“…the EDPS regards the pilot project as a great success. It has proven that public institutions such as EU institutions can offer social media platforms that respect the fundamental rights of the individual. They are thus an alternative to the usual platforms that belong to a handful of large players … Or not - because none of the more than 40 bodies, institutions and agencies throughout the EU can be found that want to operate and moderate two servers permanently.”

#eu #fediverse

Wish I could say I was surprised by this but, in my experience, at least, it is par for the course.

We do not have predictable funding for technology for the common good in the EU. We have piecemeal funding for features, etc. What I recently referred to as “begging for scraps” when telling someone why I wasn’t going to apply for their latest round of funding (we’ve applied for and never received any EU funding for our work on the Small Web).

1/3

Six years ago we ran a pilot project with the City of Ghent to explore what it would be like for a municipality to provide every citizen with their own place on the web at a domain they (the citizen) owned and controlled.

We prototyped. Everyone loved it. And then? Our budget was cancelled when a conservative local government got elected.

We need long-term funding that’s not privy to the whims of the shifting political winds.

2/3

So what do we need, ideally? The equivalent of VC but for tech for the common good.

Pick ten organisations working the common good and give them €5M each. Let them experiment. Let them pivot. Let them cooperate. The only thing you don’t let them do is exit. You can’t sell. Build something for the commons that will live on for the next ten, twenty, fifty years… if not more.

I said as much 5 years ago at the European Parliament:

https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/

3/3

#funding #EU #SmallTech