[HN Gopher] European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp
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European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp
Author : aa_is_op
Score : 72 points
Date : 2026-04-16 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.eu)
| throwa356262 wrote:
| 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?
| galbar wrote:
| It is my understanding that a lot of EU governments are setting
| up their own matrix servers.
| Arathorn wrote:
| This is true. We just published a map of it:
| https://element.io/en/matrix-in-europe
| wolvoleo wrote:
| 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 :)
| p2detar wrote:
| 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.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| Here is one of the French government:
| https://social.numerique.gouv.fr/
| llacane wrote:
| Actually European Commission has been on its own Mastodon
| server for a couple years:
|
| https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/public/local
| polski-g wrote:
| 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.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| 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.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| 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/.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| 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?
| wolvoleo wrote:
| 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.
| lbreakjai wrote:
| 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?
| spwa4 wrote:
| 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 ...
| gretch wrote:
| 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!"
| parrellel wrote:
| "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.
| palata wrote:
| 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).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| spwa4 wrote:
| 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?)
| wolvoleo wrote:
| In most European countries we don't have this extensive
| discovery thing that the US has. It's not really a problem.
| subscribed wrote:
| 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.
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| This is helpful because it makes the criminality stand out.
|
| Because, yes, in democracies we have public records laws.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > 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)
| elcritch wrote:
| > (Remember not to type crimes into a computer, people)
|
| Please ignore that. It's daft talk. Definitely record your
| abuses of power.
| ButlerianJihad wrote:
| https://youtu.be/9Klj0H6YMLQ?si=L7DrQgF0pI07zLE9
|
| "Videotaping this crime spree is the best idea we ever had!"
| 9dev wrote:
| 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.
| palata wrote:
| 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.
| hackerbeat wrote:
| Good. The US is gone.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Digital sovereignty would always have been a good idea,
| regardless of the present insanity.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| 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.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| Maybe that's a good thing. I want people running my country to
| actually know how to do things.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| No idea why this is down voted. Ai makes people dumber and
| kills problem solving skills over a long timespan.
| j_maffe wrote:
| What do you mean by most academics? In Europe? That's just
| blatently untrue.
| jampekka wrote:
| 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.
| troupo wrote:
| 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...
| com_kieffer wrote:
| 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).
| dotcoma wrote:
| It's just common sense.
| iririririr wrote:
| 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".
| casey2 wrote:
| 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.
| mjfisher wrote:
| I hope most people have a broader definition of "relevance".
| wolvoleo wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2026-04-16 23:01 UTC)