European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

Posted by aa_is_op 1 day ago

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Comment by throwa356262 1 day ago

Governments want to move away from “platforms over which we have no control,” says Dutch minister.

Sure, that is fair enough. But why is EU not setting up their own servers for whisper or activity pub or whatever OSS protocols and just make that their only official and approved communication channel?

Comment by llacane 1 day ago

Actually European Commission has been on its own Mastodon server for a couple years:

https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/public/local

Comment by p4bl0 23 hours ago

They do, actually.

For example the French government has its own Matrix platform https://www.tchap.gouv.fr/ and its own Mastodon instance https://social.numerique.gouv.fr/.

Comment by jandrewrogers 23 hours ago

The problem isn't setting up the servers, they already exist for the most part. It is getting anyone to use them.

I've seen this play out a few times in Europe. People are extremely resistant to giving up WhatsApp. These rules are so widely flouted that no one takes them seriously, including the people making the rules. It is a bit of theater, meanwhile everyone continues to use WhatsApp. There is no will to actually make this change.

If your boss keeps sending you messages over WhatsApp, why would you do any different?

Comment by pesus 21 hours ago

Maybe I'm just too American to understand, but it still baffles me that WhatsApp is used for business purposes. It makes a lot more sense for regular personal messaging, but it seems incredibly unprofessional to me. I would think it bizarre and a bit invasive if my boss tried to text or iMessage me. Are they at least using different accounts for work messaging?

Not to mention the app itself was pretty mediocre last time I used it, but that's neither here nor there...

Comment by sph 17 hours ago

You guys use iMessage and go all weird unless the bubble is blue, so I’m not sure why you can’t understand that other countries have their own cultural messaging practices.

Comment by Spooky23 21 hours ago

Alot of people use iMessage or WhatsApp for out of band messaging.

The global usage is nuts. All of my Indian friends live on WhatsApp even if they are iPhone users. When I was in Portugal and Spain recently it’s literally the way businesses work.

Plus, you’re out of your mind for putting Teams on a personal device.

Comment by gonzalohm 10 hours ago

It was kind of a cultural shock that people companies) in the US still leave messages on my voicemail. Last time I remember using the voicemail in the EU was like 2005 or around that time

Comment by IG_Semmelweiss 21 hours ago

most of the world is using WA for biz. US is an outlier

Most biz dont have the kind of money to hand over to Goog workspace or M$. therefore, you get what its free, and thats WA biz

Comment by ragall 16 hours ago

WhatsApp is a much nicer platform for business (and messaging in general), and the rest of the world would find the American idea of "professional" rather laughable.

Comment by wolvoleo 22 hours ago

At my workplace we only use WhatsApp for personal comms. Like chatting about which restaurant we go for lunch, who's at the office tomorrow, when is everyone's birthday, what did we do this weekend, that kinda stuff.

For work related stuff we use teams and that it's kinda needed too because we can only link to internal resources there, like SharePoint.

Comment by wink 8 hours ago

I mean at least you have teams as an alternative.

Where my wife works they simply have a WhatsApp group because there _is_ no messenger, and while they don't use it for work stuff, they couldn't even have anything but group emails for discussing lunch plans or reaching someone who is not present at the office without calling (and in the case of reaching someone, they don't have access to anything on personal devices and they 90% have no work phones).

Comment by galbar 1 day ago

It is my understanding that a lot of EU governments are setting up their own matrix servers.

Comment by Arathorn 1 day ago

This is true. We just published a map of it: https://element.io/en/matrix-in-europe

Comment by xethos 20 hours ago

Clicking through and stumbling upon Croatia, which specifies only "Classified deployment", has left me absolutely cackeling. Seems hilarious that they're willing to say that they use it, but unwilling to state if it's for early testing, civilian-level beaurocracy, or Croatia's equivalent of specialized armed forces.

That they publicly use it at all is great though, as it likely helps shift the Overton window of what's normal, and what fits standard useage of Matrix-Synapse

Comment by Arathorn 11 hours ago

It's more that they haven't gone public with it yet, and it's not for us to out them :)

Comment by DarkUranium 19 hours ago

I hope they don't, considering Matrix's handling of security is on the level of a bumbling toddler.

Comment by Arathorn 11 hours ago

If you're talking about https://matrix.org/blog/2026/02/analysis-of-reported-issues-..., I'm not entirely sure that characterisation is accurate :)

Comment by wolvoleo 23 hours ago

Question, with so many major orgs using it, are there no plans for manual status? The one thing I miss vis-a-vis teams is the ability to manually set myself away, appear offline, busy etc.

Matrix shows me as active (green dot) when I have the client open but there's no way to override that. At least none that I found. I'm a bit surprised all these big governmental clients didn't ask for such a feature :)

Comment by Arathorn 11 hours ago

There's a big gap between lots of orgs using it, and lots of orgs paying for development of it. That said, BWI in Germany is currently funding custom status so it should be coming soon :)

Comment by wolvoleo 1 hour ago

Ohh nice to hear it's coming.

But sorry that they are not contributing. That's pretty bad tbh.

Comment by p2detar 1 day ago

I'd really want to see more examples of https://social.bund.de

This is the Mastodon server of the German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI). Embrace decentralization.

Comment by p4bl0 23 hours ago

Here is one of the French government: https://social.numerique.gouv.fr/

Comment by lbreakjai 23 hours ago

Aren't they about to handle DigiD to the U.S? You know, the tool we use for absolutely any sort of identification when interacting with the government?

Comment by esbranson 20 hours ago

The fact that many replies mention Matrix and the Politico article does not is hilarious. Why even bother with major news orgs anymore?

Comment by polski-g 23 hours ago

They're setting up matrix servers. Nato uses matrix.

Too bad the UX is dogshit and the end users lose their keys every 90 days. Even though they're explicitly warned, loudly and clearly, to not lose the keys.

Matrix software stack isn't idiot proof; Signal is.

Comment by wolvoleo 23 hours ago

The key is only necessary as a backup these days. You can share the key from one client to another which works well. As long as the user has a laptop and phone it should be ok unless they lose both.

But yeah it would be nice if the key could be escrowed somewhere for big organisations.

Comment by dotcoma 1 day ago

It’s just common sense.

Comment by illiac786 1 hour ago

Meaning, we can expect this not to actually happen any time soon.

Comment by iririririr 23 hours ago

You'd think right? But most of south american and southeast asia political scandals were cause by political figures using whatsapp and messages "leaking" thanks to a "hacker".

Comment by Yaa101 21 hours ago

I understand the move but I also see bears on the road. When the politicians control their communication apps then it is sooner or later also very convenient for politicians to ask the operators to disappear conversations that shouldn't have taken place or conversations that somehow are political liabilities.

Comment by hackerbeat 1 day ago

Good. The US is gone.

Comment by marssaxman 1 day ago

Digital sovereignty would always have been a good idea, regardless of the present insanity.

Comment by hulitu 15 hours ago

Who, do you think, controls the OS ?

Comment by TacticalCoder 22 hours ago

> Good. The US is gone.

Yeah. But then the EU lost the plot a very long time ago. There is one EU company in the 50 of the world by companies market cap. One. Just freaking one. It's ASML.

From 2008 to today, in USD and inflation adjusted, the eurozone saw no growth. While both the US and China skyrocketed.

There's been this little thing lately that kinda took off: it's called AI. Where's the EU? How much of a leader was the EU in this AI revolution?

Explain how the EU is not long gone?

The EU is not even sinking at this point: it sank years ago. And it's busy making sure it's turning into the third-world.

I'm in the EU and honestly it's more than frightening.

Comment by yabutlivnWoods 21 hours ago

This is all empty political rhetoric.

Billions of people exist in the EU. In real terms it has not gone anywhere.

Obsession with preserving political dogma, rhetorical forms, atheist appearing syntax and semantics (language that does invoke specific concepts of theology); political and economic abstraction that do not represent reality is not much different from religion.

By your measure every nation effectively died out centuries ago as some originating principles died with their originators of those principles. Yet here we are still discussing France and Russia and the US as real things. They only ever existed as ethno objects to begin with; things that only exist if we talk about them as existing.

So what if some rhetorical specifics that used to define the economic and political foundations of the EU mutate. That's immutable reality for you. It's bound to happen due to generational churn.

People who live there can still use the term EU to define whatever political structure and economic model they land on next.

Comment by BoneShard 18 hours ago

how many billions?

Comment by Natfan 12 hours ago

they were incorrect, it's ~450 million[0] (still 120 million more people than in the USA, i will note)

[0]: https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor...

Comment by yabutlivnWoods 16 hours ago

If you have a point, one of billions, make it.

If you feel the entire premise is wrong over a B and not an M go away. I don't have time for pedants who play "guess my problem."

Comment by jltsiren 19 hours ago

Economic growth has been slow in the EU, but it's mostly a demographic issue. There are too many retirees, too few children, and the size of the workforce is stagnant.

Measuring economic growth in someone else's currency can be misleading. By the same metric you used, Eurozone economy grew by ~100% between 2002 and 2008.

Comment by posperson 21 hours ago

Economically the EU might not keep pace, but the built infrastructure to live an enjoyable life is there.

I certainly had a delightful time visiting the winter markets across Europe, and it seemed like there were a fair number of people living well.

While the Eurozone might not be a great place to start a new business it is still a going concern, enough that those top 50 companies all have a European presence.

Comment by esbranson 21 hours ago

> infrastructure to live an enjoyable life is there

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but living in the US ain't exactly like Escape from New York or Escape from LA. For every Mississippi there is an analogous place in Europe, and for every Liechtenstein there is an analogous place in the US. I'm not sure if your comment is a counterargument or neutral commentary.

Comment by ragall 16 hours ago

> For every Mississippi there is an analogous place in Europe, and for every Liechtenstein there is an analogous place in the US

Neither are true.

Comment by tremon 21 hours ago

What's frightening to me is that even in the EU people seem to think that unchecked consolidation of services is a good thing. I don't think it is a good thing at all that there exist companies with a budget larger than an average country.

Comment by esbranson 20 hours ago

Is the budget of Saudi Aramco, of the King, larger than that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, also of the same King? Why would that be not good, or bad?

Think about every international dollar the Kingdom takes from Aramco: would Aramco or the Kingdom make more profit from it, including taxes on the percent more Aramco makes from it than the Kingdom?

Comment by themafia 22 hours ago

> “Everyone in Europe is getting more and more awake on sovereignty ... For us it’s data sovereignty.”

If Julian Assange wasn't the wakeup call necessary to put this into action then I don't think the whims of a few government ministers amount to a hill of beans.

Good luck.

Comment by spwa4 1 day ago

The problem with these efforts is always the same: organizations make their own messenger, and the fact that these organizations then have control over their own messenger ... means their employees won't use it. And that's ignoring that you can bet your firstborn they cut corners developing these messengers, so they're not pleasant to use to boot. In 2026 you still hear complaints of government employees that they only have 200 mb of mailbox space ... sigh

People "don't trust" in the very abstract sense, Mark Zuckerberg. But in a very real sense they don't trust their manager at all, and they know their own manager can see their messages on the "sovereign" messenger. Zuckerberg wants to sell them stuff they don't want on occasion. Their manager ... well they're cheating their manager.

Oh and it doesn't even buy extra security: the platform owners can spy directly through hardware backdoors, they can "update" any app on the phone, and they have the root keys to the secure element, and so it isn't secure to them. And if you look under the covers ... the backend is on AWS? No? Must be on Azure then.

So annoying lots of people, reducing functionality, for no actual security.

Sure sounds like EU governments are behind this ...

Comment by palata 22 hours ago

Well, on the work messenger, you talk about work.

For private discussions, you do that on your private device, with a private messenger.

I would say that the digital sovereignty is more about "Entity X doesn't want the US to have access to all of their internal communications". Typically a non-US company or a non-US government should care about that.

Comment by 9dev 23 hours ago

That doesn’t really apply in the EU, because your manager or even your org don’t have any right to read your messages, that would constitute a crime actually.

I suspect the reason would be far simpler - people use what they are used to, and WhatsApp is the de-facto standard Messenger app all over Europe.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

> organizations make their own messenger, and the fact that these organizations then have control over their own messenger ... means their employees won't use it

Legally mandate its use for official communications.

Comment by subscribed 1 day ago

And they'll keep doing what Boris Johnson was doing when in power: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-covid...

They'll do it anyway.

Comment by WhatIsDukkha 1 day ago

This is helpful because it makes the criminality stand out.

Because, yes, in democracies we have public records laws.

Comment by spwa4 1 day ago

So the managers also demand their employees don't use it you mean? Because then it can be used against them in court? (cfr. email "retention policies" legal departments demand these days?)

Comment by wolvoleo 22 hours ago

In most European countries we don't have this extensive discovery thing that the US has. It's not really a problem.

Comment by spwa4 11 hours ago

Yes, you do. First of all, in UK, it's almost exactly the same. In Europe under Napoleon law (most of the continent), it's the judge who decides to assign someone who gets to do discovery.

Which means in practice the state (police, Tax service, ministries, ...) get to do any discovery they want, including things that would never fly in the US (e.g. have you ever known a judge to allow discovery on a bank account and blocking it for the duration of the case?) And in private cases, usually there is very limited discovery, and only by an independent lawyer, not on either side, assigned by the judge.

It's very different, with different pros and cons. Given that large companies keep leaving the EU, and I bet this is a (granted, minor) factor in that.

Comment by pjc50 1 day ago

> the fact that these organizations then have control over their own messenger ... means their employees won't use it.

Not sure what you mean here; I happily use whatever work email and messenger systems are provided for work. Most people do. I don't actually mind that IT services have access; they are in any case covered by GDPR.

In some cases there has been a legal crackdown on back channels: https://www.ft.com/content/68c26cf6-52d5-11e3-a73e-00144feab...

The Boris Johnson problem remains, but it can at least be made against the rules for normal work purposes.

(Remember not to type crimes into a computer, people)

Comment by ButlerianJihad 23 hours ago

https://youtu.be/9Klj0H6YMLQ?si=L7DrQgF0pI07zLE9

“Videotaping this crime spree is the best idea we ever had!”

Comment by elcritch 23 hours ago

> (Remember not to type crimes into a computer, people)

Please ignore that. It’s daft talk. Definitely record your abuses of power.

Comment by gretch 1 day ago

I've always found it ironic that people who distrust software from Mark Zuckerberg instead trust software from... 3 guys in a garage.

"Those 3 guys in a garage would never sell us out! They are paragons of virtue!"

Comment by parrellel 1 day ago

"We shall trust 27 different sets of 3 to 10 guys in garages and ensure they never become large enough to blackmail a large percentage of the world's governments safe in the knowledge we can in fact arrest them for illegal bs" does have an appeal however.

Comment by palata 22 hours ago

It's more trusting something you can audit and control (e.g. open source) vs trusting something you cannot audit and control (e.g. proprietary service by BigTech).

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Comment by jccx70 1 day ago

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Comment by p1anecrazy 1 day ago

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Comment by 440bx 1 day ago

[flagged]

Comment by lamasery 1 day ago

I expect the downvotes are because rather than simply calling attention to and providing an interesting perspective on another area of weakness, you're also suggesting it's a mistake to address this one while the other exists, which suggestion isn't being well-received.

Comment by 440bx 1 day ago

I don't need a diagnosis of my point. Perhaps I should explain further.

I'll say that it's more that the assertion that WhatsApp is a big issue is false. Civil servants know stuff is on the record, for example through screenshots from colleagues and the like which is a higher risk than actual control and security issues over WhatApp, so it's more of a distraction from the real security and ethical posture problems. Most of which occur though loose lipped jabbering to each other in the pub.

Security hygiene is terrible. Literally the worst. It scares the shit out of me if I'm honest.

If you think technology is a problem then the social issue are worse!

Comment by 9dev 23 hours ago

How many EU civil servants are there in London these days, I wonder?

Comment by 440bx 14 hours ago

A huge number of them. It's not like we don't work with the EU on a ton of things. Brexit didn't just pull the plug on everything.

Comment by 948382828528 1 day ago

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Comment by recursive 23 hours ago

Could you give an example of someone that could be called a "civil servant" without euphemism?

Comment by 9dev 23 hours ago

"What have the Romans ever done for us?"

Comment by hulitu 14 hours ago

Raped the women, killed almost everybody in the village, burned the village to the ground but, kept some boys to ... tell the world how great the Roman civilisation is.

"Terrific race, the Romans. Terrific".

Comment by casey2 23 hours ago

Europe has been irrelevant since 2008. Basically 0 growth and pensions larger than paychecks. Even if young Europeans had the skills or the desire, which they don't, they wouldn't have the capital.

The US is preparing to siphon most of the EUs wealth with this AI bubble. This title is just one in a long line of smoke and mirrors meant to distract Europeans from the fact that trillions are being spent to build datacenters in the US.

Comment by wolvoleo 22 hours ago

Trillions of made-up money.

And really I'm super glad I don't live in the US with the nightmare regime there. Money isn't everything. Things cost a lot less here too. I don't need to have two jobs to pay for rent and healthcare, when I get fired I'm getting welfare. I don't get shot by random civilians carrying guns or even the ICE Gestapo.

Those things really matter too.

Comment by mjfisher 23 hours ago

I hope most people have a broader definition of "relevance".

Comment by esbranson 20 hours ago

But also besides the point.

Comment by dr_dshiv 1 day ago

European civil servants are also usually banned from using AI — perhaps with the exception of Microsoft copilot. They live in a bubble where they just don’t know. This goes for most academics as well.

Comment by j_maffe 1 day ago

What do you mean by most academics? In Europe? That's just blatently untrue.

Comment by com_kieffer 23 hours ago

The European Commission actually has an internal AI chat platform with a selection of different models, and recommendations on which to use based on the classification level of the information that will be shared with the AI model.

Some are hosted internally (LLAMA models), other are sourced from commercial providers (Mistral, OpenAI).

Comment by esbranson 20 hours ago

About the only thing I learned from your comment is that most replies as of now only refute half of it. And it's also besides the point.

Comment by jampekka 1 day ago

What are you on about?

I don't know of any software or services that would be banned at my university. People use all sorts of LLMs extensively.

At least in Finland also civil servants are free to use what AI services they want, given they don't put in sensitive information. Just like they can use any search engine they want.

Comment by ironman1478 1 day ago

Maybe that's a good thing. I want people running my country to actually know how to do things.

Comment by lpcvoid 1 day ago

No idea why this is down voted. Ai makes people dumber and kills problem solving skills over a long timespan.

Comment by troupo 1 day ago

Ah yes. "It's so bad that people in government agencies cannot give sensitive info to US companies or blindly rely on LLMs for their decisions since nothing has ever happened when people in governments blindly trusted black boxes"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

https://www.politico.eu/article/dutch-scandal-serves-as-a-wa...