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European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

politico.eu

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Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#41

Post by com_kieffer »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #15

European civil servants are also usually banned from using AI — perhaps with the exception of Microsoft copilot. They live in a bubble where they just don’t know. This goes for most academics as well.

The European Commission actually has an internal AI chat platform with a selection of different models, and recommendations on which to use based on the classification level of the information that will be shared with the AI model.

Some are hosted internally (LLAMA models), other are sourced from commercial providers (Mistral, OpenAI).

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#42

Post by casey2 »

Europe has been irrelevant since 2008. Basically 0 growth and pensions larger than paychecks. Even if young Europeans had the skills or the desire, which they don't, they wouldn't have the capital.

The US is preparing to siphon most of the EUs wealth with this AI bubble. This title is just one in a long line of smoke and mirrors meant to distract Europeans from the fact that trillions are being spent to build datacenters in the US.

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#43

Post by jandrewrogers »

throwa356262 wrote: post #2

Governments want to move away from “platforms over which we have no control,” says Dutch minister. Sure, that is fair enough. But why is EU not setting up their own servers for whisper or activity pub or whatever OSS protocols and just make that their only official and approved communication channel?

The problem isn't setting up the servers, they already exist for the most part. It is getting anyone to use them.

I've seen this play out a few times in Europe. People are extremely resistant to giving up WhatsApp. These rules are so widely flouted that no one takes them seriously, including the people making the rules. It is a bit of theater, meanwhile everyone continues to use WhatsApp. There is no will to actually make this change.

If your boss keeps sending you messages over WhatsApp, why would you do any different?

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#44

Post by wolvoleo »

Arathorn wrote: post #25
galbar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is my understanding that a lot of EU governments are setting up their own matrix servers.

This is true. We just published a map of it: https://element.io/en/matrix-in-europe

Question, with so many major orgs using it, are there no plans for manual status? The one thing I miss vis-a-vis teams is the ability to manually set myself away, appear offline, busy etc.

Matrix shows me as active (green dot) when I have the client open but there's no way to override that. At least none that I found. I'm a bit surprised all these big governmental clients didn't ask for such a feature :)

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#45

Post by mjfisher »

casey2 wrote: post #42

Europe has been irrelevant since 2008. Basically 0 growth and pensions larger than paychecks. Even if young Europeans had the skills or the desire, which they don't, they wouldn't have the capital. The US is preparing to siphon most of the EUs wealth with this AI bubble. This title is just one in a long line of smoke and mirrors meant to distract Europeans from the fact that trillions are being spent to build datacen…

I hope most people have a broader definition of "relevance".

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#46

Post by wolvoleo »

polski-g wrote: post #37
throwa356262 wrote: post #2

Governments want to move away from “platforms over which we have no control,” says Dutch minister. Sure, that is fair enough. But why is EU not setting up their own servers for whisper or activity pub or whatever OSS protocols and just make that their only official and approved communication channel?

They're setting up matrix servers. Nato uses matrix. Too bad the UX is dogshit and the end users lose their keys every 90 days. Even though they're explicitly warned, loudly and clearly, to not lose the keys. Matrix software stack isn't idiot proof; Signal is.

The key is only necessary as a backup these days. You can share the key from one client to another which works well. As long as the user has a laptop and phone it should be ok unless they lose both.

But yeah it would be nice if the key could be escrowed somewhere for big organisations.

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#47

Post by lbreakjai »

throwa356262 wrote: post #2

Governments want to move away from “platforms over which we have no control,” says Dutch minister. Sure, that is fair enough. But why is EU not setting up their own servers for whisper or activity pub or whatever OSS protocols and just make that their only official and approved communication channel?

Aren't they about to handle DigiD to the U.S? You know, the tool we use for absolutely any sort of identification when interacting with the government?

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#48

Post by wolvoleo »

casey2 wrote: post #42

Europe has been irrelevant since 2008. Basically 0 growth and pensions larger than paychecks. Even if young Europeans had the skills or the desire, which they don't, they wouldn't have the capital. The US is preparing to siphon most of the EUs wealth with this AI bubble. This title is just one in a long line of smoke and mirrors meant to distract Europeans from the fact that trillions are being spent to build datacen…

Trillions of made-up money.

And really I'm super glad I don't live in the US with the nightmare regime there. Money isn't everything. Things cost a lot less here too. I don't need to have two jobs to pay for rent and healthcare, when I get fired I'm getting welfare. I don't get shot by random civilians carrying guns or even the ICE Gestapo.

Those things really matter too.

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#49

Post by wolvoleo »

spwa4 wrote: post #12
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> organizations make their own messenger, and the fact that these organizations then have control over their own messenger ... means their employees won't use it Legally mandate its use for official communications.

So the managers also demand their employees don't use it you mean? Because then it can be used against them in court? (cfr. email "retention policies" legal departments demand these days?)

In most European countries we don't have this extensive discovery thing that the US has. It's not really a problem.

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#50

Post by wolvoleo »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #43
throwa356262 wrote: post #2

Governments want to move away from “platforms over which we have no control,” says Dutch minister. Sure, that is fair enough. But why is EU not setting up their own servers for whisper or activity pub or whatever OSS protocols and just make that their only official and approved communication channel?

The problem isn't setting up the servers, they already exist for the most part. It is getting anyone to use them. I've seen this play out a few times in Europe. People are extremely resistant to giving up WhatsApp. These rules are so widely flouted that no one takes them seriously, including the people making the rules. It is a bit of theater, meanwhile everyone continues to use WhatsApp. There is no will to actually…

At my workplace we only use WhatsApp for personal comms. Like chatting about which restaurant we go for lunch, who's at the office tomorrow, when is everyone's birthday, what did we do this weekend, that kinda stuff.

For work related stuff we use teams and that it's kinda needed too because we can only link to internal resources there, like SharePoint.

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