The Berlaymont building, headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, in June 2015. Photo: Fred Romero / Wikimedia Commons / CC by
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS, or EDPS in English) announced a few days ago to launch the pilot phase of two social media platforms, EU Voice and EU Video, installed on Mastodon and PeerTube, free and decentralized alternatives to Twitter and YouTube. A launch prepared for a long time and therefore before the announcement of the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk and what we can fear from his vision of the social network (open bar for infox and hate speech in the name of a vision of freedom limitless expression – well, with the exception of the unions and critics of Musk…), but which is all the better today.
“To promote the independence of Europe”
“The European Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies participating in the pilot phase of these platforms will be able to interact with the public by sharing short texts, images and videos on EU Voice; and by sharing, uploading and commenting on videos and podcasts on EU Video,” says the EDPS.
By launching this pilot phase, the EDPS “aims to contribute to the European Union’s data and digital sovereignty strategy in order to foster Europe’s independence in the digital world”.
Wojciech Wiewiórowski, the European Data Protection Supervisor, explains this choice:
“With the pilot launch of EU Voice and EU Video, we aim to deliver alternative social media platforms that put people and their rights to privacy and data protection first. Concretely, this means, for example, that EU Voice and EU Video do not rely on transfers of personal data to countries outside the European Union and the European Economic Area; there are no ads on the platforms; and there is no profiling of people likely to use the platforms. These and other measures give individuals choice and control over how their personal data is used.”
Right to privacy
The EDPS indicates that he has worked closely with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Informatics (DIGIT) throughout the development of EU Voice and EU Video. “In line with the objectives of the Commission’s Open Source Software Strategy 2020-2023, DIGIT’s technical assistance to the EDPS demonstrates the importance of inter-institutional cooperation on open source as an enabler of the right to privacy and of data protection, thus contributing to the technological sovereignty of the EU. The launch of the pilot phase of EU Voice and EU Video will help the EDPS to test the platforms in practice by collecting feedback from participating EUIs. The EDPS hopes that this first step will mark continuity in the use of privacy-respecting social media platforms.”
A pioneer among EU institutions, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has created its Mastodon instance, where it has published 68 messages since April 28.
PeerTube, supported by Framasoft, took off in 2018. At the end of March, the platform had 610,000 videos, hosted by a thousand instances.
Read also
The European Commission launches a new bug squashing program in five free software – 23 January 2022
Open source projects to share for European public services – 11 January 2022
PeerTube: free video hosting is on track – July 23, 2018
Mastodon: the social network that could supplant Twitter – April 5, 2017