Dat honderden Marokkanen naar Ceuta zwemmen is het gevolg van Europa's (en Spanje's) grensbeleid. En geen bestorming van Fort Europa door 'horden ' Afrikaanse migranten. @heindehaas.bsky.social legt het nog een keer uit.

Every year we ask admins, moderators, community builders, to tell us how things are going, what they need, and generally take the pulse of the open social web. So far this year we've had responses from 22 countries. If you're not on the list, nudge your admin to take the 5 minute survey today […]

A cluster of ~300 WordPress web sites have begun federating over ActivityPub and then bridging to ATProto, all Swedish, mostly blank. Could be innocuous, could be the beginnings of an ad-farm, could be something more troubling. We have no idea, but here's a list of domains in case anyone wants […]

A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.

My latest for @openfuture.bsky.social discussing the Commission's move to @wsocial.eu. I like that they're paying more attention to #atproto, or open protocols more generally. But W-Social is a puzzling choice right now, especially when @mu.social / @eurosky.social is right there!

Open Future@openfuture.bsky.social · last mo.

The European Commission has joined W-Social and committed €1.4M to a protocol-based pilot. @aditya.myatproto.social argues that sovereign social media depends on open infrastructure and reduced dependencies, not just European ownership. openfuture.eu/blog/w-socia...

The European Commission just released a new call for proposals (€1.48 mill) for pilots on the Fediverse or ATprotocol. The focus seems to be on youth participation and safety. Is the timing suspicious or am I jaded.. digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/new-...

W Social, never short on amusing failures: blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-b...

W Social: a Broken Ghost Town?

W Social has been experiencing major technical problems for over a week: it is effectively a ghost town, filled with thousands of new accounts that cannot use the platform.

blog.elenarossini.com

The EU's Tech Sovereignty Package puts substance behind open source: a maintenance instrument, 'open source first' procurement, and a new Foundation for strategic open source assets. What's missing? Find in @aditya.myatproto.social and @alek.eurosky.social analysis: openfuture.eu/blog/beyond-...

Beyond Open Source – Open Future

The EU's Tech Sovereignty Package puts open source at the center of Europe's sovereignty agenda. But by narrowing the strategy to code and leaving non-code Digital Commons and data out of scope, it…

openfuture.eu

This might be one of the most insane scandals in game history When Pokemon Go players scan PokeStops, theyve been unknowingly building a detailed visual model of the world which is being sold to a military contractor to build a no-GPS positioning for the new generation of unmanned killing machines

We need more walkable, mixed-use datacenters. Like community gardens, people should be able to experience the joy and satisfaction of cultivating their own hardware. Big Cloud has alienated the connection people felt with their computers. Kids should know what it's like to swear at rack mount rails.

I'm at @re-publica.com speaking with Aline Blankertz and @sebastian.eurosky.social about ideas like 'sovereignty' and 'openness', and how they open some windows for progressive policy and infrastructure (while maybe closing some others). Come by or say hi!

Open Future@openfuture.bsky.social · 3mo ago

What are the promises and perils of “digital sovereignty”? @aditya.myatproto.social on the tensions between digital sovereignty and openness. www.re-publica.com/en/node/9692 (In English)

New from me, on the decision by the @ec.europa.eu to not extend the DMA interoperability requirements to social media, and how this closes off a pathway for mass adoption of open social networks. connectedplaces.online/reports/fr16...

FR#162 – EU Regulation Won’t Save Open Social Networks

The European Commission has decided not to extend the Digital Markets Act's interoperability rules to social media, closing off a potential pathway for adoption for open social networks.

connectedplaces.online

when we mourn le guin, we mourn one of our greatest writers & thinkers. but we also mourn one of our all-time greatest haters

Yesterday Bluesky went down. @eurosky.social servers worked but we couldn't communicate as we don't have an app. Our next step is to build everything we need to operate without Bluesky. We're raising €100,000 to build a European app backend supporting 100k+ users. Let's do this fund.eurosky.tech

Accelerate building an independent European social web

This week Bluesky went down. This is why our vision for a fully independent European social web matters. You are the first users of Eurosky. You are the community making this vision a reality. We are ...

fund.eurosky.tech

Eurosky AppView when? @eurosky.social 😅

It’s genuinely staggering how little substance there is to today’s instalment of the BBC’s attempt to create a national crisis out of a few unproven allegations of immigration fraud 1/

Migrants are making false domestic abuse allegations to stay in the UK, BBC investigation finds

In the third part of an undercover investigation, the BBC reveals how rules aimed at protecting abuse victims are being exploited.

bbc.co.uk

Unfortunately this is not new. Greece, with the tacit approval of the EU in general, has long been carrying out actions which put people seeking asylum in harms way, along with so many other EU countries and FRONTEX. International law is repeatedly ignored. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Greek police using masked 'mercenaries' to push migrants back across border

Mercenaries recruited since at least 2020 for illegal migrant ‘pushbacks’ in Greece, BBC told

bbc.co.uk

Microsoft, Meta, and Google have collectively paid billions in fees for privacy violations similar to the ones Libert and webXray found during the audit. “In many ways fines have come to replace taxes.” @evystadium.bsky.social has more. @mjgault.bsky.social story: www.404media.co/google-micro...

Scottish Labour manifesto is out, don’t vote for them

Digital public spaces need more than regulation; they need public infrastructure. Our new policy brief (authored by @aditya.myatproto.social and Zuzanna Warso) proposes public investment in interoperable, commons-based communication infrastructure. openfuture.eu/publication/...

If anyone believes their project should run as public infrastructure - come talk to us. If you believe that running components as public infrastructure is beneficial to the ecosystem and you have institutional funds available - come talk to us. @modalfoundation.eurosky.social Please RT

Super useful reporting. When there's talk about AI for good, sovereign AI, or even alternative social networks, not enough is said about improving the conditions of the data workers that actually make it all possible

SOMO - Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations @somoamsterdam.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Big Tech relies heavily on thousands of data workers for their AI products. While these workers are hired through intermediaries, Big Tech firms are responsible for their unstable and unfair working conditions.🚨 Read our analysis: www.somo.nl/big-tech-set...

The forthcoming revision of the Public Procurement Directives and the Cloud and AI Development Act presents a legislative window to shift public money away from proprietary technologies toward Digital Commons. This brief makes the case for using it. openfuture.eu/publication/...

Public Procurement as a Strategic Lever for Digital Sovereignty – Open Future

Public bodies are among Europe’s largest buyers of digital technology. This policy brief argues they should use that power to advance digital sovereignty, and explains how.

openfuture.eu

Is social media the new public square? Then what is the role for public funding in keeping it resilient, safe, (maybe even fun)? 1/3👇

Open Future@openfuture.bsky.social · 4mo ago

A European Citizens' Initiative calls for publicly funded social media. But copying the old centralized, surveillance-based model would repeat harms. Public money deserves a more ambitious target: Digital Public Space. @aditya.myatproto.social explains what that means. openfuture.eu/blog/public-...

Europe’s cloud dependency is a strategic risk. Our new brief, authored by Zuzanna Warso and @aditya.myatproto.social, outlines how to cut lock-in and use public procurement to back sovereign, interoperable cloud alternatives. Read more: openfuture.eu/publication/...

Right, so. Re: "BlueSky will implode." There will never be a social media platform that enables you to have the degree of security, freedom, and privacy that many of you seem to desire because the problems with these platforms aren't technical, they're social. Further, they're uniquely social.

We sought out the perspectives that move beyond industrial policy, towards foregrounding the communities that actually sustain our shared digital infrastructures. Also of note, emerging interest in viewing open social media protocols as critical infrastructure deserving sustained public funding.

Open Future@openfuture.bsky.social · 5mo ago

🔓 The EU's Open Digital Ecosystems Strategy reframes digital sovereignty: open source isn't just licensing—it's about sustaining communities & Digital Commons. From procurement reform to ecosystem stewardship. Read @aditya.myatproto.social & @alek.bsky.social's latest: openfuture.eu/blog/europea...

Calls for “digital sovereignty” are everywhere. While recommendations to switch away from certain companies is good advice, such a limited framing has drawbacks. I wanted to address these and hope to inspire motivation beyond moving into "larger cages". www.structural-integrity.eu/a-larger-cag...

A larger cage: about the ongoing calls for "digital sovereignty"

Calls for "digital sovereignty" are still everywhere. They are a central narrative of contemporary European economic policies, they serve as powerful justifications for corporations to call for subsid...

structural-integrity.eu

I need people to understand that "AI" used in moderation isn't necessarily the "AI" of ChatGPT + friends or synthetic text extruding machines, or LLMs. There's stuff lumped under "AI", as the term is a marketing term, that is actually useful and important for flagging stuff on social media.

Blacksky Algorithms@blackskyweb.xyz · 6mo ago

🗳️ Blacksky-only posts are coming. - The community uploads 100K+ media monthly, too much for human review alone. - Any AI moderation (if we used it) would run on our own infrastructure. - No third party gets access to Blacksky data, period. Please weigh in using the below survey by Feb 28th 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

"Technology doesn’t need liberation, people do."🔥

tante@tante.cc · 6mo ago

Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.