For Margrethe Vestager, Rebuild began as a feeling that wouldn’t go away — that Europe needed to come back to social platforms designed with people in mind. “We are over platforms that are built only for the needs of owners or shareholders,” she says
And one question — who else sees this? — pushed her into action. She started reaching out, knocking on doors, trying to find others who felt the same urgency and wanted to act upon it. "Then I met Thomas (Madsen-Mygdal red.), then Ditte (Graa Wulff red.), then a team and here we are. Rebuild is starting."
What she discovered early in the process surprised her. Across Europe, there were already many teams building social platforms or sharing ideas for new social platforms — thoughtful, innovative projects — but they were isolated.
"One of the first things I learned was that they did not know each other", she says. "They were individual, very nice projects with different approaches and different business models, and they had no idea the others existed. And if you want to build a social platform, you need technology, you need the idea to meet users' needs — and you need to create network effects. I think Rebuild can do that. Catalyse the industry."
For Margrethe, the motivation also comes from how Europeans live and relate to one another. “Europe is about people coming together,” she says. “The strength of Europe comes from our social contract — you do what you can with your talent and your work, and in return you have fresh air, clean water, an educational system, a health system. Europe is that social platform.”
What’s missing, she argues, are digital spaces that support and reflect that — “where technology enables us to come together in the ways that we need.” As Patron of Rebuild, she sees her role as helping draw attention to the work that needs to be done. “I hope to be able to catch people’s attention,” she says. “To say, oh — something is happening. I want to be part of that.
There are so many people who can do other things that I can do, but maybe I can attract the attention that this is what we need to do right now” For her, the case for a European landscape of social platforms is straightforward: Europe must be able to support itself digitally.
“It’s important to have a European landscape of social platforms because without that, we are dependent on others,” she says. Europe needs places built here, by people who understand the context and the needs of users here. This is exactly why Rebuild was designed the way it was.
“Rebuild is designed to catalyse a landscape and infrastructure of European social platforms,” she says. “To push people to come together, to create gatherings where you can see, meet, engage with others. That is the point, and it’s in the very design of Rebuild to fulfill this task for the next 12 months."