The European Commission falls for openness theater by working with W Social

Link: W Social, Public Institutions and the Theater of European Digital Sovereignty, by Elena RossiniElena Rossini (rightly) calls shenanigans on what’s been happening in the European social world. I think what happened should be instructive for any pro-social technology movement.Here’s what happened:Earlier this month, the European Commission announced a technology sovereignty plan that included a reliance on open source software as a path to autonomy.Eurosky, a non-profit fork of Bluesky that is both fully open source and stores all its data in the EU, subsequently launched Mu, a social media application running on AT Protocol that is fully EU-based and is arguably more fully-featured than Bluesky itself.But the European Commission, including its President and its Central Bank’s President, went another way by migrating to W Social, a proprietary AT Protocol. Whereas Eurosky is a non-profit that has worked extensively in the open with open social web and democratic communities, W…