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The European Social Stack

european.social

21–30 of 139 posts

Re: The European Social Stack

#21
post #7

I'm all in favour of the EU finally emancipating itself from American tech companies, but trying to recreate Social Media, just in a European way, is the worst possible way to go. We need less Social Media, not an inferior clone of TikTok or Instagram. Gaia-X would have been a nifty project, if it weren't a committee designing a framework for designing committee design frameworks by committee. We seem to make this mi…

I think there's space for less crappy social media.

The early days of Facebook, where I actually saw friends and family posting their thoughts, that was great! It wasn't dominated by people resharing political screeds or random videos from groups I've never even heard of.

Re: The European Social Stack

#22

> Europe is a union of 27 sovereign nations I guess the Swiss, British, Norwegians, Albanians etc etc are not welcome to participate in this project. EDIT: In any case this whole thing is stupid. Open source and privacy matters, not country of origin.

Europe != EU

Re: The European Social Stack

#24

Here is an idea for a EU product: Build something that is great, and make it so good, that everyone, including US citizens, will want to use it. Your ethics can still be great, but don't make me feel like your product won't be. If you have to market "Europe" or privacy it probably won't be.

The problem is impressumspflicht, you have to add your full contact address plus name to a website you host, inviting all sorts of trolls on the internet to ruin your life. No thanks.

Re: The European Social Stack

#25

Engagement metrics fed into recommendations algorithms are the paperclip maximizers that feed humanity's collective poison. Europe should do the one thing it knows how to do: regulate. For once, it is the answer. Do it only there. The rest of the dominos will fall. Making a european branded humanity poisoner is not the answer. Specifically, regulating against silent signals like watch time and comment count. Upvotes/…

Do you mean regulating "watch time and comment count" at the presentation (to the client) or the server (business/analytics) level? If the later, how would you even enforce that?

Re: The European Social Stack

#26
post #7

I'm all in favour of the EU finally emancipating itself from American tech companies, but trying to recreate Social Media, just in a European way, is the worst possible way to go. We need less Social Media, not an inferior clone of TikTok or Instagram. Gaia-X would have been a nifty project, if it weren't a committee designing a framework for designing committee design frameworks by committee. We seem to make this mi…

I think there's space for less crappy social media. The early days of Facebook, where I actually saw friends and family posting their thoughts, that was great! It wasn't dominated by people resharing political screeds or random videos from groups I've never even heard of.

I'm pretty sure Pandora's box has already been opened. The youth spending hours on TikTok every day is not going to go back to early days of Facebook on their own.

Re: The European Social Stack

#27

> Europe is a union of 27 sovereign nations I guess the Swiss, British, Norwegians, Albanians etc etc are not welcome to participate in this project. EDIT: In any case this whole thing is stupid. Open source and privacy matters, not country of origin.

Europe != EU

Correct

Re: The European Social Stack

#28

Here is an idea for a EU product: Build something that is great, and make it so good, that everyone, including US citizens, will want to use it. Your ethics can still be great, but don't make me feel like your product won't be. If you have to market "Europe" or privacy it probably won't be.

Doesn't work. As soon as something great appears, US VCs immediately buy it and move it to the bay area. A fair few of the products you think are US grown probably aren't. If not, a competitor appears that is less constrained by regulations and can move faster, taking over most of the market instead.

Re: The European Social Stack

#29
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. Best thing for dating apps is probably for them to cease to exist. Humanity managed dating fine before these things were created, even managed it in cities where we live in isolating apartments and only know our neighbours by the music leaking through the walls. Pubs, clubs, general social events where you can find people whose actual interests you share, these all do fine. Even lonely hearts columns in newspape…

>Humanity managed dating fine before these things were created Except back then we had stuff like religion, church, village, common communities etc to bind people. >even managed it in cities where we live in isolating apartments and only know our neighbours by the music leaking through the walls. Statistics show urbanites to be lonelier than ever, so that take disagrees with you. >Pubs, clubs, general social events w…

> Except back then we had stuff like religion, church, village, common communities etc to bind people.

And in cities, more pubs, clubs, general social events where you can find people whose actual interests you share.

Most of us didn't go from Renaissance village churches to dating apps in one lifetime, let alone one day.

> Statistics show urbanites to be lonelier than ever, so that take disagrees with you.

Most surveys only started about 10 years ago, i.e. after social media and dating apps were already around, and the few longer surveys disagree with each other, but even they only go back to the 80s AFAICT; we've been living in big dense isolating cities for a lot longer than that.

> Massively depends on what the social life is like in the city you live in and what age you age.

So the focus should be on that, then. As in, not a dating app.

> While dating apps are more of a sure thing because most people are there to date.

Everyone I've heard talking about dating apps since Match Group cornered the market, says the only "sure thing" about them is how mediocre they are, at least for straight couples. Women get all the low-effort displays, men get no responses and spiral into low-effort displays.

Re: The European Social Stack

#30

Here is an idea for a EU product: Build something that is great, and make it so good, that everyone, including US citizens, will want to use it. Your ethics can still be great, but don't make me feel like your product won't be. If you have to market "Europe" or privacy it probably won't be.

Yeah, basically no successful American social media company advertises itself as being American. And its users do not think of it as "an American company," they just think of it as its own thing.
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