OG App is the coolest app you never heard of.
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But Eurostack is about to run into a wall: Article 6 of the EU's own Copyright Directive, which prohibits reverse-engineering and modification of tech products. It's a law that the US Trade Rep lobbied hard for, winning the day by promising tariff-free access to the US for Europe's exports (a promise Trump has now broken):
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/15/freedom-of-movement/#data-dieselgate
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So long as Europe continues to hold up its end of this one-sided bargain, it will not be able to create the reverse-engineering based tools to let EU companies, governments and households get their data out of US tech silos, let alone let them build and enjoy successors to OG App, which will make it easy for them to leave US social media without sacrificing contact with the people who matter to them.
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So long as Europe continues to hold up its end of this one-sided bargain, it will not be able to create the reverse-engineering based tools to let EU companies, governments and households get their data out of US tech silos, let alone let them build and enjoy successors to OG App, which will make it easy for them to leave US social media without sacrificing contact with the people who matter to them.
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Which brings me to Threads, Meta's latest social media network. Threads is built on Activitypub and Mastodon, these being open/free, auditable and trustworthy protocols, designed to support "federated" social media. That's social media that runs on servers managed by lots of different entities, whose users can all connect to one another no matter which server they use.
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Which brings me to Threads, Meta's latest social media network. Threads is built on Activitypub and Mastodon, these being open/free, auditable and trustworthy protocols, designed to support "federated" social media. That's social media that runs on servers managed by lots of different entities, whose users can all connect to one another no matter which server they use.
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Meta was clearly excited by the prospect of enclosing and conquering this open upstart, but also nervous at the prospect that its users would find, in federation, an easy path to escape from Meta's clutches.
After all, if you can leave Threads and join a non-Meta Mastodon server without losing contact with the people you followed and were followed by on Threads, then why wouldn't you leave?
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Meta was clearly excited by the prospect of enclosing and conquering this open upstart, but also nervous at the prospect that its users would find, in federation, an easy path to escape from Meta's clutches.
After all, if you can leave Threads and join a non-Meta Mastodon server without losing contact with the people you followed and were followed by on Threads, then why wouldn't you leave?
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Mark Zuckerberg's users don't like him - they just hate him less than they love the people they are in community with on Zuckerberg's platforms.
So Threads never *really* joined the Fediverse. You can't quite follow and be followed by Mastodon users, and you can't quite migrate your account off Meta's servers and onto a better one. Zuck and his lieutenants are keenly attuned to any design that drives high "switching costs" for leaving their services.
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Mark Zuckerberg's users don't like him - they just hate him less than they love the people they are in community with on Zuckerberg's platforms.
So Threads never *really* joined the Fediverse. You can't quite follow and be followed by Mastodon users, and you can't quite migrate your account off Meta's servers and onto a better one. Zuck and his lieutenants are keenly attuned to any design that drives high "switching costs" for leaving their services.
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They exploit these switching costs to figure out just how much pain they can inflict on users without risking their departure:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs
So now they've started to turn the screws on Threads users. They just announced a global program of Threads enshittification, with a promise to cram ads into the eyeballs of every Threads account:
https://www.contentgrip.com/meta-threads-ads-go-global/
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They exploit these switching costs to figure out just how much pain they can inflict on users without risking their departure:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs
So now they've started to turn the screws on Threads users. They just announced a global program of Threads enshittification, with a promise to cram ads into the eyeballs of every Threads account:
https://www.contentgrip.com/meta-threads-ads-go-global/
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This represents a hell of an opportunity for the EU and Eurostack. Meta's ads are wildly illegal in the EU, violating Europe's landmark privacy law, the GDPR. The only reason Meta gets away with its flagrant lawbreaking is that it has captured the Irish state, and uses legal tricks to force all GDPR enforcement into Irish jurisdiction:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/01/erin-go-blagged/#big-tech-omerta
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This represents a hell of an opportunity for the EU and Eurostack. Meta's ads are wildly illegal in the EU, violating Europe's landmark privacy law, the GDPR. The only reason Meta gets away with its flagrant lawbreaking is that it has captured the Irish state, and uses legal tricks to force all GDPR enforcement into Irish jurisdiction:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/01/erin-go-blagged/#big-tech-omerta
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People *hate* ads. More than half of all web users have installed an adblocker (which also protects their privacy). It's the largest consumer boycott in human history:
https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/
But no one has ever installed an adblocker for an app, because reverse-engineering apps and the mobile platforms they run on is illegal under laws like Article 6 of the Copyright Directive.
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People *hate* ads. More than half of all web users have installed an adblocker (which also protects their privacy). It's the largest consumer boycott in human history:
https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/
But no one has ever installed an adblocker for an app, because reverse-engineering apps and the mobile platforms they run on is illegal under laws like Article 6 of the Copyright Directive.
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As a result, tech companies - especially US giants, who can violate EU law with impunity - love to enshittify their apps, because they know that no one can do unto them as they did unto their own rivals (like Myspace).
Meta's new ad strategy for Threads is the perfect cue for a European repeal of Article 6 of the Copyright Directive.
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As a result, tech companies - especially US giants, who can violate EU law with impunity - love to enshittify their apps, because they know that no one can do unto them as they did unto their own rivals (like Myspace).
Meta's new ad strategy for Threads is the perfect cue for a European repeal of Article 6 of the Copyright Directive.
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Procedurally, this is a great moment for it, as the EU is finalizing the Digital Fairness Act, which could include an exemption to EUCD 6 for privacy-enhancing technologies:
Giving Europeans an effective way to push back against Meta's wholesale violation of their rights is a way that the Eurostack can score popular support *right now* - not in five years when the new data centers come online.
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Procedurally, this is a great moment for it, as the EU is finalizing the Digital Fairness Act, which could include an exemption to EUCD 6 for privacy-enhancing technologies:
Giving Europeans an effective way to push back against Meta's wholesale violation of their rights is a way that the Eurostack can score popular support *right now* - not in five years when the new data centers come online.
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It's a way of improving the lives of Europeans in immediate, concrete ways, rather than asking them to be grateful that some ministry has changed cloud providers - an important change, sure, but one that has no real impact on their daily lives.
What's more, legalizing jailbreaking for the purpose of making Threads alt-clients wouldn't just give Europeans a better social media experience - it could bootstrap European social media services.
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It's a way of improving the lives of Europeans in immediate, concrete ways, rather than asking them to be grateful that some ministry has changed cloud providers - an important change, sure, but one that has no real impact on their daily lives.
What's more, legalizing jailbreaking for the purpose of making Threads alt-clients wouldn't just give Europeans a better social media experience - it could bootstrap European social media services.
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Remember, Threads was able to achieve instant scale by moving Instagram users onto Threads wholesale, maintaining their Insta follows and followers when they created their Threads accounts.
Europe - like everywhere else - is full of entrepreneurs who are trying to get national, independent social media platforms off the ground, hoping to woo users by promising them a more privacy-respecting alternative.
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Remember, Threads was able to achieve instant scale by moving Instagram users onto Threads wholesale, maintaining their Insta follows and followers when they created their Threads accounts.
Europe - like everywhere else - is full of entrepreneurs who are trying to get national, independent social media platforms off the ground, hoping to woo users by promising them a more privacy-respecting alternative.
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They've got the same problem Zuck had when he tried to compete with Myspace: users love their friends more than they hate being spied on, so merely offering a better service is insufficient.
To get users off the old platforms, you have to lower their switching costs - you have to let them bring their friends to the new network, even if those friends are still stuck on the old network.
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They've got the same problem Zuck had when he tried to compete with Myspace: users love their friends more than they hate being spied on, so merely offering a better service is insufficient.
To get users off the old platforms, you have to lower their switching costs - you have to let them bring their friends to the new network, even if those friends are still stuck on the old network.
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Legalize jailbreaking in the EU and you'll make it possible to do "on-device bridging" - where a new social media app is able to break open the data storage of the Threads app on the same device and move that data into its own feeds. And because the EU has the GDPR, they have the privacy framework needed to police the privacy violations that breaking into other apps' data storage can lead to.
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Legalize jailbreaking in the EU and you'll make it possible to do "on-device bridging" - where a new social media app is able to break open the data storage of the Threads app on the same device and move that data into its own feeds. And because the EU has the GDPR, they have the privacy framework needed to police the privacy violations that breaking into other apps' data storage can lead to.
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Meta will squawk. They'll say Europe is legalizing the violation of its corporate rights. But Meta violates Europeans' rights at scale, and the "rights" that I'm talking about taking away from Meta are rights the EU gave it in the first place, in exchange for a broken promise of tariff-free access to the USA.
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Meta will squawk. They'll say Europe is legalizing the violation of its corporate rights. But Meta violates Europeans' rights at scale, and the "rights" that I'm talking about taking away from Meta are rights the EU gave it in the first place, in exchange for a broken promise of tariff-free access to the USA.
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Adblocking isn't stealing. Adblocking is *bargaining*. Without adblocking, the companies don't sell us services in exchange for our privacy - they plunder all the private data they can get, and dribble out services at whatever level they think we deserve. If ad-supported media was a restaurant, it'd be one where you got thrown up against a wall, relieved of your wallet, fed a handful of gruel, and then got kicked in the ass and sent on your way:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah
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Adblocking isn't stealing. Adblocking is *bargaining*. Without adblocking, the companies don't sell us services in exchange for our privacy - they plunder all the private data they can get, and dribble out services at whatever level they think we deserve. If ad-supported media was a restaurant, it'd be one where you got thrown up against a wall, relieved of your wallet, fed a handful of gruel, and then got kicked in the ass and sent on your way:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah
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Every time Donald Trump threatens the EU, he makes the case for the Eurostack, but still, he can't help himself. Likewise, every time Zuckerberg enshittifies his services, he makes the case for repealing Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, and he can't help himself either.
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Every time Donald Trump threatens the EU, he makes the case for the Eurostack, but still, he can't help himself. Likewise, every time Zuckerberg enshittifies his services, he makes the case for repealing Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, and he can't help himself either.
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Threads' inexorable enshittification is an opportunity: an opportunity to make the case for the Eurostack, an opportunity to improve the lives of millions of Europeans, and an opportunity to break through the walled gardens that keep the people we love stuck on legacy social media platforms.
When they did it to us, that wasn't progress. When we do it to them, it's not piracy.
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Threads' inexorable enshittification is an opportunity: an opportunity to make the case for the Eurostack, an opportunity to improve the lives of millions of Europeans, and an opportunity to break through the walled gardens that keep the people we love stuck on legacy social media platforms.
When they did it to us, that wasn't progress. When we do it to them, it's not piracy.
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I'll be in #Toronto TONIGHT (Jan 30) for an event with Tim Wu:
https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/
eof/
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