I wanted to know about the european social media scene
In this divided world most of our favorite social media sites are based in the US. The only one that makes an exception is Tiktok and as much as it is very entertaining (for a while) it also can control how we think and how we live our lives a lot more than we realise. For me, I am obviously very addicted to my phone and most of the apps like Facebook at first then Snapchat, Instagram, Youtube, Tiktok are taking a good piece of the cake of reasons for my addiction.I started asking myself if there were alternatives to giving all of my mind’s undivided attention and craving for dopamine to USA or Chinese born corporations. I looked for European social networks because why not we always say it is best to eat local.
Bereal is, according to me, the most known and used European social network. It has been developed in France in 2020 and it has since become pretty known and used in western europe. The concept is easy to grasp: you take one (or more) 360° view picture per day and you can only see what your friends have posted if you post one as well. This a well constructed process that helped the app grow fast coupled with its innovative feel.
An interesting alternative to now Elon Musk’s weird baby X is Mastodon. The platform created by German dev Eugène Rochko is surprisingly add free. It aims to protect the user’s data by being able to choose the servers you want to take part in. The app has a nice design and is well thought out. I could see myself getting used to it. The only problem is that this app does not count nearly as many users as X which can be a good thing or a bad thing it’s up to you.
These are the only two networks I could find that look like they could stick in the long run. There are others like Whaller which is a social network crafted for companies of Peertube a distant relative of youtube but similar to Mastodon. Of course next to the other datavore giants they don’t really compare but it was nice looking into it 🙂
The aim with having european social networks could be to strenghthen digital sovereignty and better protect european citizens’ personal data. However would we be better off with euroepean supervision of our digital footprint ? I will talk about it in my next post so stay tuned haha 😉
Thank you for reading !
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