Sebastian Fougelsang: Developer of the Flashes app, designed for sharing photos and videos based on the AT protocol.
Berlin — When I launched my first website in 1998, the Internet felt vast and expansive. You could publish something in Berlin, and someone in Boston or Belgrade could stumble upon it within seconds. However, today, with a few tech monopolies capturing attention and stifling creativity, this spirit of connection has been lost.
Leveraging their powerful platforms, giant social media companies dominate a significant portion of the core digital infrastructure. Companies like Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) and X, among others, operate as walled gardens, using algorithms to deter users from leaving by deprioritizing posts that contain outbound links. As a result, people often find themselves stuck on a single platform, mindlessly scrolling—a far cry from the early vision of the internet as a web of interconnected sites and communities.
Europe must recognize the reality: a systematic dependence that threatens the sovereignty of the digital continent. Just as the European Union aims to reduce its reliance on external providers for semiconductors, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, it must do the same with social media. Dominant platforms extract value from European users by capturing their attention and selling their data while paying minimal taxes and circumventing regulations. Their proprietary infrastructure increasingly shapes our lives, from the news we see to the way we communicate online.
While European policymakers have long expressed concerns over the concentration of power among major social media firms and their massive influence on society and politics, the presidential elections in the United States last year should serve as a wake-up call across the continent. Tech billionaire Elon Musk weaponized the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, which he acquired in 2022, to help Donald Trump win the election by promoting pro-Trump content. Since then, he has threatened interference in European elections.
One solution lies in investing in EU-based alternatives. Time and again, policymakers use the same excuse: there are no viable options. Similarly, the new international digital strategy from the European Union questions the bloc’s ability to wean itself off major tech companies and instead calls for cooperation with the United States to address its dependency.
Yet this stance ignores the emergence of social media sites in recent years built on decentralized protocols. These new platforms differ fundamentally, both in principle and design, from American giants like Instagram and X. They return control to users, reduce gatekeeping, and encourage creativity.
Perhaps the best example of this is the AT protocol, which serves as the foundation for the rapidly growing Bluesky platform, now home to nearly 36 million users. The AT protocol is designed to support interoperability, allowing users to own their data and control the algorithms that govern their feeds. Anyone can develop applications on a decentralized basis—which means no single company can assert dominance—and users can easily switch between platforms, bringing their followers and content with them. This means they will never have to start from scratch.
Fostering plurality in this way helps dismantle the monopolistic power of tech giants over social media, which has stifled European creativity for decades. European-based companies have already used the AT protocol to create platforms like SkyFeed and Graysky.
Others are also working to protect and build this social ecosystem away from the grip of major tech firms. The Free Our Feeds campaign aims to ensure that the management of infrastructure serves the public good. The Eurosky campaign, a voluntary effort by a group of European tech experts, including myself, seeks to create tools (such as EU-compliant integrated content moderation) and infrastructure on the AT protocol that assists European developers in building and scaling platforms capable of competing with social media giants.
Open protocols are not a utopian project. They are poised to transform the current state of social media and create a more democratic digital world. This is why European policymakers should classify these social networking frameworks as critical infrastructure and invest in their development.
Social media should be at the heart of Europe’s digital sovereignty agenda. Building platforms in Europe that rely on open-source frameworks will help protect democratic discourse from foreign manipulation, create economic value for the continent, and ensure that European social media users control the algorithms that shape what they see. Countries outside the European Union can also benefit from these efforts to challenge the dominance of major tech companies.
The world of the Internet has veered off course, with the American tech sector largely controlling how it is developed and used. Europe has the capacity to help restore the Internet to its roots by fostering an ecosystem governing social media that is based on plurality rather than polarization, but it requires political leaders willing to fight for a truly new digital social infrastructure.
