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FediForum June 2025:

The EU Stack & Third Way - What It Could Mean for the Fediverse?

/2025-06/session/5-e/

Topics:

Convener: Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden@mas.to)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

Notes

Jaz: Some EU gov instances listed here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Msmq_vgm1ggLEeR9fEjPWEPLmJbw3WuIB2fBwAstrRs/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Map might be easier: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/organisations-self-publishing-on-activitypub_1011537#3/59.89/-26.81

Samvie (chat): Yesterday we had a session at #FediForum on #Europe and the #Fediverse It would be great to connect & get to know people who are taking part from European countries. “Europe” as in beyond 🇪🇺 Feel free to use the hashtag #FediForumEurope to reach out and connect ✨ As @j12t pointed out regional FediForums would be great https://chaos.social/@samvie/114637154526917624

Notes from yesterdays session on EU by samvie: link

Ian: US as “commerical internet”. China as “government internet”. Europe as “community internet”.

Jeremiah (chat): Venture capital is winner take all. EU is market-competition oriented and then sometimes public infrastructure oriented.

Jeremiah: China just does with your socia media information what every other country demands of your digital payment information. 💅

Jaz: relevant blog: https://about.iftas.org/2024/03/06/open-social-for-the-common-good/ https://mediascope.group/europe-needs-its-own-social-media-platforms-to-safeguard-sovereignty/ also good background/framing/messaging

Eurostack movement. Gaia-X in the past EU attempt. https://www.scaleway.com/en/blog/full-steam-ahead-towards-a-true-multi-cloud-offering-to-deliver-on-broken-promises/#gaia-xs-initial-ambitions-got-diverted

About the EU stack: https://euro-stack.eu/ And the Francesca Bria paper: https://euro-stack.eu/francesca-bria-paper/ Review of EU stack - https://dldnews.com/europe-innovation-francesca-bria-eurostack-interview/ EU cloud alternatives: https://www.eucloud.tech/

Book recommendation: Hacking Capitalism by Kris Nóva (she founded https://hachyderm.io and https://nivenly.org) https://www.lulu.com/shop/kris-n%C3%B3va-and-ashley-bischoff/hacking-capitalism/hardcover/product-kr787y.html

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams is also fantastic in understanding Meta’s domination at any cost mindset. Fantastic and scary book.

Discussion and shaking of heads regarding failed Free our Feeds AT Proto pitch that raised $2M without a plan and then announced an unexpected blockchain proposal.

Adbusters video resonates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hTtAfjBhyo

Jaz: Need metric of success for fediverse. Underlying desire in EU, UK, Austrlia for data [and economic] sovereignty and ceding it to companies in another country that’s not them. Need to push for European perspective for the fediverse. Need a Fediforum Europe to advocate for this.

  • Ian: something the Fediforum committee is thinking about

Jeremiah: As Cory Doctorow said yesterday, EU governments will fund communities doing something like wanting an online space, but not a pitch for a Mastodon community server. It’s about positioning.

Joan: Last week I attended a conference on Digital Sovereignty (GIG-ARTS 2025). One of the keynote speakers (Paul Timmers) spoke about the EuroStack. There was one slide title “What is Eurostack? What is Eurostack not?”. Slides were not shared but I took a picture: http://joan.pla.cat/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/06/2025-06-06-at-20.59.14_48ec08b6.jpg

Need to work on anti-big-tech and how fediverse aligns with EU values. Consent, privacy, lowering language barriers. Writing about consent https://privacy.thenexus.today/free-fediverses-and-consent/

“Civic-public-partnerships” instead of “private-public-partnerships” - IMO those are too easily subverted by privat lobbies

Chaos Computer Club?

There is a need for connections to get a foot in the door to introduce these ideas: policymakers, people with money, money = access. Powerful acts of individuals. Start building locally. The Interet started with this, but now local community eroded by global community. US perspective skews global perspective. Support what our local area needs.

Jeremiah: Been promoting to Sverige politicians to introduce regulation for government agencies to post to an agency-owned social web channel in addition to their Big Tech platforms. Politicians don’t want to mandate leaving the platforms citizens use, but requiring them to also post to an owned social profile is considered more politically possible.

Related: https://www.xlast.org/

Laurens Hof was involved in AHOY, the EU Social Networking Day, possibly building off of that could be a good starting point. https://ahoy.eu/

https://savesocial.eu/ : citizens petitioning governments. Talk about safesocial at ahoy conf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toC91tQ7fRc

Andy Piper: wrote about this last year with government bodies on the fediverse. http://fediverseforfreedom.com and spoke at FOSDEM about it https://makertube.net/w/bXFCEBbNqNDbFjPh3cyChh

Germany’s national gov has their own Mastodon service: https://social.bund.d1e/explore

Republica - https://www.re-publica.com/en

#fediforumeurope or #fediforumeu?

NGI Forum, limited success with engaging with EU Commission members regarding social web in the past. Next one is end of this month: https://ngi.eu/ngi-forum25/

Next version of Mastodon will have option for community servers to enable referrer headers so governments know traffic being sent from social web posts. Until then, add ?ref=activitypub to the end of all your links on Mastodon.

We think Mastodon will be able to add “institutional features” in the next 12 months via an NLNet grant 🤞🏻

Adversarial approach: think like a tech lobbyist and try to figure out how to counter what they will do

Example of power of tech lobbyists fighting us: https://noyb.eu/en/eu-make-gdpr-procedures-unworkable

Would be great to have more collaboration between several Fediverse projects to present a united front and approach