The world needs social sovereignty
"By making the news and truth contingent on advertising budgets we’ve created an environment where any narrative can win, as long as the storyteller is willing to pay. If we allow these conditions to continue, we will leave behind the voices that truly matter."
Over the last week, the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s X €120 million for providing a blue check “verification system” that doesn’t meaningfully verify users. In response to this regulatory action, X blocked the European Commission from posting ads on its platform. “Time to abolish the EU,” Musk posted.
These are the kinds of shenanigans that could only happen and would only be meaningful on a monolithic closed platform, which Mastodon’s Hannah Aubry points out:
“We’re grateful to Elon Musk for proving once again why the world needs to log off corporate-owned, centrally-controlled social media platforms and log on to a better way of being online.
[…] In any free society, it is the right of every citizen to access and comment on the news, decisions, and reasonings of their government. We believe it is a government’s responsibility to ensure this right for its constituents. Public institutions should communicate with their citizens on open platforms, not ones that require creating an account and sending personal data to a self-serving tech company.”
When X reduces the reach of a government entity as an act of retaliation for a regulatory action, it proves how unsuitable closed systems are for any kind of democratic communications. In contrast, open systems are democracy-preserving and resilient to the bad actions of a corporation (or an oligarch): the web itself can’t retaliate against someone (nor does it need to be fined), because it doesn’t have a single owner.
Open social web systems like Mastodon share that important property, as well as making it easier to subscribe via email, RSS, etc, so you don’t need to be a member. They don’t judge their success on whether people are locked in and spending their time, money, and attention on their platforms. That’s where the European Commission, and other government entities, should be reaching their constituents.
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