Since Elon Musk's takeover of X (formerly Twitter) in October 2022 and his subsequent alignment with US President Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign, a significant number of users have left the platform. This exodus has revived a debate that first gained traction during the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal: the fragile trust between users and the digital platforms they rely on, and the urgent need for viable alternatives.
Across Europe, from Berlin to Luxembourg, a new wave of social media projects is attempting to offer something different. But can they truly compete with the algorithmic powerhouses of Silicon Valley?
Open-Source and Decentralised: A Different Model
Understanding the alternatives requires a clear distinction between social networking sites and social media platforms. Michael Bossetta, associate professor of communication at Lund University, explains: “The difference between a site and a platform is really the role of algorithms. A social networking site, as many were in the early days, is really just facilitating communication between people, so you don’t really need an algorithm there.”
Most mainstream platforms—Instagram, Facebook, TikTok—are built on closed-source software, meaning their inner workings remain secret. In contrast, platforms like Mastodon, the European alternative to X, are open-source. Anyone can download, modify, and run Mastodon on their own server, and its code is publicly available. Mastodon also operates on a decentralised model: instead of a single company controlling all user data and interactions, it runs on a distributed network of independent servers.
Yet open-source platforms face hurdles. “The problem is that the user experience on these open source platforms is just not close to how major platforms like TikTok and Facebook operate,” Bossetta notes. Moderation and regulation are also more complex on decentralised networks, as there is no central authority.
Monnett: A European, Algorithm-Free Alternative
Beyond open-source, other projects aim to challenge the geographical dominance of US-based tech firms. One such venture is Monnett, a Luxembourgish company founded in 2025. Its founder and CEO, Christos Floros, argues that “algorithms dictate our democracies, they dictate our societies, algorithms have become our dictators. And we need to build alternative social platforms that enable people to have agency again.”
Monnett resembles Instagram but deliberately steps back to the social networking era. “The main promise that we make is that there's no algorithm,” Floros says. When you sign up, you simply see your friends. Because of this structural choice, Monnett is not free; it operates on a membership model starting at €2.99 per month. The platform also enforces a strict AI policy: “We don't want AI-generated content, and we also don't want to feed people's content into AI for moderation. So our goal is to have human moderation on the platform.”
Can European Social Media Reshape the Sector?
Monnett is not alone. The Danish NGO Rebuild, with former European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager as a patron, is working to connect entrepreneurs with investors to build a European social media ecosystem. Yet opinions differ on whether geography matters.
Bossetta argues the issue is not where technology is created but the priorities it sets. “We have very talented, well-paid people who are spending their lives trying to get a couple of extra seconds of you on your phone rather than working towards solving some of the biggest challenges we face as a species, things like climate change.”
Sandra Wachter, professor of technology and regulation at the University of Oxford and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, is more optimistic. “If alternatives would pop up, then this could be like a unique point for other competitors to come into the market, which is one of the reasons why we have this Digital Markets Act, which is trying to revive healthy competition.”
The EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), in force since November 2022, is a key regulatory tool. In April 2025, the European Commission used it to impose fines of €500 million on Apple and €200 million on Meta. Wachter believes such regulations, while imperfect, are crucial for shifting the balance of power. “We don't have to fall into the trap of this ‘too big to fail’ narrative and to see them as demigods and tech giants whose power cannot be yielded anymore. I think that's a popular narrative that plays into their hands, but in reality, nobody is really above the law.”
As the housing crisis tests Europe's social stability and EU leaders gather in Cyprus for crisis talks, the search for trustworthy digital spaces remains a pressing concern. Whether European alternatives can gain meaningful traction will depend not only on their technical merits but also on the regulatory environment and the willingness of users to embrace a different kind of online experience.
