Radio France and a Digital Sovereignty Discussion

Recently I have been using the Radio France app for iPhone and came across a set of three podcasts looking at Russia and its move towards digital sovereignty. This is a set of three podcasts looking at how Russia has tried to seperate itself from the internet, but especially from US influence.

Russia is not alone in trying to do this. Europe is making an effort, as is Asia, and Asia, and Australia. The problem, at this moment in time, is that if the US government catches a cold, to use a metaphor from last millenium, the world falls sick.

The Broligarchy and Divergent Values

At the moment the Broligarhy, as some have termed it, are trying to have complete freedom in how they run Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies. Companies like Amazon have global reach. In essence the US has a dominant position on the Internet.

When I saw posts that I did not agree with, on Facebook, I reported them because in my view they promoted hate, and violence. Eventually, after being told “This post does not violate our values” I became frustrated. This was made worse when FB decided to ghost my account. When FB did this, I deactivated my account.

What Facebook has to realise, and as I have said, since 2007, if we speak about ROI, for businesses, PR firms, and personalities then we need to remember to preserve ROI for normal users, like myself. If I get no pleasure, and no sense of community, from using FaceBook or Twitter, I can just leave. We can all just leave. I did leave both of these antisocial networks. My ROI went to zero.

I slowed down, with my use of Threads because it was having a toxic effect on my personality too. In my eyes we have transitioned into the age of antisocial media. That’s why the Fediverse is more interesting. We have a smaller network of networks where participation makes us visible, rather than algorithms. Pleasant personalities rise up, and toxic ones fade out of sight.

Single Points of Failure

When AWS goes down, when cloudflare goes down, when Facebook goes down, a big portion of the web goes down at the same time. In essence the World wide Web has become fragile because most of it is based in the US and because two or three companies have a leading market share. If one has a failure, a third to half of the internet goes down.

With European, and Russian digital sovereignty to use the cliché term, but digital independence, to use a term that is less loaded, we regain some control over how internet companies behave, and how our own data is used. Thanks to GDPR and more, our data is safer from US giants.

Digital Sovereignty Nuances

Of course, Europe wants to control what information stays within Europe, and wants to protect our rights. In the case of the hermetic Russian version, it is about controlling the flow of all information. In the podcast, in the third episode the topic of indoctrination is brought up, in regards to Russian occupied Ukraine, and how Russia is convincing people to think one thing, rather than another.

And Finally

While the US and Europe had the same values, it made sense for Europeans to use US websites and social media, but now that values have diverged it makes sense for Europeans to use European alternatives, and to use European based fediverse instances rather than US based alternatives. Recently Eh has been getting attention. It is the Canadian Social Network alternative.

Until recently digital sovereignty was idealism. Recently it has become necessity.