European alternatives to Big Tech – Part 1

European Social Media Alternatives

As the political tensions intensify, people start to realize how much us, Europeans depend on products & services made in the US, which is quite unfavourable. Let’s just take the first thought: They can disable our access to their service anytime they want, just because of oppositions when it comes to leadership.
I try which app the given platform is the most similar to, but (and I think its not necessarily bad) sometimes they take different approaches to social media.

Mastodon: The Twitter/X alternative from way before Bluesky

Way before Bluesky, or even Threads came around and became a viable alternative, Mastodon was already around! It is built on the ActivityPub protocol, somewhat similar to AT Protocol used by Bluesky, but ActivityPub lets you access content posted to another app from yours. The most important part is that (just like Bluesky), mastodon has multiple instances, like mastodon.social, mastodon.tech, and they can communicate with eachother easily (if the instance admins didn’t block the other instance). Not as populated as Bluesky, but you can choose from a lot of European Instances.
To most people, Mastodon is the first introduction to the Fediverse („The fediverse is a word derived from the combination of federation and universe. Its implied meaning is therefore an interconnected universe. This universe is made up of independent servers across the internet, all using a common language to communicate.” – The Fediverse Wiki)

Misskey: A modern Twitter/X alternative

Misskey is a more modernized app with similar microblogging features as Mastodon would have, its the second largest Fediverse app by registered users (after Mastodon, excluding apps that implement ActivityPub, like Threads and FlipBoard).
It comes with great features, such as: Post Quoting, Rich text formatting, Emoji reactions, Reply threading, Chat, Galleries, Groups.
According to their official website, „Misskey isn’t a web service in itself, but rather the foundational software for creating one, much like using WordPress to build a website.” which means you get great autonomy to customize your social platform to your own liking.
Even though the main instance itself is Japanese (as it hails from there), you can look for an European instance yet again.

Pixelfed: The Instagram alternative

Pixelfed is the answer to Instagram, the third biggest platform based on registered users. You can post Photos, Videos, Stories (expiring after 24 hours, just like on Instagram), and Collections. Again, there are tons of instances available, with a lot of European instance available. Of course, anyone across the Fediverse can follow and interact with the posts without needing a Pixelfed account. It also has a great mobile app. According to their official website, it offers „Ad-free and privacy friendly, Open source and decentralized, and Chronological feeds”. It’s an incredible application and you’ll find your way around easily if you come from Instagram.
If you use Instagram the most, choose Pixelfed!

Lemmy: The Reddit alternative

If you’d like to find an alternative news aggregation platform, Lemmy is your best bet. Just like other Fediverse apps, you’ll find your way around it in no time! It resembles the old look of Reddit, but that comes with a much more practical overview.
The Open Source nature of it means that there is no advertising, tracking, or secret algorithms either on this platform. Content is organized into communities just like with Reddit, making subscribing to topics that you are interested in, and ignoring others a breeze. Voting is used to bring the most interesting items to the top.
Interested in Lemmy as a Reddit alternative? Visit their website!

Before we go to other platforms! The Fediverse has so much more services for almost all use cases, such as Castopod for podcasting, or Funkwhale offering a full blown audio platform.

Monnett: The New European Social network taking over social media

Monnett is a new social platform made in Europe with users – rather than revenue – in the focus. As per their website, it is advertised as „Europe’s answer to Big Tech.” Even though it’s a new platform Hailing from Luxembourg, it was even featured in several European news sites.
What Monnett offers:

• See what you want to see: See only content you want. Tailor your feed to your liking, whether you want to see your friends’ or a wide range of content, you can do either.
• True Reach, No Shadowbans: Your followers will actually see what you post, no more big following, but no reach.
• Privacy First, profiled by none: The platform claims it won’t sell your data to advertisers and analytics companies.
• No spying: Your private chats are yours, they don’t sell it

Of course, these are claims of the app, and as much as Monnett seems a great app, testing and more users are needed to refine it well, but if Monnett can deliver on these principles on the long run, they might be a really good Social Network with a different, unique personality.
I am going to try out their application and I plan to summarize my findings in another article.

Conclusion

These are your best bets if you’d like to go for European Social Network Alternatives. Fediverse-based apps has the upper hand for now, due to the longer time they are active, their decentralized nature and the underlying softwares’ Open Source licence. This doesn’t mean Monnett would be any bad – I haven’t tried it yet – its just the time on market. As I also said, Monnett looks to be the most unique alternative.
In the next article of the series, I’m going to provide you with European alternatives to various softwares and platforms.