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I dunno, *can* we build #European alternatives to #Facebook and co?
The #EU community managers are at it again with promoting the EU instance on #Mastodon!

PS: the community management team (that's my team) are up for an award. Any chance you'd give us a vote? Project 32 on this link: enonet.eu/survey/index.php/227…

in reply to Hannah Grace

Like, for real - companies and organisations sign up to Mastodon and then just expect people to show up.

But you gotta post on Facebook / Twitter / Threads / Instagram / whatever, to say:

"Hey! Look, we have our own accounts on Mastodon. Go get the Mastodon app and follow us over there!"

👍

reshared this

in reply to Matt Vestengen-Cox

That was in fact exactly how communites changed platforms in the past, and it always seemed to go well enough. So I don't know why it would be a problem now.

"Starting by [date], we'll be making official announcements primarily from [Masto acct], and much less over time on [corporate accts]. Join here."

This entry was edited (Thursday, June 4, 2026, 4:01 PM)

Simon Brooke reshared this.

in reply to WesDym

in reply to WesDym

@wesdym @matt If I tweet I'm moving out, but Twitter's algorithm doesn't show it, they kinda do. People I'm following, but are not following me back, don't even see it. Even if my followers do, but the majority of people they're following (family, friends, colleagues, communities of support) are staying and they'll loose their contact, they'll not be following me out.
Those companies found several ways to lock users in and the main tool they use to do that is DRM law.
So I say let's ask @EUCommission (we still don't have European Parliament here) to get rid of DRM Law (it doesn't do anything positive anyway), so we can get back that web of the past you were talking about. I'm not saying it was perfect, but sure it was much, much nicer 😀
in reply to paulasimoes

@paulasimoes Then you're a fool for relying on people you don't even know, and have no relationship with. That isn't even slightly my point. My point is about communities -- people with shared interests, including an interest in each other.

An actual COMMUNITY can change platforms easily enough. I've seen it before, and participated in it. If people can communicate with each other at all -- and have reason to want to -- they can and WILL be able to communicate a move.

in reply to WesDym

@wesdym Well, @hpod16 question was "can we build European alternatives to Facebook and co?" and my answer is no, unless we get rid of things like DRM law (because of the arguments I stated above). I'm trying to stick to the point.
It doesn't mean it doesn't work for half a dozen communities or people (it worked for me, I'm here 😂), but it will not work for the majority of Facebook & co users, and thus it is not an alternative.
In the past you would do what @matt said (that's the way to go) and you'd get a good chance of success, but you also had adversarial interoperability then, that we don't have today.
in reply to paulasimoes

@paulasimoes You're talking about copies, not alternatives. I don't know why you're hung up on this, since it doesn't look to me like anyone else is talking about this, or even thinking about it. An online community is people engaging with each other. Those not interested enough don't really count.

There is nothing preventing anyone on X or FB from telling people there where and how to find them here, or elsewhere.

Anyway, I've got a live to lead.

in reply to WesDym

@wesdym I understand, people get different info & different views. From where I'm standing everyone is talking about this. How Europe is realising its dependence of American big tech is proving dangerous, how Facebook & Co techniques (dark patterns, doom scrolling, target ads, hate speech, disinformation, allegedly elections interference, etc) are having a negative impact in economy, citizens lives, society, and democracy itself.
And I'm not seeing this being debated only in specialized associations or Governments & European Commission proposing laws to deal with Facebook & Co, I'm seeing these themes in national newspapers and TV channels. So, from my point of view and I hope you understand, everyone is talking about this. Have a nice weekend! 😀
in reply to Matt Vestengen-Cox

@matt To this I would add: consider adding a prominent, tappable Mastodon icon in the "walled-garden cabbage patch". I'm referring to the area at the bottom of the front page of the said organization's website (where #Facebook / #Twitter / #Threads / #Instagram / etc icons are proudly/shamefully shown). Those icons are the "rotten cabbages", while #Mastodon is a "good cabbage".
in reply to Hannah Grace

I already wondered who makes this good work! (Clicks link).

I think one problem is that people await a 1:1 copy of these platforms, but why should we imitate them with all their inherent bad sides? FB's strength are their groups where people can talk with their whole village or meet all gardeners of their region. Easy, intuitive for absolute non-techies. I can't do that in the Fediverse. But we don't need a FB clone to invent such places.

This entry was edited (Thursday, June 4, 2026, 10:02 AM)
in reply to Hannah Grace

Focusing on building new platforms is a huge distraction. Mastodon is open source and #ActivityPub is a @w3c protocol. Everything is already in place. It's just a matter of people posting or adopting the protocol on their current social tools. I don't think anything else has to be built. If institutions AND real people, MPs for example, start posting for real, that will create momentum.
in reply to Vladimir Campos

@vladcampos so is making them specifically "European", whatever that means in a world were software development is more often than not, developed using off-shored and out-sourced teams from all over the globe, using development tools and software libraries, and online services that are even more developed by a global coalition of contributors. Attributing nationality hides this people work, to serve silly and missguided goals.

@hpod16 @w3c

in reply to Diogo Constantino

I think, "European" means the seat of the company, the legislation, the laws and regulations. And if you give the data to US clouds or in other dangerous places or place them in the EU. It's not about the internationality of a network.
@vladcampos @hpod16 @w3c
This entry was edited (Thursday, June 4, 2026, 11:22 AM)
in reply to Petra van Cronenburg

@NatureMC

Which as I explained on the rest of the thread, do change, and are currently lead by people who want to make them weaker to serve Trumpf and Big Tech. Talk about the values not the flags! Also people from other places also share many of the values, and there's no tech without us all collaborating to build it.

@vladcampos @hpod16 @w3c

in reply to Diogo Constantino

@vladcampos
What serves the public over time is guarantying them rights over software and technology. Sometimes certain jurisdictions do it better than others, this is true, but that is circunstancial, as we can see with the Commission multiple pushes for Chat Control for more than 10 years, the curent plans to weaken GDPR and other regulations to please Trumpf and Big Tech.

@hpod16 @w3c

in reply to Diogo Constantino

@DiogoConstantino @w3c I see myself as an Internationalist. That's why I mentioned #ActivityPub, a decentralized protocol that anyone can adopt. Its interconnectivity characteristics makes is local/global. BTW, it's not European. And I agree on the open source, no matter where it's from.

But there are limits. For example, the world payment system shouldn't be dependent on Visa/MC which can be shot down by a single country. The same is true for "the Cloud", communications, etc.

in reply to Vladimir Campos

@vladcampos the cloud is several different things, one in popular culture, and the technicall definition.
The infrastructure is mostly but not exclusevely on American hands. But the cloud is what I also have here on my home, were I can scale up and down resources on demmand, for systems and applications I selfhost.

To see and to treat technology exclusively as if only Big Tech exists is a big error that most Big Tech detractors do, and that almost all journalists do.

@hpod16 @w3c

in reply to Hannah Grace

I would argue that it really depends on what "Facebook", "instagram" and "whatsapp" mean for this person.

I think we don't really have a valid alternative to the Marketplace for example.

Instagram is pretty much covered by Mastodon and Pixelfed, but would it work at scale? (with millions or billions of photos and videos to store and moderate)

Whatsapp is a lot harder. I don't think that Matrix is a good alternative and unfortunately Signal is under US influence too.

in reply to Gilberto Ficara

Friendica, would be the fediverse alternative to Facebook, giving the possibility to have private groups.

Here an article from (of course) @_elena

blog.elenarossini.com/the-futu…

There are not that many #friendica instances, unfortunately

This entry was edited (Thursday, June 4, 2026, 1:30 PM)

Eye reshared this.

in reply to Christopher Stark

@christopherstark

People who use it, seems to love it.
I'm not that much into formatted posts or groups.
Never been on facebook.

For example people with a friendica account, could create a topic or local group
and you could follow that group from your mastodon account.
How cool is #fediverse

@informapirata

@zompetto @hpod16 @_elena

Informa Pirata reshared this.

in reply to Christopher Stark

@Christopher Stark I'm a big fan of Friendica, but it's clear that, while Friendica has achieved a good level of usability, it isn't and never will be as usable as Mastodon.
Friendica is still the most complete software in the entire Fediverse and deserves a larger community of users and, above all, developers: currently, there are practically three of them maintaining the system!

I recommend trying the Raccoon for Friendica Android app (also usable with Mastodon) because it has significantly improved many of the web version's ergonomic issues. The app is currently still in beta, and I recommend downloading it from GitHub because the one on the app store is still version 0.4 and has some significant flaws.

github.com/LiveFastEatTrashRac…

@Gilberto Ficara @Elena Rossini 🌈 @Luca Sironi @Hannah Grace

in reply to Informa Pirata

@Informa Pirata
The team is working very hard to simplify the WebUI. The current stable Friendica version (2026.05) already includes a number of changes. The development version will take things a step further.

The project welcomes people who want to contribute their experience and skills for the benefit of the Fediverse.

For those interested: Friendica has a theme and add-on system. So if you want to bring your own ideas for a great UX/UI to life, you’ve come to the right place.

@Elena Rossini 🌈 @Gilberto Ficara @Christopher Stark @Luca Sironi @Hannah Grace

Informa Pirata reshared this.

in reply to Christopher Stark

@Christopher Stark @Elena Rossini 🌈 @Gilberto Ficara @Luca Sironi @Luca Sironi @Hannah Grace

I think Friendica works fairly well, especially when you organize your feed into categories. I love the RSS feed and the Bluesky-feed, which works way better than Mastodon's.

The main problem as far as I see it, is that there are so few people there.

in reply to Gilberto Ficara

we do have marketplace alternatives! They usually vary by regions and countries. For example, you have ebay, which is the biggest, but in france, you may use leboncoin, while in some eastern european countries and netherlands there's the olx giant. At least in romania olx is the most popular, the oldest and the main reason why facebook marketplace didn't really take off here
in reply to clouderst has beef with apache

@clouderst The problem is that people want to buy directly from social media. They want to buy a piece that their favourite artist shows, they don't search leboncoin for it. A lot of people are only on Insta because it's an important part for earning their life. And Mastodon is still no alternative (many artist get aggressed for posting their shop links). Leboncoin is good to sell an old table ...

@zompetto @hpod16

in reply to Petra van Cronenburg

i'm not denying the aggression thing. It's just bad cause how do people expect artists to make money if they don't promote themselves!

now even though people want to buy from social media, instagram doesn't have a marketplace of its own, nor does it take any taxes for promotion. It's an advertising platform, not a marketplace. The same goes for every other platform excepting youtube and facebook. Facebook marketplace was designed to be a replacement for services like leboncoin. Since most of facebook's userbase is old, they decided to capitalize on that since most young people don't tend to buy old.

Literally no artist puts up their work on facebook marketplace and if they do, they advertise and send the user to another platform (patreon ko-fi etc), just how they do on insta, twitter etc

in reply to Gilberto Ficara

in reply to Gilberto Ficara

@zompetto
Yeah, I mean the answer is phrased pretty broadly on purpose. Mastodon isn't the solution for all this, but I like to promote the EU mastodon account whenever I can.

(I'm trying to get it into the top 10 most followed (active) accounts on fedi, grinding away over here...)

in reply to Hannah Grace

@zompetto
What I'd love would be a "facebook for local bussineses" that you don't need an account to view (a bulleting board, if you please); far too many companies still don't have only FB page for opening hours, menus and other information, so as a result it's easier to plan ahead if you're going to big chains.

I'd love Friendica to be that, but it's actually more strict about browsing without an account.

in reply to WesDym

@wesdym
Pecause they also need to worry about SEO, and actually registering a website, and actually making that website, and that would mean hiring someone, or some firm, to do it.

I'd PREFER if all bussinesses had their own websites, but they just want to make food and sell crafts, not worry about all that stuff. And FB has made it easy to just make a site, and bebhappy with it. It's simple, it's fast, and it "has reach".

in reply to Hannah Grace

Periodically people say '[abusive company with unethical business model] could only have originated in the USA, it could never have succeeded in Europe' and it takes me a minute to realise that they somehow meant this as an endorsement of the USA.
in reply to Hannah Grace

Another upvote for your team's efforts then. It is delightful to see how EU presence is expanding on the fediverse since EUVoice and EUVideo and 3-day workshop ActivityPub for Administrations by SocialHub.

socialhub.activitypub.rocks/pu…

in reply to 🫧 Social coding commons

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@smallcircles

Aaaaand did you see this sentence in the EU open source strategy published yesterday?
Link: digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/…

in reply to Hannah Grace

yes, I sure did. For a moment some time ago there was talk that the open source strategy would be less pronounced. But this direct reference to decentralized social media, and building out on mastodon is beyond expectations again. Nice!

PS. I maintain the 3 fediverse-related delightful lists that give a good overview of how many ActivityPub based open source projects already exist. See: delightful.coding.social

This entry was edited (Thursday, June 4, 2026, 4:19 PM)
in reply to Timothy Roes

I assume you refer to how in communication references to "mastodon" are made?

There's indeed something problematic in that, about which I've been posting a lot and also blogged about: the app-centric nature of the current fediverse, and the re-centralization forces this sets in motion.

See e.g. coding.social/blog/grassroots-…

Mastodon is a brand. A platform and product that targets the fediverse to offer Microblogging services. The way it is used puts it on a pedestal, makes it more prominent than other microblogging apps like #GoToSocial, #Pleroma, and many other alternatives. But it is the social network as a whole that counts, not individual service provider players.

The word #Mastodon is overused in too broad meaning, similar to how people say "I'll google it" when they want to do an internet search. It sells alternatives short, like DuckDuckGo or Kagi. Some people don't even know about fediverse and say "Join mastodon" when they mean "Join the decentralized web".

This entry was edited (Friday, June 5, 2026, 7:36 AM)
in reply to Timothy Roes

@TimothyRoes
The (over)use of "mastodon" is understandable. Mastodon played a pioneering role in implementing microblogging use cases with the #ActivityPub protocol and is also the most mature product at this point in that 'business domain'. Establishing itself as a brand.

#Fediverse is not a very descriptive name to people unfamiliar with it and the idea that it provides access to many apps that integrate with on a single social network (ideally) interoperably is foreign. They are used to 'platform thinking'. Fediverse weaves a social fabric that allows you to be "social together with others" online.

The europa.eu website now has a #Mastodon icon in its social channel list, that hides all that.

Perhaps most communicative is the name #ActivityStreams (name of W3C standard vocabulary of social actions to support). Then a person would subscribe to EU's activity streams and receive Posts, Articles, Videos, Events, Policies, News. Every service the EU offers adds to the stream.

in reply to Graeme 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

@Graeme 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 People over 40 still use Facebook thanks to two specific features: events and groups. Local groups, in particular, are an important way to find news about their town and to identify local buying and selling deals.
Some still use Messenger, but it's not a determining factor. The messaging system, however, is crucial for those who use Instagram, which now relies solely on passively viewing reels and actively writing messages to their contacts.

@Hannah Grace

in reply to Graeme 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

@pa27 Weirdly -- and just in the last year -- I've met a number of small businesses who RELY on FB either to deliver vital info to patrons, or for interaction with them. I've tried in all those cases to explain to them why they shouldn't but gotten through to only one of them. There's something weirdly cultish about it.
in reply to Hannah Grace

I don't understand this question. The actual THING is stupidly easy to make. Hell, I was often impressed with how weirdly primitive Facebook is, given when it exists. (Some earlier platforms were much more sophisticated.) The thing itself is easy to do. It's the PEOPLE USING IT and how it's managed that make the difference, and that's been done many times and can be done again.

Just make something and see who shows up, and try not to let it get out of hand. Why is this even an issue?

in reply to WesDym

This Facebook ‘alternative’ helped build the Fediverse and has been part of it from the very beginning. It’s called Friendica.
It’s just that the Mastodon fanboys don’t want to promote it, just like they don’t promote the many other services such as Loops, Pixelfed, Vernisage, etc.
After all, it’s competition for Mastodon, which operates as a company within the Fediverse and does corporate things.

@hpod16@eupolicy.social

in reply to SomeVeganCheeseIsOk

@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk There's still a bit of that sometimes but mostly it's just become echo chambers where opposing but not really bad ideas are still downvoted to oblivion.

Idk if Lemmy is a good alt to reddit. I haven't been there in a while, but I usually only lurk on some subreddits through my redlib instance nowadays but yeah there's no place for good discussions there anymore.

Also I forgor to add, there's "AI" presence there... I'm finding a hard time finding them within replies

This entry was edited (Thursday, June 4, 2026, 1:33 PM)
in reply to SomeVeganCheeseIsOk

@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk Oh... that's really fucking bad.

Last time I was there the people were pretty mad and outraged about what Trump was doing and they were some mocking him. That was a year ago and I was on lemmy.world instance

Well, to be honest I don't even feel like I belong there so I stopped going.

in reply to SomeVeganCheeseIsOk

@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk Yeah Redlib's a private front-end for Reddit. Think of it like it's invidious or nitter but for reddit. You can self-host it or use somebody's public instance.

I browse around subreddits without js that way cos the regular reddit website wont load without it.

Yeah there are bots around reddit now. Pretty expected cos I think google bought them a year or two ago and y'know, google's onto "AI" a whole lot.

github.com/redlib-org/redlib

in reply to Really Lazy Bear

@reallylazybear Reddit's fundamental promlem is the same as FB's: They MUST make money for their corporate owners. Both run on ad revenue, which relies on engagement. So pretty much all their effort is on the latter. That's why reddit used the nuclear option against locked subs, and put a hard cap on how many people you can block. And that's also why both suck to spend a lot of time on.

Removing the profit motive obviates those motives.

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

WesDym

@reallylazybear What FB figured out, before anyone else, is that negativity fuels engagement more than anything else. So they tuned their algorithm to optimize that, and it works wonders. They made a fortune off it, and they don't care who gets hurt by it. Same with nearly all other corporate platforms that rely on user engagement for ad revenue and data collection.
Unknown parent

@wesdym It's really exploitative of the human mind and it's just sad a ton of people like to "knock down" other people's opinions in quest of having the only right and superior opinion.

And the worst part is that it just works and I think the algorithm on those places favors this, which is just sick and I don't doubt people sort get a high being the right one, idk...

in reply to dummzeuch

@dummzeuch You wouldn't necessarily want a specifically *European* #facebook. But a facebook owned and controlled by its users, or a non-corporate facebook, or a non-walled-garden facebook, or a fecebook with responsive moderation, or -- perish the thought! one which was all of those things? Now that is something many people would (reasonably) want.
in reply to Hannah Grace

@Hannah Grace also remember that, if you have control of your Mastodon instance, you can upgrade to Mastodon Glitch-soc, a well-supported, friendly fork of Mastodon. The advantage is that you can write formatted posts with hyperlinks (of course, you can remove the 500-character limit). I installed it on poliversity.it to accommodate poliverso.org users who weren't comfortable with Friendica and preferred Mastodon.
in reply to DFX4509B (Joshua Mason)

European Network Dynamics is precisely answering that point

@DFX4509B You're absolutely right, and the good news is: it already exists! 🌍 European Network Dynamics runs Social. Netdynamics.eu, a Friendica-based instance, self-hosted in the EU, designed as a positive agora for European citizens to connect, share, and speak freely. It federates across the entire Fediverse while keeping your data under European jurisdiction. Registrations are free and open! Why not join us and bring this conversation there? 🤝 Everyone in this thread is welcome, the more voices, the richer the community. ✨

👉 social.netdynamics.eu

Kind regards.

#netdynamics #netdynamics.eu #fediverse #friendica @DFX4509B (Joshua Mason)

This entry was edited (Friday, June 5, 2026, 10:03 AM)
in reply to Coal

Let us reformulate this question like this : "do you want to join European Netdynamics ?"

Friendica has no defined nationality, it does not belong to a private techno-feodalist company. Friendica was orginally built by an american australian.
Friendica is totally open sourced.One of Friendica's team key members (Tobias Diekershoff) is German Berliner.

European Netdynamics is self hosted in France, by an officially registered company (registration number on demand, by PM)

Registration, participation is free and open to anyone.

@Coal

@Coal
This entry was edited (Friday, June 5, 2026, 12:36 PM)