By Egle Markeviciute, EU Tech Loop, Euronews
Published on
Ever since Elon Musk acquired X, formerly Twitter, in 2022, and even before then, some Europeans have been either moving to alternative social media platforms (often returning to existing ones due to their larger user bases) or discussing the need for a European social media platform.
Currently, the most popular social media platforms are based in either the United States or China, and they often face criticism from European policymakers for their data management practices and harmful effects.
Yet, two years in, no privately owned European alternative to existing social media platforms has become as popular as the existing ones (notable mentions include Mastodon), so it seems activists are now asking the European Commission for help.
The latest initiative calls on the Commission to essentially draft yet another legislative act and to help establish a European social media platform that would be “funded by society” – likely meaning that European taxpayers’ money would be involved at least to some extent:
“would form an alternative to the current platforms and work as a service for the society, be funded by the society and be under its oversight” and “could stay impartial and independent from political pressures while also guaranteeing rights of all people without distinction”.
Next steps & limitations: for now, more questions than answers
On March 4th, the European Commission registered a so-called European Citizens’ Initiative for a European social media platform. In a truly European, multi-step fashion, the Commission approved the start of signature collection within the next 6 months, over 12 months, during which more than 1 million signatures from at least 7 EU Member States must be collected.
Practically, it means that activists have up to 1.5 years to collect the signatures, if the Commission decides it wants to act on it, drafting and approving the aforementioned legislative act would likely take at least a year.
Later, some type of procurement process would be required, which would also take quite a bit of time. How much time Europeans would ultimately need to launch such a platform remains unclear. It’s also unclear whether a completely new platform would be established or whether existing ones could be funded.
It’s also unclear whether the EU is ready to open its wallet to fund a user-friendly, globally competitive platform that can sustain itself without frequent financial injections from the EU.
For context, 20 years ago, Facebook had $13 million invested in 2005, two years later, in 2007, Microsoft added the equivalent of about $373 million in today’s terms, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion (about $23.3 billion in 2025 dollars).
The initiators of the idea explain that developing and operating the platform would cost €1 per citizen per year, which amounts to at least €450 million annually.
“The full costs for the development and functioning of the platform divided among all EU using internet connection, would be around EUR 1 yearly (just €0.08 monthly), an amount that should not be materially damaging to anyone and affordable for the Union and its member states”
This story was originally published on EU Tech Loop and has been published on Euronews as part of an agreement.