (DIGIT), who isn’t even posting on her real account but under the title @EC_DIGIT_director_general
As far as I know none of the EU member countries have their own Mastodon servers and most politicians at least here in Sweden seem to be using either X or (the technically minded “progressives”) Bluesky, while they complain about American Big Tech.
As always with politicians, actions don’t correspond to rhetoric.
petrescatraian@libranet.de 4 days ago
Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
I hear that the only users of twitter in Denmark are: tech bros, journalists and politicians
And politicians wanna be where the journalists are
Smoke@beehaw.org 3 days ago
Ireland has Mastadon.ie, it’s not official but it is at least a server there.
mischk@discuss.tchncs.de 4 days ago
Samenerguss, Europeans should not make the same mistakes. Public discourse should not be in the hand of a private company. No matter if its European, us-American or Asian.
bytesonbike@discuss.online 4 days ago
This is what’s frustrating me the most.
We have a working infrastructure. It’s open source. Please adopt.
tal@lemmy.today 3 days ago
I am somewhat-cynically wondering if the optimal political strategy is to sit on Twitter (which has more European voters to see one’s actions) and loudly complain about a lack of Twitter alternatives (which probably scores points with European voters) than to actually use a Twitter alternative.
Kichae@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
It’s a lot harder to demand your government ID on a federated platform.
m3t00@piefed.world 2 days ago
more fedi in europe than usa already. https://fediverse.observer/fediversestats
protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
dont get me wrong, but the fediverse from techinical perspective sucks ass, idk what fuck the they were cooking with these protocols
kbal@fedia.io 2 days ago
Well, it's not perfect but it's better than the way federation works on twitter, or X, Bluesky, or — we can probably assume — on W.
Luffy879@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
SWR just made a whitepaper on it, its coming.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
No country wants to build a tech infrastructure that they don’t control.