12.09, 18:30–19:00 (Europe/Berlin), Dachgeschoss
Sprache: Deutsch
This session explores how we can join forces to create a 'European Social Stack' — establishing a diverse and resilient information infrastructure and hosting a healthy public debate.
Social media platforms are having an enormous impact on European societies. Through addictive design and opaque algorithms, public opinion is manipulated, political agendas are pushed, and democracies are under attack. This needs to change.
Europe has a strong ecosystem of social companies and deep expertise in designing and operating social protocols. This session explores how we can join forces to create a 'European Social Stack' — establishing a diverse and resilient information infrastructure and hosting a healthy public debate.
During the last months, Michael Foster (The Newsmast Foundation) and Björn Staschen (Save Social - Networks For Democracy) have negotiated common principles between main actors of the Open Social Web, amongst them The Social Web Foundation, A New Social, Mastodon and Eurosky. In our talk, we will introduce the combined principles and explain why we think that on certain action layers, we will only succeed together.
Björn Staschen is founding director of the European non-profit Save Social - Networks For Democracy, an initiative advocating for open, democratic online spaces in the face of Big Tech dominance. A Save Social petition gathered more than a quarter of a million supporters in 2025. Björn has a background as media scientist and journalist with a long-standing engagement in how digital media shape society and public discourse. He authored the book In der Social Media Falle ("In the social media trap") and has worked in broadcast journalism, including as a TV correspondent in London. In January, he initiated Digital Independence Day - a campaign with more than 60 supporting organisations in Germany and beyond that aims at consumers to change for more sovereign digital services.
Director, The Newsmast Foundation
Jantien Borsboom is the director of PublicSpaces. She has been committed to a fair digital society for a long time. In the past, Jantien worked for various cultural institutions in the Netherlands where she led digital projects, often with a critical approach. For example, she founded the DigiLab at the Bibliotheek Midden-Brabant, a place for getting acquainted with and critical discussions about new media and new technology. She also developed KennisCloud: a hybrid community platform for knowledge sharing and collaboration on societal issues. Jantien has a strong interest in the possibilities of the digital world, specifically in the boundary between digital and physical and how they merge. She likes to connect ideas, people, projects and organizations to shape a better future together.