Lately I have this quiet feeling that the social web is waking up.
Not in a loud “new app of the week” way, but in small, thoughtful moves that point in a different direction. Less growth at all costs. More user rights, interoperability, and sovereignty.
Over the past weeks I have been bookmarking articles, posts and ideas that all seem connected. A Social Media Bill of Rights and the same person who helped define early social web culture now pushing for something better again. A European initiative around open social infrastructure. WhatsApp being forced open by regulation.
Taken separately, they look like curiosities. Together, they feel like the start of something better.
A Social Media Bill of Rights
On Bluesky I have been following @rabble.nz for a while. He has been around long enough to remember when social media still felt like a public experiment instead of a trapped feed.
Recently he published a “Social Media Bill of Rights”, a kind of manifesto for what users should be able to expect from online platforms. Things like owning your identity, taking your social graph with you, and not being locked into a single company’s feeds and algorithms.
What I like about it is that it does not ask us to trust the next network to simply behave better. It asks for structures that make abuse harder in the first place. Open protocols. Portable identities. Real exit options.
Rabble is also involved in DiVine, a reboot of Vine that aims to restore the old archive and build on more open principles. Different project, same direction. Less central control, more user ownership.
Reading and listening to these ideas, I realised how low my own expectations had become.
Most of the time I just hope platforms do not get worse too quickly.
The Bill of Rights is a good reminder that we can ask for more.
Eurosky and European social sovereignty
In the same spirit, there is Eurosky. It is a European initiative built around Bluesky’s AT Protocol, with the goal of creating European social media infrastructure that is interoperable, open and actually hosted and governed in Europe.
On 19 November they are hosting “Eurosky Live” in Berlin. I am looking forward to following it. It feels like the right kind of question to ask here in Europe.
If we are serious about privacy laws like the GDPR and ambitious rules like the Digital Markets Act, why are most of our social spaces still running on infrastructures we do not control.
Eurosky is still small. It will not replace anything overnight. But I like that it starts from protocols and governance instead of just design and branding.
As a Bluesky user, it also fits how I see identity on the web. I already use my own domain as my handle. The idea that this identity could live on European run infrastructure, while still talking to the wider network, makes a lot of sense.
WhatsApp opens up, but staying out has a cost
On the messaging side, the biggest change is coming from regulation, not idealism.
Because of the EU’s Digital Markets Act, WhatsApp is rolling out third party chat integration in Europe. On paper this means that other apps can plug into WhatsApp so people can talk across services.
This is a big shift if you look at the history of closed messaging platforms. It breaks the idea that one company can own both the app and the network forever.
At the same time, the way it is set up still keeps WhatsApp as the central gatekeeper. Even if you talk from another app, Meta sits in the middle, holds the contact graph and sees the metadata. It becomes the default hub for everyone else.
There is also a reason why privacy first apps are cautious about this kind of interoperability. They do not want to weaken their threat model just to plug into an ecosystem that does not share their priorities.
For me, the story is a bit different. I do not use WhatsApp at all and I do not have the app installed. On paper that sounds like the “simple” privacy choice. In reality it is not simple at all.
Without WhatsApp or Instagram I miss a certain layer of social noise. The birthday photos in a group chat. The casual “look where we are” messages. The tiny updates that, stacked over time, make you feel part of a wider circle.
I notice that I am no longer really aware of what my broader group of friends is up to. I am not in the shared groups. I do not see the quick plans or the inside jokes. That is a real cost. It is not just “FOMO”. It is a quiet drift.
On the other hand, the connections I do keep feel more intentional. More calls. More one to one chats. More small groups in Signal. Quality instead of quantity. Less scrolling through other people’s lives, more actual contact when it happens.
I hope that over time more friends move in that direction too. Join Bluesky. Start small community groups in Signal. Use tools where we are not just raw material for an ad system. It will not be everyone, but it does not need to be. A few strong circles already change how it feels.
Doing the right thing when no one is looking
Sometimes I wonder how many people even read posts like this. A handful, probably.
Most of my friends are not refreshing my blog for the latest thoughts on protocols and messaging apps.
But I still feel that writing and acting this way is the right thing for the long term. Each choice shapes my habits. Which apps live on my phone. Which icons I tap by default. Where my photos and relationships end up.
At my new job at Openprovider, one of the core values is “be a wolf, not a sheep”. It fits this whole story quite well. You do not have to follow every herd into every new fenced platform, even if it feels like everyone is there. You can step aside and pick a different path, even if it is a bit lonelier at first.
If I zoom out, that is what these changes in social media and messaging feel like. Not a big revolution, just lots of small personal decisions. Which networks we leave. Which ones we join. When we say no to “just install this app, it’s easier”, and when we propose a different option.
It is slow and imperfect. I still use plenty of mainstream tools. I am not trying to be a purity example. But on balance I feel I am moving in a direction that matches what I believe: more control, less tracking, fewer Big Tech companies & their feeds deciding what I see.
For now, that is enough.
Keep nudging things one step at a time, stay curious about the alternatives, and try not to drift back into the default.
Small choices, repeated over years, are how the internet changes.