The European Union solicited feedback from stakeholders on Open Source software’s position with respect to digital sovereignty, security, and competitiveness. The Social Web Foundation worked with allied organizations like Newsmast Foundation, SABOA, FediVariety and Save Social to encourage the support and adoption of Open Source Fediverse technologies in Europe. The text of our letter follows.

We are a coalition of civil society organisations operating in Europe and globally. We are encouraging the adoption of Open Source social networking platforms that connect to the Fediverse.

Social networking is an especially vulnerable sector for digital sovereignty, security, and competitiveness. Worldwide, an increasing percentage of citizens get their news primarily or solely from social media. Centralised social platforms have been documented vectors for interference in the democratic process in Europe and elsewhere. Engagement-oriented algorithmic feeds have amplified inauthentic behaviour. From Brazil to Canada to Brussels, centralised social platforms have used their power in the market to push back on enforcement of local laws like the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act.

We believe the Fediverse provides a strong check on these vulnerabilities. The Fediverse is a network of interoperable social media platforms connected with the open standard protocol ActivityPub. Services on the Fediverse include Mastodon, Flipboard, WordPress, Peertube, Write As, Pixelfed, Meta Threads, Ghost.org, Mobilizon, WordPress, and others.

The Fediverse offers users a choice of social media platforms without losing access to their friends, families, publishers, local communities or important thinkers. Because it’s possible to connect across platforms, different users can make different choices, and maintain their social ties, read others’ posts, and comment, like and share. Every day, millions of people share their life and career updates, engage in conversations, post silly memes, or stay in touch with loved ones on the Fediverse.

Because ActivityPub is an open standard protocol, published at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 2018, it is available to any company or developer to implement, without patent encumbrance or fees.

Fediverse software that is available under an Open Source license lets individuals, families, communities, businesses, universities, cities and other stakeholders in society establish social network servers of their own, which interact on an even playing field with commercial services. There are dozens of Open Source Fediverse social networking programs, such as made-in-Europe options like Mastodon, Peertube and Mobilizon, with thousands of installed servers across the continent and around the world.

Connecting the Fediverse from the bottom up, person by person and community by community, is a resilient structure and one of the Fediverse’s core strengths. Heterogeneous Open Source software lets software decisions occur much closer to the user than with a single commercial platform. The choices that the Fediverse provides allow a competitive market in social platforms resistant to vendor lock-in. Local and national governments, the EU, universities, public broadcasters and media companies in Europe have adopted Fediverse technologies.

The Fediverse is a solid foundation for European digital sovereignty in the social networking space. Europeans can use social platforms hosted and managed close to home, under the jurisdiction of their elected officials. And the Fediverse allows them to stay connected to people in Latin America, the US and Canada, Asia, Africa, and Oceania – but rooted in Europe, on European terms.

Our organisations strongly encourages the EU to consider the promise of the Fediverse for connecting European society with autonomy and independence, and the importance of Open Source software to the spread and adoption of the Fediverse. The EU can greatly aid digital sovereignty efforts by supporting the development and adoption of Open Source Fediverse technologies.