Thank you very much. Yeah. Hi, welcome everybody. I hope you had a good lunch break. Welcome back to our afternoon session. Hi, I'm Sandra. I will speak about digital serenity and how that goes advocating for it in Europe. And I'm very thankful for New Public because I'm one of some speakers that could make it to Atmosphere Conf due to the sponsorship by New Public. So thanks very much for having me. I feel honored. Oh sorry. No, there it is. Okay, okay, okay. Sorry, I should use this one. Yeah. So within the next 30 minutes, uh, I will speak a little about what's going on with digital serenity and what concepts in Europe are discussed about this.
And the goal really is to exchange knowledge, knowledge on framings, what uh people use in Canada in Europe, but also uh on a more global perspective, because I think it's very important to exchange knowledge and get to know each other and everything. And I also think that we need to speak more about uh our political demands. It's good and relevant uh to build things and to use existing infrastructure, but I think it's also very important to to be more present about what we demand actually. Um and if we have a little bit of time left, I would like to speak a little bit about cross-protocol cooperation.
Yeah. So that's me, I'm Sandra. Um I live in Vienna and Berlin. My professional background is within uh political science, um, but I also worked in communication and the policy field uh on several projects. And as you can see by my different handles, I'm not only active uh within ATIP Proto, but also I'm coming uh from the activity pub field. Um the pinguine is my handle uh within Mastodon and Activity Pub. And that being said, um besides my professional background, uh I'm engaged since more than 10 years um within the digital rights uh environment. So um I advocate for freedom of information in Austria.
By now we finally, after more than 15 years, have a Freedom of Information Act. Um and it's always about openness and and digital user rights. Uh so this is my perspective. Um but I'm also active with uh Chaos Communication Congress. I don't know who of you heard of of this. Uh yeah, okay. So and they're uh putting up some ethical principles uh they commit themselves to and uh I feel very uh connected to those. Uh it's not only about making public data available but also protecting private data and stating that information should be free. Um but there's also one, the third one, uh which brings us to our topic, which is promote decentralization, right.
So how did I come here? Uh we had in Europe uh exactly one year ago we had something called Ahoy, which was uh our European social web day together with the Indie Sky, and uh that's where I met uh Bulbus and Ted and also Sebastian from Euro Sky, which we had the launch in November, which was uh a very valuable day, and you can re-watch all the videos uh on that presentations as well. And then by now, I'm lucky we're here and I hope there will be many more Atmosphere conference and maybe soon one in Europe.
I think that will be something to look for. So let's get into it. So um I think I don't have to speak that much about it while we're here. Um, but just to maybe bring some attention. Um digital sovereignty is since the last year a topic not only for Europe but also in Canada, right? So and at Eurosky, I met uh Jen from Ganda who spoke also about their uh discussions about digital sovereignty. And we also had like uh several incidents I would call them with regard to international organizations but also threatening uh governments and uh their societies with different outcomes, let's say it that way.
So if we speak about digital sovereignty, the main idea is to develop an own technical stack so you overcome relying on providers that are subject to foreign jurisdiction. The other big the other second idea is that you need to support European corporations in order to get to reach digital sovereignty. But I would like to highlight that with this approach, I think the danger of sovereignty washing, just as we have open washing is growing, therefore. So digital sovereignty and the agenda around this is also intertwined with the offers to build alternatives to centralized big tech social networks, right?
And we need to have a space for our public discourse, we need to be able to exchange freely and have a pluralistic information ecosystem. And oh sorry, I would argue and I will argue that we need to do this through building and using existing public social networks that are based on open protocols. And what we see right now within different developments for European social networks, there are very different approaches, let's say it that way. So we have European locked-in social networks, that was just the start of Redium, a German one. But also, as you probably know, we have other open protocol-based ones that but connect themselves to age verification and ID scans like WeSocial.
And then to put even more one aspect of an idea, and not very valuable one in my eyes, for state-run digital infrastructure and social networks. So the French president Emmanuel Macron gave a speech last autumn where he analyzed the situation, right, I think. But when it comes to saying that anonymous accounts are the problem, I think that is not that right because hate is spread as well with full names in the internet field. So that's why I'm very much pro-right for anonymity, and we have that right, and we should still fight hard for that right, also against our authorities against our national governments.
Yeah. And just a little bit short, I have to speed up a little.
And in the European context, uh it's mainly thought about European digital wallet, ID systems, payment systems. But the focus is state-run, it's state control, so it's state control over their citizens. And I think or I hope what we all here are more in favor of is uh public digital infrastructure. So tech digital infrastructure for the public and also run by the public, but public funded as well, without state control. So this is the concept of public digital infrastructure. Um there's already some conceptual work around it. Um I I put the references here, so I hope if you're interested, um you can check that out even more so.
Um, yeah. So um the first uh association I think one has if speaking about digital sovereignty and Europe is of course you do it by legislation, right? Uh you probably heard about the general data protection regulation, GDPR, and the more younger ones, the digital service uh act and the Digital Markets Act. And the DMA is more there to make sure that our digital markets function well. So the European Union established themselves the goal to have functional markets, right? And they acknowledge that this is not that there yet. So the DMA was put up for that to fight against oligopoles and to to to make sure that European users have choices.
And then the DSA is more consumer rights function, so it would there are the rights included that how you can delete stuff or your general rights against digital corporations. And I would say that was and is a success story. You have on both ends, you have people arguing the enforcement of the DSA is still too weak. And on the other hand, you have I will come back to that voices that say we need to deregulate even more and we need to have the so-called digital omnibus that that want to get rid of a lot of user rights on the premise of then our economic uh standards in Europe have uh we could become more powerful, so to speak.
Just shortly, we have also European threats against our own legislation, I would call them. We have the case of a former lobbyist of Meta, who is now member of our European Parliament, and by the EEP was uh nominated as the appointed rapporteur on execus digital omnibus. So I think what's it's clear what the problem is. And also within uh European jurisdiction um a lot of digital companies uh put their head offices in Ireland because they have the lowest taxes there, but also the the the enforcement of the regulation is somewhat unsatisfactory. Max Schrems uh and his none of your business association is trying to enforce more and more of the DSA also against Irish pressures.
Um a different aspect is also that it's very unequal forces. So this is a study by corporate Europe Observatory and lobby control, and it's stating that just uh in 2025, just for Brussels. So it's not about Berlin lobbyists or or lobbyists situated in Berlin or in Paris, it's just for Brussels. It's 150 million euros uh just this year. So you can see it's of high relevance what digital policies are about the digital policies we we have in Europe. Um yeah, so a little bit deeper uh on on our what's going on in uh Europe. Um last May we had uh an election uh on our European Parliament, and what's relevant there is that we had a change of majorities, and by now we have a conservative right majority uh within the European Parliament.
Um also what is very important for this year is that we have the negotiations on the so-called multi-annual financial framework, more or less the budget of the European Union. And um this is also an indicator why right now it's very important to put up our political demands because what's not now in the budget won't be there for the next six years. So we have like this year is really really important, and that's why I make all the effort to spread the message because we need to be loud. Because money wise we don't even get there anyway.
All we have is the power of us, uh and I would like to spread some ideas of what political demands could be so we all can repeat them and spread them. So um, yeah, I hope I hope you join me uh in this effort. Um and as I said, we need to fight this deregulation and simplification approach. And what's uh what's uh a hopeful aspect of it, the DMA probably will be expanded uh for social networks as well. And uh and the debate uh for for expanding interoperability is also strong, but needs more commitment, I think.
But those are two um positive things. And uh this picture here shows uh our panel discussion which we had at Fostem, a very big uh developer conference in Brussels, and uh Alexandra Gese is member of the European Parliament and she's very active in in uh pointing out our approaches as well that open uh protocol based social networks are relevant for democracy and they need funding as well. So I I want to give a shout out to her and her whole team. So the as I as I told you before, the main tool for how European Union thinks they will achieve digital sovereignty is by the idea of implementing Eurostacks.
There are different approaches on this. But more or less it's the idea of we need to buy European and then we will reach digital sovereignty. So more or less, and that's my critical standpoint of the it says um we just need the same infrastructure, just make it European, and then and then our problems are solved. And I think that's obviously not the case. So I come up with three uh critique points that would broaden the concept of digital sovereignty. Right now it's very narrow, and I think it makes a lot of sense to broaden it up because then digital sovereignty will help us solve anyway their uh societal problems on a long-term basis.
Yeah, so what are my critique points? So the first critique point uh is that uh making it European is not enough. Um, right. Um it needs to be open and public benefit as well. Those those are um yeah, indicators that will help achieve real digital sovereignty, real digital autonomy also for the users against their authorities, so to speak. And also it helps bringing people together, being working collaborative on ideas, it's uh it's in many um ways beneficial, I would argue. And just to uh give a little bit of spotlight on European initiatives, the open firm Europe uh took up on the idea of a European sovereign tech fund, um, which is a very very valuable concept in my eyes.
That's why I want to highlight their work. Nick Gates uh is the one um working on this. Um the second critique point is that buying European, of course, will be done with public money, right? And um, so if the idea is that you uh spend a high amount of public money buying European private uh products, uh I would argue from from uh a user rights-based approach that of course some amount of this public money then needs to be spent in order to buy and establish public digital infrastructure. Um it's so obvious for me, it's it's always very hard for me to state that because in my eyes.
Yeah, and uh if you don't know it by now, the Free Software Foundation Europe uh long has this long uh campaign for public money public code, uh which we refer to as well. And uh Matthias Kirchner is the president of this organization, and as this topic is debated within the German parliament quite well, um, we found out that uh just on the federal level from the German state, they spent around uh 750 Canadian dollars per year just for Microsoft uh licenses. Um yeah. Okay, um so public procurement is like a very relevant uh level uh leveler.
Um and another uh very recommended organization, the public future, uh the open future institute uh by uh and Aditya and Susanna Boswell just published this uh some days ago. But I recommend reading all of their policy briefs, it's very valuable knowledge. Um they pointed out like how that we need to focus more on public procurement. Uh and exactly that's also what happening more and more governments or or state entities decide to procure open source-based uh software. But and and just to name some, so the Austrian minute one Austrian ministry started to using Nextcloud within the hybrid version, the Austrian army uses open desk, uh, open desk as uh a tool that was as written there as well, uh developed by um uh the German uh Zendes.
The German army uses Matrix and so the list goes on. But still we have other approaches like the state of Bavaria. Buying Microsoft products again for one, how you say that, billion euros? A lot of money without like a legal legal legal right to do so, actually. So and this is especially relevant. Like we already have several building blocks of public digital infrastructure, right? They're all open open, open source-based, and they are there and they could be bied, so to say, if not at least funded. And that's what we should do, I think. And of course, interoperable social networks are a relevant part of such a stack.
My third critique point would be exactly that that if we want to achieve real digital sovereignty, social networks need to be understood as a relevant part of that, and social s like we can't achieve digital sovereignty without social sovereignty. And Hanna Orbury, who is the community director of Mastodon, published a blog post on that. If you want to read uh further. So all of this critique I I addressed also to politicians themselves. In autumn, there was the summit on European digital sovereignty, and when it was announced and the program was announced, it was obvious that the main topics circle around AI and cloud infrastructure and stuff, and and we sat together and uh tried to find a way to bring our demands to the table.
So what we did is I found co-founded the alliance called Open Networks and Democratic Public Spheres. By now we are supported with uh more than 30 other organizations. We come up with four demands that interact with which each other um yeah, and again to establish long-term solutions. Um that's the goal. Um, yeah. And only I I will present only one demand of those that we had, and I think that's a very impactful one. U Ralf Stockmann, uh, who is uh the head of the digital affairs within Berlin Library came up with the so-called plus one principle.
And this plus one principle is addressed at public institutions because again they're funded with public money, so they should feel a higher uh they should feel responsible to make wise decisions, and if they're doing uh social media communications, they should feel obliged to publish their communications in at least one open protocol, uh open protocol-based social network, right? Um and as this was presented at our Berlin Feddy Day, uh, it has the Fedivare logo, I hope you don't mind. Um but the argument is um yeah, if if they say we need to stay on those big tech platforms, we can't leave because there are the people, whoever that then still is, um, that makes a bridge to say, okay, if you think you have to stay there, at least do one other uh social network.
Um, yeah. And I want to uh uh highlight also uh to Lauren's blog about connected places, he writes about uh both protocols and is very critical, which is good. Um, and he says lawmakers should not only speak about digital sovereignty, but they should use uh the networks that are already there, otherwise uh it's just birds, right? And I think he's right on that one. Um it's not only about social networks. I think again the interrelatedness is also uh uh should be important for media systems, and maybe you have heard of this public spaces incubator, which is an initiative not only for European public broadcasters but also uh uh non-European ones.
And um, besides their prototypes, um they want to implement uh both protocols within their uh network services. Um, and I think this is something to look out for. Okay, five more minutes. Another initiative I want to highlight is Safe Social. They came up with 10 demands on their own. And what what their latest initiative is the so-called Digital Independence Day. So the first Sunday every month they call for Digital Independence Day. And the idea is at least on this one Sunday, you can try to switch over from one big tech services to one non-big tech. And so they come up at DDOT Day with several cookbook recipes which are differentiated between is it easy or is it hard?
How hard is it? And they tell you step by step what you need to think about and how you can do that. And I think that's only not from an individual users' perspective, but also again for public institutions. It's like very helpful to have examples of initiatives that have done that. So for example, the University of Innsbruck is hosting their own Mastodone server, right? Their own instance for all for all employees, and they will extend that to students as well and making services as pixel fed, for example, usable for those. So please check out D Day.
I checked yesterday, and there will be one event on the 5th of April. The 5th of April will be the next one in Colorado, I think. But maybe in Canada we soon have events as well. That would be nice, right? So to sum up, what are some demands that I think are valuable for now even not all only Europe. I think we need to push further, that interoperability is expanded and portability will be established. So not only data portability, but of course atproto portability of identities and feeds, right? It's to make real choices available. And we need to call for funding for public digital infrastructure and implement the one plus one principle at least for public institutions.
So three more minutes left. That's good.
As you have heard, uh my background is within activity pub, uh so I'm uh active there since some years. And um not only because of my nature of I want to get to know more people and their ideas, and I think that's the strength for us to get to know each other and learn from us. I think we have within the the open protocols, I think we have some fields that I think would make perfect examples where we can work together or at least talk to each other despite differences. Um I think the field of moderation is uh such a topic as well as trust and safety, and the one I'm here for, policy and advocacy.
So if you're working in that field around policy and advocacy, please let us talk later. Um yeah, I just want to make the point that we need more cooperation and and I hope such events at Atmosphere make that possible for us. Um yeah. One example, um I was invited uh to join Jess Michael from IFTUS and Aaron from Bluesky to speak about trust and safety, exactly in Canadian embassy in Berlin. Um so yeah, hopefully we have uh more more meetings like this and yeah, work together. Um I would like to call uh to work together, get to know each other, learn from each other in order so we can achieve a better digital future for all of us, no matter if we are in Europe or uh elsewhere.
Uh and um yeah, I I hope we can get to know each other better, repeat our messages together, build together in general. Um and yeah, please let's do that. So if you want to stay in contact or reach out, uh those here you can find me, but also I will be here till Monday as well. Thanks so much.
Thank you very much Sandra.