The European Union wants to have its own social networks and platforms, its own Facebook, Twitter, TikTok or YouTube, with which to make a big difference with the current ones based on respect for privacy and data protection.
UE Voice is based on Mastodon and UE Video on Peertube, decentralized networks that would prevent a single company from dominating an entire platform or social network
It is an impulse in parallel to the principles of the new Digital Services Law which has led the European Commission to reinforce control over these aspects to which the most popular platforms and social networks are not subject due to their status as non-companies. community. Given, in addition to how reluctant they are to adjust to the regulatory requirements of the EU and given the possibility that their services could even be interrupted, from within the community institutions it has been decided to promote the creation of, for now, two own platforms that they would try to supply these services and, this time, with total respect for privacy and data protection.
Is about UE Voice and UE Video, counterparts very much inspired respectively by Twitter and YouTube. The basis that has been taken for the development of UE Voice is Mastodon, a social network that has decentralized and open source servers. It was founded in 2016 and has suffered two major boosts in terms of attracting a large number of new users related to controversial episodes in which some have seen attempts to censor communication through Twitter.
One of them was the suspension of the account of former US President Donald Trump after the controversial events of the inauguration in Washington of current President Joe Biden. The other, more recently, has been the announcement made by Elon Musk in which he declared his intention to acquire Twitter. The EU would bet on using Mastodon as a technological base for that UE Voice is a social network with independent servers that do not collect data or user information.
This decentralization, together with the non-collection of data, would be the main factors for the EU to support this social network: freedom of expression, absence of a private company that dominates the platform and maximum respect for European regulations on privacy and data protection.
In the case of UE Video, Peertube would be used as a base, an open source software and also decentralized, which prevents a single company from controlling the platform. The plans of the European Commission include that UE Video can host both podcasts and videos and similar materials.
In addition to privacy and data protection, these initiatives are intended to combat disinformation, fake newsthe deep fakes and the false accounts, in addition to putting an end to targeted advertising, especially that which is aimed at minors. It is about ending the profile-based recommendations made from the information gathered about users. An issue in which there are currently disputes between the EU and platforms like TikTok.
