Elon Musk is considering taking Twitter out of Europe amid EU compliance investigation
As Twitter, renamed X, faces increased scrutiny in the EU and usage falls, Elon Musk has floated drastic action.
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Suppose this happens - his stated dream of global town square dead - except it was already because most people in the world live neither in Europe nor US. China has wechat behind their great firewall, russophone areas have vkontact and telegram and their alternate reality, meanwhile, in much of the rest of the world I fear Meta dominates (even in francophone Europe, and Africa so I'm told).
So - forcing europeans to rethink could give the fediverse an opportunity - but it also hasn't penetrated much globally, the real challenge is to broaden beyond english speakers and north-atlantic. How to do this? One issue is fediverse is best on desktop, while most people in developing countries are using small screens. But it's not just about tech - there are big japanese fedi-communities with little interaction with the west, presumably due to language barrier.
A decentralised system could even thrive in authoritarian states, if there is some way to protect server admins. I recall twitter seemed to play a key role during the Arab spring, what's the replacement ?
To go a bit further, if you like conspiracies, maybe this was the whole point - instructions from the Kremlin, and big cash from Saudis inter alia...- to break the concept of shared global discussion, noting twitter also played a key role in western support for Ukraine too. They are late - that ship sailed, but we don't yet have another, be careful what you wish for.
