Buy European

Isn't it interesting that all the arguments against it boil down to two main things:

• Network effect: The established platforms already have so many users that alternative platforms don't stand a chance.

• Lack of technical expertise: The established providers are more advanced technically, there is a lack of investment, no comparable start-up culture in the EU, etc.

I think both are self-fulfilling prophecies:

• The network effect is at least to a certain extend maintained, for example, by the fact that even government institutions do not leave the established platforms (even though Twitter, for example, is no longer an open platform, which makes it completely unsuitable for public announcements).

• There is a lack of investment in technology because the EU does not invest in this sector on a proper scale, but instead makes itself dependent on established providers. In addition, due to the monopoly position of the established providers, which is imo made possible by inadmissible antitrust regulation, there simply can't be competition from small startups.

I therefore believe that it all boils down to one central point: it is supposedly too late to change anything, so we should just accept the situation.

I find this unacceptable, as it is precisely the lack of will to change that has created this situation in the first place.

I mean, Bytedance was only founded in 2012 (TikTok in 2016) and faced exactly the same challenges. However, China still provided massive funding and support for the company, even though Meta, then still Facebook, was founded in 2004 and thus had a head start of almost 10 years. I simply don't believe that it was just the short video format that made TikTok so successful – it also received massive (state) funding to promote the platform. If China had not done that, they would not have one of the most successful social media platforms worldwide by now.

It is also assumed that social media can only function in the form of centralized platforms. I think this is also wrong, because the platform economy is not a law of nature on the internet. Rather, it is only since around 2000 that the internet has developed from a distributed information medium into a largely centralized medium through unregulated, neoliberal capitalism — with the consequences we are all now feeling.

I therefore believe that it would be entirely possible to establish EU platforms or at least to promote the ones already existing more effectively.

I think it would be worth a try, especially since established social media platforms clearly pose a significant threat to democracies, as demonstrated by the global rise of fascism (which, imo, is largely attributable to misinformation on social media).

However, this would require renouncing the principles of overarching capitalism to some extend – and I think that this is the real reason why such approaches are not being pursued: Many EU politicians if not most are convinced neoliberals, which is why they refuse to acknowledge the devastating consequences of this concept and instead prefer to maintain the status quo, thereby making the established, centralized players more and more powerful.