6. The Politics of Federated Protocols

This commentary examines the growing centrality of federated digital architectures in contemporary European debates on digital sovereignty. Drawing on science and technology studies and infrastructure studies, it analyzes how technical properties traditionally associated with “alternative Internets” (such as decentralization, interoperability, self-hosting, and open-source development) are being reappropriated by European states and institutions as instruments of infrastructural and political autonomy. Based on ongoing qualitative research and fieldwork within developer communities and policy-oriented events, the article traces how federated protocols, particularly in the domain of secure messaging (e.g. Matrix and its governmental implementations), are mobilized as responses to Europe’s dependence on US-based digital services. The commentary argues that digital sovereignty is not only articulated through legislation and regulation, but increasingly enacted “through infrastructure,” via concrete design choices embedded in technical architectures. It highlights the tensions and contradictions that arise when tools originally developed for activists, journalists, and high-risk users (often emphasizing anonymity, metadata protection, and ephemerality) are adapted to institutional and governmental requirements such as accountability, archiving, and user verification. By conceptualizing federation as both a technical compromise between centralization and peer-to-peer architectures and a political project of distributed responsibility and choice, the article shows how European digital sovereignty is being infrastructured in practice. Ultimately, it suggests that the institutionalization of federated protocols reveals both the possibilities and the limits of translating alternative technological imaginaries into state-led sovereignty strategies.