If you’re among the many throng of Twitter-die hards which can be greater than a bit bummed a couple of sure South African billionaire’s plans to purchase out the social community, you may need flocked to its open-source different, Mastodon. As it seems, the European Union is true there with you; the European Data Protection Supervisor (or EDPS) introduced this week that it could publicly pilot its personal Mastodon server, dubbed EU Voice, as a approach for European establishments and companies to speak to common of us.

And if Twitter’s not your factor (and truthfully, who could blame you), the EDPS mentioned that it’s additionally testing a YouTube different, EU Video, which is based mostly on the open-source platform, PeerTube.

Together, these platforms are a part of what’s colloquially referred to as the “fediverse”; a set of free-to-use, open supply options to the fashionable social platforms we all know and detest. These embrace providers like Pixelfed (mainly the fediverse-Instagram), and Funkwhale (the fediverse-Spotify), on prime of the platforms the EU has already jumped on.

Whether the EDPS will make the plunge into these platforms is but to be seen, nevertheless it wouldn’t essentially be a shock. European officers have been brawling with U.S. tech corporations for roughly the past decade, and native lawmakers proceed to pile scrutiny’s on these firm’s shoddy privacy practices and content moderation snafus.

“With the pilot launch of EU Voice and EU Video, we aim to offer alternative social media platforms that prioritize individuals and their rights to privacy and data protection,” Wojciech Wiewiórowski, European Data Protection Supervisor famous in a press release.

“There are no advertisements on the platforms; and there is no profiling of individuals that may use the platforms. These measures, amongst others, give individuals the choice on and control over how their personal data is used.”

It all sounds nice in concept—in spite of everything, Twitter is an ad-ridden hellscape, and YouTube dad or mum firm Google is constantly a privateness nightmare. But to ensure that one thing like EU Voice or EU Video to get off the bottom, the Commission might want to lure a very good chunk of its more than one million followers over to the opposite facet. And whereas Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko did report an inflow of tens of thousands of latest customers in wake of the Elon Musk information, that also leaves fairly a number of caught within the Twitter vortex.