To wonder why is there no major British/EU alternative to X/ FB/ Insta/TikTok/Whatsapp/Messenger etc?

[ILikeDinosaurs]

They seem to be all American? And all Trump supporting owners too? Should we not have created our own social media by now?

Even Bluesky and Threads appear to be US owned so how long will they stay as a viable 'alternative'?

I honestly think it's time we had our own versions of these, run in the UK?

GDPR, it killed the small european social media startups.

More here: https://reason.com/2022/05/10/study-europes-aggressive-privacy-regulations-are-killing-app-innovation/

Just to add, the EU Digital Services Act and UK Online Safety Act will see even less technology innovation.

From March OFCOM will demand a huge amount of complaince from even the smallest of UK forums which will see many close down. The fines for not complying properly go up to £18 million. More here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer

DH works for one of these types of tech company. Honestly, there is a reason billion dollar start ups are so much rarer in Europe than the US, and likely always will be.

In the US there is a frankly unhealthy level of expectation and pressure to give everything to the project that he's never seen in a European workplace. But because of that there is a belief (maybe prejudice, but also in part true) that European companies won't be as successful. The knock on is that there is much much less seed investment that is vital for a start up to progress.

The perception is that Americans are crazy with zero worker rights or whatever, but the perception at the tech companies are that the Europeans have it fairly cushy, and are less motivated, less likely to push to be a "winner" as such.

The US has had the Tech advantage over Europe through Companies based in Silicon Valley and in new fields such as AI for at least the last 20 years. The US has a favorable regulatory environment for startups, access to top talent, and a free market system that encourages risk-taking, more access to venture capital.

I think that since the tech innovations and e-commerce took off in the US that Europe has increasingly been left behind.

We could try and launch an X or other social media app, Tiktok was an outsider but if succesful it might be bought up or banned in the US and it doesn't seem likely in such a saturated marketplace who would fund it?

Please! No more!!! Do we really want another from the UK?

Mumsnet is the British alternative

All social media are international because they work best with more people on them. And the USA is the biggest country for that kind of app with favourable laws etc.

TikTok is Chinese by the way

Does it matter if it's banned in the US? We could still use it here.

@ILikeDinosaurs - I think getting the VC funding for a company that cannot operate in the US would be nearly impossible.

Remember it is the same small pool of venture capitalists that pump money into all these companies when they are very small and a high risk investment. They are unlikely to invest in companies that would directly compete with their current investments in that way.

The gatekeeping would mean that a European based SM platform wouldn't even get to IPO.

We had Friends Reunited until Facebook took over.