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Tech Policy Press: Can Mastodon Survive Europe’s Digital Services Act?

It has been around two weeks since Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, acquired Twitter and, already, increasing fears of what this means for free speech on the microblogging platform have begun to proliferate. With Musk firing some of Twitter’s key personnel, including Twitter’s legal chief Vijaya Gadde and terminating contracts with outsourced content moderators, many users are looking for an alternative.

A substantial number are migrating to the ‘fediverse,’ and specifically to Mastodon, a similar microblogging platform that has been called “Twitter, with the underlying architecture of email”. Mastodon’s decentralization raises substantial questions about how existing regulatory regimes, such as Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA), will apply. 

Read the full version of this article on the Tech Policy Press.

By: Konstantinos Komaitis, Louis-Victor de Franssu

Picture: Flickr / Marco Verch Professional Photographer

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