What do you think about “Monnett Social”?
#Monnett oder doch gleich ins #Fediverse ?
Kim Rixecker hat für @t3n das #luxemburgische #SocialMedia @monnett getestet:
> Wer nach einer #europäischen Alternative zu #Instagram sucht, dürfte allerdings derzeit mit @pixelfed besser bedient sein. Das dezentrale Netzwerk basiert auf dem #AcivityPub- Protokoll, das auch die #Twitter-Alternative #Mastodon antreibt. Das hat laut aktuellen Daten immerhin mehr als 900k Nutzer:innen.
🤔 Hat wer aktuelle Erfahrungen?
Dez. '25: https://t3n.de/news/monnett-im-test-europas-instagram-1719374/
Kein Tracking und Kontrolle über den Algorithmus: Ein luxemburgisches Startup will mit Monnett eine europäische Alternative zu Instagram, Tiktok und Co. schaffen. Noch müssen dafür aber ein paar Probleme gelöst werden, wie unser Test zeigt. Dass das Luxemburger Team hinter Monnett einiges anders machen will, als die Konkurrenz aus den USA und China, deutet bereits […]
i was asked about monnett.social and if it has something to do with the #fediverse so i made a dive
* they are based in Luxembourg
* hosting in germany
* their domain is hosted at contaboserver.net
* the FAQ says nothing about the fediverse or open source
* they are an SA, which means they are "public" in some way and work already for shareholders, not the users? (the ? because i am not that deep into stock market lore) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Société_Anonyme_(Luxemburg)
What is Monnett? Everything to know about the European social media app going viral amid alleged censorship on TikTok in the US
“Right now, we have algorithms manipulating what we see. We have bot farms manipulating what we see through bad actors and there's a consortium of oligarchs that seems determined to undo our democracy and get to shape what we think is uh is the opinion of others around us.”
Christos Floros, Monnett
RE: https://mastodon.acm.org/@nobody/115970182720802674
Nyet MONNETT!
Οχη!
Nein!
La-ah!
Is Haram!
https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=wzJNIagTnIE
@nobody I hate myself for saying this, but uhh we need to make governments host national Fediverse instances. That's probably the quickest way to stop this shit flood and cool peoples' heads, so we can focus on making the next thing actually suck a little less
#monnett #bluesky #blacksky #x #twitter #ssb #nostr #eu #digitalsovereignty
TikTok getting MAGA spawns new social media services.
UpScrolled is apparently built from scratch as a centralized platform, not based on ActivityPub or ATProto. They explicitly state that current decentralized protocols don't deliver what they need for a video-forward app, whatever that means. It's run by Palestinian-Australian developer Issam Hijazi with support from the Tech for Palestine incubator, launched in June 2025. Positioned as an Instagram and TikTok alternative without shadowbanning, with chronological feeds.
UpScrolled saw a massive surge after TikTok's US ownership restructure in January 2026, when Oracle and other US investors took controlling stake while ByteDance retained only 19.9%. Some users accused TikTok of censoring posts critical of ICE under the new ownership, which drove people to alternatives.
Monnett is also built from scratch, centralized, with no federation. Run by Monnet Social SA based in Luxembourg, founded in 2024 by a team of European technologists and activists. It's their answer to surveillance capitalism, GDPR-compliant, hosted in Germany, with user-controlled algorithm sliders and no psychological profiling. Basically the European sovereignty play.
W is the newest one, announced at Davos just days ago. Another centralized platform built from scratch, run by Anna Zeiter, former eBay chief privacy officer. It's legally a subsidiary of We Don't Have Time, a Swedish climate activist organization backed by IKEA, Volvo, Unilever, WWF, and Salesforce. The advisory board includes former German Vice Chancellor Philipp Rösler and Club of Rome chair Sandrine Dixson-Declève. Requires identity verification with photo and ID to combat bots. European-hosted data only.
The name of W supposedly stands for "We" with two hidden V's for "Values" and "Verified" - and they cheerfully admit that W coming before X in the alphabet is "a welcome coincidence". Beta in February, public launch late 2026. Zeiter said the platform would already count as a success if "political Brussels" posts on W instead of X.
So all three are new walled gardens with different policies and ownership, but none contribute to the Fediverse, ActivityPub or ATProto.
Makes me want to shout, "Hey, look here, we're here!". But nobody listens.
Sources:
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news-corner/new-european-x-alternative-backed-by-climate-activists
https://www.wionews.com/technology/europeans-plan-to-launch-w-their-own-social-media-platform-to-rival-elon-musk-s-x-1769165110324
https://monnett.social/faq/
https://80.lv/articles/european-politicians-unveil-w-an-upcoming-twitter-x-alternative
https://updates.techforpalestine.org/upscrolled-is-live-the-instagram-alternative-thats-actually-on-your-side/
jfr_1980
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