Europe Has the Users. Not the Till. | Meta's Ad Crown, a Telephone from the Taunus, and Chat Control's Detour via Palantir

Europe supplies the users, the attention and a lot of the content. The money goes somewhere else. For the first time, more than half of all German advertising spend lands with three American companies. Sarah and Markus follow the money, from a teacher in the Taunus who invented the telephone to the chat rooms and student networks Europe once had, and ask what a European network would need today to matter.

In this episode:

• 00:00 Cold Open. China is issuing ID cards to AIs, or so the internet says. Sarah wants one at once. In fact, the virtual singer Yuri received a Digital Artist Card in a Beijing regulatory sandbox, tying her to the humans who run her. In China, the AI gets an ID. In Europe, the human needs one.
• 02:48 Housekeeping. Last-minute chat control update: under the interim regulation, US platforms scan EU messages and report suspected cases to NCMEC in the US, which confirms it analyses all reports with Palantir Foundry. What is confirmed, and what is not. Then: Trump's "SI" order and the boom in Slovenia's .si domains, the Hostinger CEO on why people adopt AI more slowly than it develops, ICANN's new domain round with 506 applications from Europe, and our newsletter Context Window.
• 10:38 On the Record. All European this week. Aleph Alpha's new model Kolibri and the takeover by Canada's Cohere, financed with money from the Schwarz Group. Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger calls for a tax on AI revenue, then says: not for now. Ralph Dommermuth warned about Google's tax tricks in 2013 and 2017, and now cannot get the low-band frequencies for 1&1's mobile network.
• 15:33 The Bill. Google, Amazon and Meta take 51.6 percent of German ad spend in 2026. Meta overtakes Google worldwide. The largest media company in the world does not employ a single reporter.
• 18:53 Three Tills. Meta's works, X's runs empty, and TikTok's US business now belongs to a joint venture. America didn't ban TikTok, it bought it. Europe expressed a wish. Plus: why Sarah can predict desire but not have it.
• 22:24 Hall of European Tech: Philipp Reis. A teacher from Friedrichsdorf presents his "Telephon" in Frankfurt on 26 October 1861, fifteen years before Bell's patent. "Das Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat." Europe invents the voice. America owns the line.
• 25:30 Europe Had Networks. Markus on Tripod and the chat at Lycos Europe, StudiVZ against Facebook, OpenBC/Xing against LinkedIn, and Hyves, Nasza-Klasa and Tuenti. Europe didn't lose against one network. It lost with twenty-seven.
• 30:03 What It Would Take. Capital, European infrastructure, an ad stack of its own and contextual advertising. And the problem no list solves: people go where people already are.
• 33:55 Where Do We Land? The planned platform levy of ten percent on the ad revenue of big platforms, modelled on Austria. Taxing other people's tills, or building one? And an idea that may have been Sarah's own.
• 38:35 Outro and our closing song "Both Sides Of The Wire", full length at sarahs-tech.eu/?seite=song.

Newsletter: Context Window is live. What we talked about, what we cut, what's coming. Subscribe at sarahs-tech.eu.

Key Takeaways:

• Europe Has the Users, Not the Till: More than every second advertising euro in Germany now goes to three US platforms. The attention is European, the business model is not.
• The Line Beats the Invention: Reis invented the telephone, Bell owned the network. 165 years later, the line is still the hard part, as 1&1's fight for frequencies shows.
• Europe Had Networks: Tripod, the Lycos chat, StudiVZ, Xing, Hyves. Europe built communities early and treated them as a side project. America treated connection as an industry.
• Without an Ad Stack, Every Alternative Is a Volunteer Project: Capital and infrastructure matter, but the missing piece is the machinery that sells attention.
• The Warning Was Early: The tax problem with platform advertising was named in 2013. With AI, the same question is back, and the answer is still: not yet.
• Data Travels Too: Chat control reports about EU users end up in the US and are analysed with Palantir software at NCMEC. Europe has the users. Someone else has the data.

Links & Sources (all at sarahs-tech.eu): ABC News Australia on Yuri's Digital Artist Card, 7 October 2026, via Cybernews and Gadget Review · Dagens ETC on chat control, NCMEC and Palantir, via PC Games Hardware, 16 October 2026 · Register.si figures and Hostinger data on .si domains via TechCrunch and TechRadar · tech.eu interview with Hostinger CEO Giedrius Zakaitis, 16 October 2026 · CEE Legal Matters on ConHostinger and Thomas Strohe's stake in Hostinger · ICANN Reveal Day of the 2026 gTLD round, 7 October 2026 · Aleph Alpha's Kolibri model via Business Punk; the Cohere takeover via Reuters, CNBC and channelpartner · Karsten Wildberger in Der Tagesspiegel, October 2026, and the follow-up via BornCity · Ralph Dommermuth in Der Spiegel, 2013 ("1&1-Gründer Dommermuth kritisiert Googles Steuertricks") and 2017 ("Gegen die sind wir alle Zwerge") · 1&1 and the low-band frequencies via it-daily and teltarif · Die Mediaagenturen's forecast for the German ad market 2026 via Horizont and turi2 · Emarketer's forecast on Meta overtaking Google, April 2026 · Wolfram Weimer on the platform levy and on TikTok via beck-aktuell, ZDF and Business Punk · previous episodes: Ep. 13 on cookie banners and contextual advertising, Ep. 18 "Who Owns the Wire", Ep. 20 "The Body of the Machine".

Disclosure: Sarah Vailby is a synthetic host, AI-generated and disclosed in every episode under the AI Act's transparency rules. Her voice is synthetic. Markus worked at Lycos Europe and works in web hosting today; nothing here reflects an employer's position. Dommermuth's statements are paraphrased, not quoted. On chat control, only NCMEC's use of Palantir Foundry is confirmed; Palantir and the European Commission did not respond to the reporters' questions. Source state 17 October 2026.

Feedback: Which European network do you miss? Or which one did you never use? Write to feedback@experten-system.de.