Fame vs Privacy: alternative social media platforms vs future challenges for policymakers

Francesco Albinati is Digital Media Coordinator at the EDPS. He holds a master degree in Political Science. As a co-project manager of EU Voice and EU Video, he oversees the project and fosters inter-institutional cooperation. 

In this episode, Francesco stresses that: “Our goal with EU Voice and EU Video is to provide a service that it is privacy oriented but that also protects democratic processes and enables citizens to freely express themselves. [...] We believe that the large adoption of these platforms by public bodies will incentivise their adoption by citizens and, in this sense, the EU is proving that it has a strong role to play.”

Robert Riemann is a Technology and Privacy Officer at the EDPS. Robert holds a degree in Physics from the University of Berlin and in 2017.He also received a PhD in computer science in Lyon. He specialises in web technologies, synthetic data and follows up on recent technological developments like open-source software.

In this episode, Robert introduces us to the main patterns of federated social media platforms and explains the differences between centralised and decentralised platforms.

In this episode, he explains the following: “In the Fediverse, communities can create their own social platform within their country and their rules considering cultural background. [...] The way disinformation will work in the Fediverse will be very different since there are no sponsored messages or algorithms that would give some messages a push or propelled by fake likes. The algorithms at the moment are transparent [...] and most of the Fediverse platforms rely on open source software.”

Konstantina Vemou joined the EDPS as an experienced Technology and Security Officer with experience in the public sector, in personal data protection. She is interested in Privacy-by-Design, Privacy Impact Assessments, and the protection of personal information in social networking services.

In this podcast episode, Konstantina stresses that “From the technological point of view, we see a lot of implications for data protection and privacy in general  [...]. Given the fact that VR equipment would capture small reactions from your eyes or parts of the body, there are risks as to the use of such information and potential inferences that come from it for targeted marketing. [...] However there are specific uses of VR that could have a positive impact on data protection like providing an interesting medium for training and raising awareness.”