I believe it is worth fighting for alternatives to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other centralized social media platforms.

They have made it incredibly easy to publish photos, videos and text and share them with the world. But over time they have also changed the rules. Today, algorithms increasingly decide who gets to see your posts. Even among your so-called friends and followers, only a small fraction may ever see something you publish.

These platforms collect vast amounts of personal data because their business model depends on targeted advertising and keeping users engaged for as long as possible. Their interests are not necessarily aligned with ours. They are not democratic institutions. They are privately owned corporations whose primary responsibility is to generate profit.

As these companies have grown, they have also become extraordinary concentrations of power. A handful of corporations now influence how billions of people communicate, receive information and participate in public life. That concentration of power raises legitimate questions about democracy, privacy, freedom of expression and the well-being of our children.

Many of these platforms are designed to maximise engagement rather than meaningful communication. Endless feeds, recommendation algorithms, notifications and visible popularity metrics encourage competition for attention instead of genuine conversation.

I believe we can do better.

I am almost finished developing an alternative that makes it easy to create independent, reliable publishing platforms. I am already using the system myself, and it has proven to be remarkably simple and reliable in everyday use.
One of its most important features is that it can automatically import years of posts, photos and videos from existing social media accounts. People don’t have to start from scratch. They can preserve their history while gradually moving to an independent platform under their own control. Existing social media simply become signposts pointing to a place they actually own.

I am not claiming that this is revolutionary. The technologies have existed for decades. My contribution is to combine open standards in a way that makes them genuinely practical, easy to use and sustainable over time.

The goal has been to build something that is robust rather than fashionable. A system that can keep working for years without depending on endless software updates, plugins, changing APIs or the business decisions of large technology companies. The simpler the technology, the longer it tends to survive.

The idea is simple.

Use existing social media only as notice boards. Publish a short announcement there, but keep your actual content on your own website, under your own control.

People can subscribe through RSS feeds or email newsletters instead of depending on proprietary algorithms. There are no addictive “like” buttons, no AI-generated feeds deciding what deserves attention, and no platform that owns your audience. Just people communicating directly with other people.

Instead of locking people into yet another platform, the software encourages everyone to own their own website, their own data and their own identity. Independent websites can communicate with one another through open standards such as RSS and email, creating networks without creating a new centre of power.
What matters is not that the technology is new. What matters is that it works.

This is not about replacing one giant platform with another. It is about making it possible for thousands, or millions, of independent websites to communicate with one another while remaining completely autonomous.

The internet was originally built as a decentralized network. Somewhere along the way, we allowed much of our communication to become concentrated inside a handful of commercial platforms. We can choose a different direction.

Let’s reclaim the internet.

Sharing Space

Anne Romme

Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Academy

These days, there are many thoughtful contributions arguing that if we are serious about sustainability in the built environment, we must learn to live in fewer square metres. As many have pointed out, technological solutions to our overconsumption are not enough. We have become better at insulating our homes and reducing energy use, but what does that achieve if we simply keep building more space that needs to be heated? In the end, the result is the same. Looking at the figures for residential floor area per person in Denmark—53.6 m² (2023)—it seems we may be building and occupying far more space than we actually need.
Living with less is, in fact, not particularly difficult. It simply requires a willingness to consume less, to give things up, and to be content with less. It requires sacrifice. Sacrifice is not something our generations have been especially accustomed to. But the freedom that comes with it should be a powerful source of motivation.
Here is one example of how it can be done. Since 2010—that is, for the past fourteen years—I have lived with my family in approximately 42.5 m² (according to the Danish Building Register). Until 2022, our household consisted of four people and a dog; since then, three people and a dog. That amounts to roughly 10–15 m² per person.
At first, it genuinely felt like a sacrifice. I am an architect and teach at the Royal Danish Academy. I compared myself to colleagues living in large, beautiful old apartments with elegant furniture and enough space for a simple, minimalist interior. Before moving into the small apartment, we lived on a houseboat. That felt cooler somehow, and the apartment seemed like a compromise. Surely something better would come along. But it never really did. Gradually, we grew into the apartment and learned how to live in it.
We discovered that we had to share not only the space, but also the hours of the day. The two of us each have time when we more or less have the shared living area to ourselves: the morning for the early bird, the evening for the night owl. Simple enough.
Over the years, our children have probably dreamed of having bedrooms of their own, like most of their friends. But at the same time, they have thrived living close together. There is a sense of comfort and security in it. Conflicts are dealt with immediately, because there simply isn’t room for resentment to linger in separate corners.
Tiny houses have become a global phenomenon, inspiring clever and sustainable designs. But living in fewer square metres does not necessarily require building something new or making a major investment. In our case, we ended up creating a tiny home within an entirely ordinary housing cooperative apartment in Copenhagen.
A small apartment gets messy very quickly—anyone who has lived in one knows this. Things pile up. Our home is a long way from the beautiful, minimalist Japanese tiny houses I admired as a young architect. But whenever it all feels too cramped, too cluttered or too dirty, we remind ourselves how many resources this way of living frees up—resources we can instead devote to our projects and to spending time with our children. We also have a summer house, where we can enjoy more space during weekends and holidays.
Today, I am proud to talk about the way we live. I am glad to practise what I preach and to set an example of one way to live more sustainably. I am not perfect. Had we been given the opportunity, we probably would have moved into a larger apartment. Like most families, we try to do our best without getting everything right. But I do know this: if everyone were willing to embrace living with radically less space in the city, many of the problems our cities face today would be significantly reduced.

Najavaraq Louise Fontain We are in process with the project Bar Mark and in-residency at HAUT in Copenhagen. Today, Me and Najavaraq Louise Fontain spent the day preparing at Nordatlantens Brygge for our performance exhibition on Sunday June 21st, 14:00 ✨ We are working with relational practices, skin, plants and bodies as carriers of historical testimony.

For example, we could decide that each resident may only control a modest number of square metres.
That only a limited part of the city may be used for commercial purposes.
That there should be no unused square metres.
That tourism should be limited.
That no one should be allowed to profit from another person’s need for housing.

Small changes in the rules can completely change the city.