Sherif Elsayed-Ali

Europe Can Build Its Own Social Media Sebastian Vogelsang thinks policymakers are overlooking the potential for developing platforms on decentralized, open protocols.

European policymakers should designate open-source frameworks like the AT Protocol, the foundation for Bluesky, as critical infrastructure and invest in developing social-media apps on them, argues Sebastian Vogelsang.

The original excuse for my trip to London was to meet my friend @sherifea.bsky.social — we had not seen each other in five years!

« There’s this person I’d like you to meet, what about we record a podcast? », he said.

That’s how I met Vib. A collision I will remember for a long time.

(Links next)

Special Episode - The Next Social Wave System Change · Episode

🎙️ New System Change episode – the podcast version of our webinar: The Next Social Wave. Hear from @marietjeschaake.bsky.social, @emilyliu.me and @robin.berjon.com on the future of open social media, euro tech sovereignty, and the infrastructure we need.

open.spotify.com/episode/3qDc...

I don't know if decoupling as in not suing US platforms is needed. I think choice and real, competitive alternatives are very much needed though.

And for good measure we also talk about how Apple nearly killed webapps because when you have so much power you can do outrageous things.

Here's some of what we covered:
• Why AWS, Azure, GCP dominance is a problem
• The myth of “sovereign cloud”
• The gaps in Europe’s cloud stack
• Why procurement and patient investment are necessary
• The case for a European AWS vs. federated cloud
• The hopeful path forward

Can Europe build it own AWS? John Ozbay (Crypt.ee) had a chat about this. TL;DR European cloud is a good 10-15 years behind and it will be a hard lift, but it can and must be done. #tech #European #Eurostack

Listen here open.spotify.com/episode/7h0c...

& podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/c...

Just dropped a new ep of SYSTEM CHANGE 🎙️

talked w/ John Ozbay (Cryptee) about cloud monopolies, European tech sovereignty, and if a euro-AWS is possible?

🎧 listen: open.spotify.com/episode/7h0c...

#systemchange #cloudsovereignty #interoperability #crypty

Digital ads pays for the internet. But the system is broken, and one company - Google - is at the center of it all.

The digital ad market is monopolised, extractive, and harmful — to users and to the web itself.

I discuss with @robin.berjon.com & @coricrider.com
open.spotify.com/episode/5m7v...

After 5 days, 102 hours of live streaming, 19 guests & over 10,000 viewers, I've finished my portrait of Elon Musk.

And I think I've captured the psychology of the man.

#WeNeedToTalkAboutElon

We talk about the significance of ad tech, the implications of Google's monopoly, the challenges faced by the media industry and the need for structural changes.

If you like it please leave a review, subscribe and share.

Here @coricrider.com talking about how Google became a convicted monopolist

The Dark Side of Adtech System Change · Episode

Hey everyone, so I have a new podcast all about the tech industry, the changes we need to have better tech, big innovation & competitive markets. New episode now out on adtech and Google’s monopoly with the superb @coricrider.com and @robin.berjon.com open.spotify.com/episode/5m7v...

“In Elon’s case… he's more of...a vulture capitalist mind than a technology mind.” - @alexwinter.com

Livestream continues today at 4pm BST with Brian Eno, Jon Ronson and more! Join us at IanPaintsElon.com

Ian's back, tell a friend.

Yesterday, the wonderful @kuminaidoo.bsky.social and I discussed how Apartheid may have been the original algorithm in Musk's life.

I'm going live with @alexwinter.com at 3.15 BST over at IanPaintsElon.com!

Free Our Feeds Let's take social media away from billionaire capture.

Please join me for this collective moment to pause and protest.

I will be asking people to donate to freeourfeeds.com - and for the first 1,000 people to donate, I will be writing their names into the portrait itself as a symbolic means of saying "We can wrest control back from the billionaires."

We Need To Talk About Elon I’m a portrait artist, fascinated by what Elon Musk is doing to our online and offline worlds. Join me as I spend a week, alongside special guests, exploring...

So, Internet, we really do need to talk about Elon. How did we get to a place where a single billionaire with daddy issues could take over and control our global public square?

I picked up my paintbrush as a means to answer that question.

How the web became unreadable, an article obscured by medium's pop up asking you to sign up to read the words that have already loaded.

Lmao

I’m doing something very exciting next week - delving into the psychology of the world’s richest man while talking to some incredible guests.

I’ll be live from 3pm UK time on Monday at IanPaintsElon.com

#WeNeedToTalkAboutElon #FreeOurFeeds

I am thrilled share that I'm joining the @freeourfeeds.com team as interim director. Since leaving @globalvoices.org I've been focused on the incentives that influence how we talk to each other in public spaces and online. Free Our Feeds tackles this head on at the level of infrastructure.

Super excited about this. We’ll a few more updates from @freeourfeeds.com next week.

The US ruled against Google’s monopoly — Europe should do the same As Big Tech tightens its grip on governments and markets, the EU must ensure competition can flourish

We've let Google defund democracy for years — it's time for democracy to hit back — and hard.

The US DoJ and states have scored two major wins, now @dacemoglumit.bsky.social says that "Europe should finish the job."

I couldn't agree more. 🧵
www.ft.com/content/2b78...

Palantir still in the process of becoming a *major* UK government contractor – particularly in the NHS – in a way that they’d get increasingly more difficult to remove or replace with every passing year.

Google loses adtech monopoly case A loss for Google.

BREAKING: Google loses the adtech case, has unlawful monopoly over advertising tech.

HUGE deal - it is the source of their monopoly profits - and now puts pressure on the EU to step up and finish the job.
www.theverge.com/news/650665/...

Things take time. Please bear with us.

Free Our Feeds - Update #1, Feb 2025 We launched Free Our Feeds a month ago. Since then the imperative to build independent, non-profit, and resilient infrastructure for social media has proven to be even more critical and urgent. We’ve ...

Hi Franklin. This is our last update free-our-feeds.ghost.io/update-1-feb.... Appreciate it's a couple of months old. We have another update coming soon, please bear with us.

The question of European tech alternatives is not just about competition & innovation but also a need to tackle a fundamental national security vulnerability.

I recently spoke to @marietjeschaake.bsky.social about European alternatives for our webinar on the emerging #OpenWebEconomy. Excerpt 👇

In March 2024, website owner Morgan McBride was posing for photos in her half-renovated kitchen for a Google ad celebrating the ways the search giant had helped her family’s business grow. But by the time the ad ran about a month later, traffic from Google had fallen more than 70%, McBride said. Charleston Crafted, which features guides on do-it-yourself home improvement projects, had weathered algorithm changes and updates in the past; this time, it didn’t recover. McBride suspected people were getting more of their renovation advice from the artificial intelligence answers at the top of Google search. The now-ubiquitous AI-generated answers — and the way Google has changed its search algorithm to support them — have caused traffic to independent websites to plummet, according to Bloomberg interviews with 25 publishers and people who work with them. That’s disrupting a delicate symbiotic relationship that’s existed for years: if businesses create good content, Google sends them traffic.

NEW: Spoke to 25 small publishers about the kind of impact Google's AI changes to search has had on their businesses.

Things don't look good—not for the publishers, and not for the quality of information out on the open web, which ironically Google itself relies on.

Gift link: bloom.bg/43Jmzk3

Please 🥲

This is a generalisation but I find folks in private finance circles to have a blindside to politically driven change in economic behaviour. Doubling on my caveat that it’s a generalisation and there are exceptions.