So what now?

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Yeah the biggest threat are the same corrupt right wing forces in Europe (which are often funded by the US or other adversaries). They will try to chip away Europe's unity and divide, which leaves everyone weaker in terms of bargaining power or otherwise. Britain already fell into this and they are almost certainly not going to be better off by themselves.

Europe should be concentrating on unity, but also economic and military strength.

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Why would Matrix be less developed than WhatsApp?

I can have Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram in Matrix, and it works on every platform I want.

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I'm always a fan of starting with local things to make the world a better place. Idk, be nice to your neighbours, have some community. Or gather your friends and family. Take care of each other. You could also volunteer some work for society. Of course also spread the word, keep up the fight for democracy, freedom... I also think Europe is very important. And I'm sad it's not as strong and loud as we'd need it to be. But I'm just not sure if this requires a top-down approach, or if it's just fine to do it the other way around and start with small and local things. Because that's certainly easier than to change Elon Musk's mind or something like that.

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home grown right-wing populists

corrupted traitors, which are mostly foreign subsidised and supported. Let's not forget that important bit.
If they weren't they probably wouldn't never gotten that far

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one of the reasons why Volt is considered weak is because it's small and young, that also means that it can be fixed if you people join their local chapters and try to be active and help however they can, just like any organization.

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yeah when it works it's cool, but it doesn't always work.

Plus the user experience for anyone who not only isn't tech literate but neither fairly tech savvy can be a pain. Navigating the way into joining rooms, DMing people, etc is pretty confusing (even for someone like me, who can manually install Arch for example^[obligatory I use arch btw]) and that's without mentioning all the E2EE problems with federated instances, etc, which not only can mean sometimes users can't see each others' messages but it can even break bridges.

Oh and the bridges may be cool but they're also kinda shit, I mean the TG one can't handle supergroups, WhatsApp often requires you to open the app anyway to view certain content, I don't use the signal bridge cause I don't mind using signal. Oh and tbh bridges only exist because we still need to talk to some folks in the other places, but they do not provide you any extra privacy, your message is still going in the apps (which realistically you'll also still need to keep installed anyway) etc and on top of that it will also go through the servers of whoever is hosting your instance.

Yes self-hosting is an option, no your average joe will not do it and it is absurd to ask them to, and self-hosting for your whole community is nice but it gets hard if you're on your own and good luck if you have quite a few friends to actually talk to.

Unfortunately, messaging apps are meant to do one job: talk with people, and in order to do that privately and securely you need to get people on the chosen app^[refer to part about bridges] and therefore it needs to be easy enough to grasp that even people who don't know what an OS is can get them, hence why Signal beats out Matrix (and getting people to switch to Signal from WhatsApp or Telegram is still pretty challenging).

So this is why I believe it's less developed. Matrix is probably not the only made in Europe project tbf, and besides even US things can be used if they are open source.

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Navigating the way into joining rooms, DMing people, etc is pretty confusing

I've never had issues with that or other things like Encryption when using the official Element clients. But I also don't install Arch manually or use it at all.

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@Illecors @Elrecoal19_0 not sure how software would relate to employment and politics in this regard, but I fully agree with the hosting part. And if it's more of a hassle, try finding someone doing it for you. In Europe. My profile is on a server based in Finland and the server admin is kind enough to also offer me and whoever is here some small amount of Nextcloud space (can be increased if you have accounts at other providers too) along with some NC apps like, calendar, polls, tasks, passwords, bookmarks and talk. In addition to all of that, I also have an XMPP address with the same account.

Now, my Friendica node is currently closed for registration, but there are also some more popular providers like tchncs.de which offer more stuff (not yet having a friendica offering fwiw, but they do have a Mastodon instance, a Lemmy one and a Writefreely one, along with some other stuff like Matrix, XMPP or even a Minetest server). I think providers like these are the way to go for the regular folk moving forward. Or maybe something that doesn't require hosting on an external server at all, such as Secure Scuttlebutt. I mean, we already have the phone network which doesn't really depend on a central server (i.e. your number belongs to your SIM card) as much. It would imply less of a hassle for the regular user, since not everyone has all the time and/or knowledge to selfhost and deal with all the issues this implies.

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Reasons for Volt being criticized are some of their decisions in the past and their base philosophy creating an EU leader similar to US Präsident or chancelors.

It seems that some are a bit starry-eyed about reasons and about what to do

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You missed one other option that has also been gaining traction in Europe:

employee = employer

A co-op kinda gets the benefits of both, with the downside being growth can be a little slower due to how it's organized and bureaucracy, but this could be fixed too with legislation.

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We'll see. I'm currently working for a company that went from limited -> employee owned - nothing has changed. Maybe it would be different if there was no legacy of a limited company, but so far I'm still sceptical.

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one of the reasons why Volt is considered weak is because it's small and young,

Maybe because they want a sort of (Con) Federation for the EU. I was surprised to see that many citizens don't seem to want that .

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A lot of citizens do want an European federation. The topic is not in the mainstream so it's hard to gauge, bit either way Volt isn't a single-issue party, there's more to it than just EU federation (which is a long termine goal of the party)

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Within volt views are probably mixed. Dure there may ne some starry-eyes but you won't get far without a dream after all. And again it's not something that can't be fixed by joining and contributing, which is probably better than sitting on your screen and being on Lemmy to debate how everything is flawed tbf.

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Just because it "works on your machine" doesn't mean it works for many. You were lucky, but I, for example, have witnessed several instances of people not being able to see each other's messages in the local LUG group because of encryption vs within instances. I also had my bridges break because of it.

I was also able to join rooms and shit but I found it unintuitive and I know for a fact that someone like my grandma, mother, aunt, most of my friends, etc would not find it will struggle with it and won't bother because it is a pretty silly way to navigate it.
There's a bias here: you are on Lemmy, you're already more familiar with these concepts than the average user so obviously for you it is easier, but for others it is not atball easy to mavigate and in fact it can be very confusing, and it would be silly and counterproductive to dismiss that as them not wanting to learn and to say that matrix is as well developed as WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal, cause from a functional point of view it just isn't.

P.S.: I realize the tone of my message may seem a bit hostile from the text but it's not meant that way.

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Software part was in response to the last paragraph:

I wish EU was stronger and both the EU and its citizens (and netizens) les reliant on external services (like youtube, reddit, whatsapp, discord, etc.), and I want to do something about it, but I feel completely lost and hopeless.

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lot of citizens do want an European federation.

Idk, I had assumed that, but negative votes on my lemmy posts, made me think differently.. FYI, I did vote for Volt. Most local and international issues make sense. Plus for Mr a like the difference in that aspect.

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I mean, Lemmy isn't exactly a representative sample of the population

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The current problem is that the EU is not very democratic and dominated by a few large member states. As long as there isn't an effort to limit the power of these overly large states, the smaller ones will never agree to more integration as it would just mean assimilation for them.

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dominated by a few large member states.

I do agree that the EU should be more democratic, it's always annoyed me.

You mean France/German EU axis?
There's also a positive discrimination/preference for founding & larger members. But since EU is mainly alot of smaller states and some bigger states, I mean the bigger ones do have more people (and money). How would you even that out?

Seems though times are changing , i e. current Polish EU council presidency ( and their role in leading the House) and also Kallas.

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So what now?