Frequently Asked Questions

Eurosky is building a European base for the open social web, to support and create apps that actually serve the interests and needs of people, and enable European tech to compete in the global digital economy.

Eurosky is building software infrastructure for Europe and contributing open source software for developers globally. Eurosky user services (such as the eurosky.social accounts) are open to anyone who wants their data securely hosted in Europe. It is not just for Europeans.

Your data will be hosted on EU servers, subject to GDPR and European law rather than US or another country's law. Many users mention this as their primary motivation, especially in the current geopolitical climate.

No. Eurosky is a non-profit initiative, not an official EU government body. It is independent and is explicitly not a government-run platform.

The Modal Foundation (Stichting Modal) is a Dutch non-profit, public interest organization and the institutional home of Eurosky. Modal works to support decentralized social technologies that help people create, circulate and discover trustworthy information. The foundation grew out of the Free Our Feeds campaign to advocate for alternatives to big tech.

Eurosky was initially funded by the Free Our Feeds campaign, which has raised funds primarily through individual donations, as well as the contributions of several foundations. Eurosky is now funded through its parent organization, The Modal Foundation. We expect funding to come from a mix of individual contributions, institutional grants, cooperatives, and market-based approaches.

Eurosky is separate from Eurostack. We share similar goals of making Europe's technology infrastructure independent of Big Tech and more competitive, but we focus on different areas of technology and there are no institutional connections between the two. We believe the two organizations are complementary and we are big supporters of Eurostack's ambitions.

Our main focus is on building independent social media infrastructure and apps in Europe that are hosted in Europe, run by a fully European non-profit and subject primarily to European law and jurisdiction. For example, our first service – Eurosky accounts (PDS) – is hosted at Hetzner facilities in Germany and operated by us, with the contract held by our parent legal entity, the Modal Foundation, a Dutch non-profit.

We are participating in the multifaceted effort to build fully European information and communications infrastructure. However, we also believe that the internet should remain open and interconnected globally, and inevitably, that means that we interact with technologies and services from around the world.

Because we cannot do everything simultaneously, we have set priorities. We are focusing on social technologies because they are the primary online experiences through which many people discover and interact with information and others. We are focusing on open, decentralized protocols and standards because they foster choice, agency and diversity in these interactions. Our goal is to reclaim control of social media and our online public spaces, removing it from the hands of billionaires, foreign governments, or dominance by a single corporation.

What matters: organizational independence (European entity providing governance and oversight, structured as a non-profit with a strong public interest mission), legal jurisdiction in Europe, services running on European cloud, and our services being built on open source technologies to the greatest extent possible.

Mastodon (ActivityPub) and Eurosky (AT Protocol) do not need to be rivals. They can be understood as complementary approaches to the same broad goal: an open, interoperable social web that reduces dependence on closed, centralized platforms.

Both underlying protocols seek to separate key layers of social media infrastructure so that identity, content, moderation, and user experience are no longer controlled by a single company. Both also aim to give users more control over their online lives, make it easier for communities to shape their own spaces, and create better conditions for innovation.

In fact, Eurosky explicitly seeks integration between AT Protocol and ActivityPub as a way of moving toward an open social web that can serve everyone.

Live stats are available at eurosky.social/stats.

Today most people use a Eurosky account as an entry point to Bluesky and on other websites and applications built on what's called The Atmosphere — the ecosystem of apps and services built on the AT Protocol. We are aiming to build a technology ecosystem in which, in the coming years, the Eurosky account (and other Atmosphere accounts) can be people's main online identity, which would enable them to manage their online data and presence across the web.

The AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer Protocol) is a new technology for building decentralized social media and other online services. Initially started as a project to develop decentralized social media at Twitter, it then moved to Bluesky as an independent company and is today an open source project with thousands of people globally contributing to, and building on it. You can learn more at atproto.com.

PDS, on the AT Protocol, stands for Personal Data Server. This is the server that stores your posts, follows, and other data. Moving to the Eurosky PDS means your data lives on European servers instead of Bluesky's US-based servers. A key feature of the AT Protocol is that anyone can set up and run a PDS — it is a permissionless system.

With a Eurosky account you can use any technology that is built on the AT Protocol. That includes Bluesky, of course, but also Tangled, for sharing code, Leaflet or Whitewind, for blogging, Flashes, for photo and video sharing, Blacksky, Northsky, or Gander, for community-focused microblogging, Graze, a custom feed builder, Sill, a news aggregation app, Margin, a web annotation tool, Semble, a bookmarking and collections app, and many, many more.

Users may not use the Eurosky PDS in ways that are unlawful or that materially interfere with the operation or security of the service (as set out in section 5 of the Terms of Service).

Eurosky runs on Hetzner infrastructure in their Falkenstein data centre in Germany.

Because AT Protocol is open and federated, the ecosystem doesn't depend on Bluesky the company. If Bluesky were to shut down, the protocol itself would continue, just as email continues to work even if one email provider closes. Your data on Eurosky would remain intact and accessible through any other AT Protocol-compatible application.

Eurosky does not have a dedicated app as of yet. With Eurosky accounts people can use any AT Protocol-compatible client, such as Bluesky. We are currently experimenting with prototypes of new types of social media apps.

Moving to Eurosky means your data is stored on European servers subject to GDPR and European law, moving it from US jurisdiction. However, today all data on the AT Protocol is public and is accessible globally. Private data is expected to be introduced to the AT Protocol later in 2026.

Yes. Eurosky is hosted in Europe and governed by European law, which includes GDPR and the Digital Services Act.

Eurosky provides infrastructure. A PDS is a hosting service, not a social app. Content moderation on what you see in your Bluesky feed is handled by Bluesky's labelling system and any moderation services you choose to follow. However, Eurosky does govern what is stored on its servers. Our Acceptable Use Policy prohibits illegal content, child sexual abuse material, violent extremism, harassment, malware, and other harmful content.

We don't have any plans to require ID verification. We will comply with legal requirements where they are introduced in Europe.

Eurosky accounts are free. They are relatively low cost to run and maintain, which is why we can provide them for free as the foundational part of the open social web. We may in future charge for other products or services but have no plans for charging for accounts. Critically you can move away from Eurosky to another provider at any time. Your account is yours: we merely look after it.

We will never sell user data.

The Bluesky app itself supports multiple languages. Our migration tool EU-HAUL is available in 24 languages. We recognise that Eurosky's own website and documentation are currently only in English, which we know is a barrier for some users. We are working to make our documentation available in other European languages. Watch this space.