Two Canadian Social Networks, Two Approaches to Digital Sovereignty

A few months ago, I moved my personal website from Vercel to a server in Beauharnois, Quebec. Seemed straightforward enough. Move the files, configure a few services, update DNS, and enjoy my new Canadian home.

Well, sort of.

There were databases, backups, email, CDN services, and the small matter of figuring out which dependencies were still outside Canada.

I thought I was moving a website. Apparently, I'd volunteered for an infrastructure audit.

That experience got me thinking more seriously about digital sovereignty. I've spent considerable time poking around the AT Protocol, exploring Personal Data Servers (PDSes), and trying to understand what it actually means to control our online identities and information.

Seems like spending my working days dealing with technology isn't quite enough punishment.

Which brings me to two Canadian social networks I've been supporting for some time: Gander and EH! Social.

I've been involved with both platforms since their early days. I participated in both beta communities. I maintain a paid EH! subscription and remain active there. I've also invested financially in Gander and have been active there as well.

Full disclosure, then. I have a financial interest in Gander's success, and I want readers to know that.

I've admittedly spent more time on Gander lately, largely because I've been working with the underlying AT Protocol technology. I've also spoken with Ben and the Gander team on several occasions and have written a few articles about Gander, its infrastructure and its ambitions for Canadian social media.

EH! has been part of my Canadian social media experience too, but I knew considerably less about its underlying systems. To give both platforms a fair examination, I reached out to Jessica Glowacki, founder and CEO of EH! and TrailMix Technologies.

Jessica kindly responded, sharing details and explaining TrailMix's ambitions. I also spent some time reviewing the company's published strategy.

I've written quite a bit about Gander already, so EH! will get a little more attention here. I've covered much of Gander's technology and ambitions in previous articles. EH!'s underlying systems are newer territory for me, and Jess has given me some interesting material to explore.

I genuinely want both to succeed. I'm not looking to declare a winner, and I don't think every Canadian social network needs to adopt the same architecture.

But I do think we should understand what we're supporting, what trade-offs we're accepting, and what control we actually have over our digital lives.

Gander: Building a Canadian Home in the Atmosphere

Gander is built on the AT Protocol, the open protocol also used by Bluesky.

For anyone unfamiliar with the technology, the AT Protocol separates several responsibilities that traditional social media platforms tend to bundle together.

Personal Data Servers hold account records. Relays distribute updates across the network. AppViews assemble the feeds and conversations people actually see. Labelling services provide information that applications can use to moderate or filter content.

The important part is that these components don't necessarily have to be operated by the same organization.

Gander is building Canadian infrastructure around this model through Wingspan, including its own Sovereign PDS, AppView and moderation services.

It's not simply a Canadian-looking interface sitting on top of Bluesky.

The goal is to operate more of the underlying infrastructure independently while retaining the possibility of communicating with other services using the same protocol.

A member's identity and account records could, in principle, move between compatible providers without requiring them to rebuild their entire online presence.

I like that approach. A lot.

But here's where my enthusiasm runs into a little frustration.

I've been building AT Protocol applications, including Byline.pub, and I'd love to be able to use my Gander identity to sign in to those services. That's part of the attraction of the protocol in the first place. One identity, different applications, without having to create another account every time.

Right now, I can't rely on that working the way I'd like across the services I'm using.

I understand that Gander's infrastructure is evolving, and I appreciate the work involved. But this is one of those cases where the promise of interoperability and the experience of actually trying to use it are still some distance apart.

Gander has deliberately taken a selective approach to interoperability, giving members a choice about how much of the wider AT Protocol network they see. Its “Gander + Bluesky” setting allows one-way discovery of content from the broader AT Protocol network, including Bluesky, Eurosky, Blacksky and other services.

Full cross-network interaction and account migration remain on Gander's roadmap. Some of the current boundaries are intentional design choices, while other capabilities are still being developed.

The potential is exciting, but we should measure progress against what actually works.

Gander also takes a deliberate approach to participation and moderation through its Human Check verification system, community guidelines and labelling infrastructure.

The goal is to create a space with fewer bots and more accountable human participation, while operating under Canadian governance.

Those decisions shape the community as much as the technology does.

Beyond Gander: The Wingspan Ambition

Gander's ambitions also extend well beyond its own social network.

Through Wingspan, the team wants to provide Canadian-operated AT Protocol infrastructure that other developers, businesses, institutions and communities can build upon.

Gander could become one application among many using that infrastructure. Rather than every Canadian developer having to build and maintain an entire social networking stack, Wingspan could provide some of those underlying services.

The team has also talked about broader international interoperability, account migration, creator tools and eventually opening more of its code.

There's a considerable amount of work involved, and some of those capabilities are still on the roadmap. Turning an open protocol into a reliable ecosystem of independent applications takes time and plenty of engineering.

But I can see the opportunity, especially as someone building applications of my own. Canada could have a foundation for a wider social ecosystem, with different services operating independently while still being able to communicate.

The trade-offs

Operating independent AT Protocol infrastructure is complicated.

You need services that reliably exchange information, maintain records, support moderation decisions, and handle differences between applications.

Gander's Boards, Groups and other platform-specific features present another challenge. They work within Gander, but another AT Protocol application won't necessarily understand them.

That's a challenge for the wider ecosystem, not just Gander. But users won't care whose implementation is responsible when something they expected to work doesn't.

Operating independent infrastructure also brings technical responsibilities. Gander has to maintain its own services, keep them reliable as the community grows, and manage the complexity of running more of the AT Protocol stack itself.

And there's the tension between openness and local control.

How much of the wider network should Gander embrace? How does it preserve a distinctly Canadian community while allowing people to interact internationally?

The protocol provides tools and options. It doesn't make the policy decisions for us.

EH!: Starting With the Community

EH! approaches the problem from another direction.

The platform was developed independently by TrailMix Technologies, a Canadian technology company based in British Columbia.

Rather than adopting an existing protocol such as AT Protocol or ActivityPub, EH! built its own social network.

Its focus is local.

The application connects Canadians with communities, businesses, local news and events. EH! also operates public local portals through ehnow.ca, intended to give Canadian cities a home for discovering what's happening nearby.

This part of EH!'s approach is particularly familiar to me.

I've built and operated several social media sites over the years. About 15 years ago, I took a run at building a business called Urbis Local, a social network focused on connecting local communities and businesses.

Sound familiar?

Urbis never really got off the ground. We were early, perhaps too early. At the time, the response I kept hearing was:

"Why would we need a Canadian version of Facebook?"

Fair question back then. Facebook was where everyone was, and most people saw little reason to leave. There wasn't much appetite for an alternative, Canadian or otherwise.

Fifteen years later, I doubt we'd get quite the same reaction.

The problem hasn't gone away, but people's reasons for wanting an alternative have certainly changed.

A local bookstore shouldn't need to become an expert in manipulating a global recommendation algorithm just to let neighbours know about an author signing.

A community group shouldn't have to pay an American advertising giant to tell people about a fundraiser down the street.

And a Canadian social network can do more than provide somewhere to complain about American politics.

Although, admittedly, we've been getting plenty of material lately. More than our fair share.

Beyond EH!: TrailMix's Ambitions

After reading through TrailMix's website, I found that EH! is part of a broader design.

TrailMix describes its work as local-social infrastructure.

The idea is to create technology that makes communities, businesses, events and local information easier to discover, while supporting the economies around them.

EH! is the flagship implementation.

There's an economic argument here that goes beyond social networking.

Canadian businesses spend considerable advertising dollars reaching customers through international platforms. Local organizations compete against global entertainment, political outrage and whatever happens to be occupying the algorithms that morning.

TrailMix wants to keep more of that attention and economic activity within local communities.

EH! also offers choices around how people experience their feeds, including chronological content and topic preferences through its MyEH experience.

Those features address a different kind of user control from the identity portability offered by an open protocol.

It's control over what you see, rather than where your account lives.

Too much of social media is designed to hold our attention. There's value in helping people actually find one another.

Jessica explained EH!'s philosophy rather well when she wrote to me:

"Sovereignty matters to us, but it’s in service of community, not the other way around."

She's right about the priority. I spent years trying to make a local social network work with Urbis Local. If people can't see a reason to use the service, the underlying technology won't rescue it.

That's where EH! deserves some credit. TrailMix is concentrating on the community experience and the local economy. Whether that model succeeds commercially remains to be seen, but there's a recognisable problem they're trying to solve.

And TrailMix isn't planning to stop at Canada.

Jessica describes the company's strategy as "Canada first, built to repeat." EH! is the flagship, but the intention is to take the same underlying technology and local-community model into other markets when the time is right.

I like the ambition. There's no reason a Canadian technology company can't develop something here and export it elsewhere.

It does raise a few questions, though. Would future networks operate independently? Would they share infrastructure? How would local laws, privacy requirements and community governance work in each market?

Those details haven't been established, and expansion remains a future goal. But it's an interesting direction for a Canadian company that's still building out its first platform.

What's under the hood?

Jessica confirmed that EH! is independently developed and doesn't currently use AT Protocol or ActivityPub.

It also doesn't federate with other social networks.

This doesn't establish whether every component of EH!'s software is proprietary or open source. It tells us that the overall social network is independently developed and isn't currently participating in those federated ecosystems.

EH! operates on Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres in Canada, with member data stored domestically.

The platform is Canadian-built and owned, but its infrastructure currently depends on an American cloud provider.

Jessica also explained that the company has a path towards full data sovereignty in development.

Canadian ownership matters. So does keeping the data here. Neither settles who ultimately controls the infrastructure or which laws can reach it.

I understand the choice and appreciate the distinction. AWS offers mature infrastructure and plenty of tools for a growing company. Building a social network is difficult enough without also having to build a cloud platform.

But AWS is an American company, and Canadian data residency doesn't eliminate every legal dependency. The U.S. CLOUD Act can apply to information held by qualifying providers outside the United States, subject to legal process and safeguards.

That doesn't give American authorities unrestricted access to Canadian data. It does mean there are jurisdictional questions that could come up.

Those were some of the same questions that led me to move my own website to Quebec.

The question isn't whether using AWS is inherently wrong. It's what level of independence EH! wants to achieve, what risks it considers acceptable today, and how it intends to get where it wants to be.

Jessica says that work is underway.

I'll be interested to see how it develops.

Interoperability and portability

Although EH! has chosen to develop independently, Jessica hasn't ruled out future interoperability. She's open to conversations about standards and partnerships between Canadian platforms as the ecosystem develops.

For now, EH! members can request their personal data through the platform's privacy processes, but there isn't a confirmed mechanism for moving their identities and social connections to another service.

That's worth distinguishing from the portability the AT Protocol is designed to support, even if Gander's own implementation still has work ahead of it.

For some users, that won't be an immediate concern.

They want a reliable service where they can talk with friends, find community events, discover local businesses and enjoy themselves.

Fair enough.

For others, especially those who have spent years watching social networks change ownership, policies or business models, the ability to leave without starting over matters considerably.

How much that matters depends on what you expect from the platform.

The trade-offs

EH!'s independently developed architecture gives its team freedom to build around its own product priorities. It doesn't have to make every feature conform to the expectations of an existing federated protocol.

That can be useful when building something focused on local discovery, businesses and communities. The trade-off is greater dependence on the operator.

Without established federation or portable identity, members rely more heavily on EH! to preserve their accounts, relationships and access to the community.

Its infrastructure strategy also matters.

And its plans for international expansion may raise questions about future ownership, governance and the independence of regional communities.

A Technical Comparison, Without the Scoreboard

The two approaches become easier to understand when we look at what each is trying to accomplish.

Gander has a working community and an ambitious infrastructure roadmap. My experience with Byline.pub shows there's still a gap between the protocol's potential and what works across applications today.

EH! already delivers its local-community experience, but its longer-term independence and portability remain open questions.

Both have real products. I'm more interested in how they address their remaining gaps than in judging either solely by its architecture.

Canadian Data Residency Isn't the Whole Story

When I moved my website from Vercel to OVHcloud in Quebec, I felt better about where the infrastructure lived. But that didn't suddenly make every dependency Canadian. Hence my “Assembled in Canada.” 

There were still decisions about DNS, CDN services, databases, backups and email. I could self-host more of it. I could even run my own AT Protocol PDS. Ugh, Please, no.

I've spent enough of my professional life maintaining systems to know what that involves. Backups, availability, security updates, recovery procedures and whatever breaks at two in the morning. I've had quite enough of that excitement.

I don't need to run everything myself. I want trustworthy providers, preferably Canadian where practical, and the ability to change them if circumstances demand it.

That's where sovereignty gets complicated.

A Canadian company can operate on American infrastructure. An open protocol can offer portability while relying on services outside Canada. And an entirely Canadian-operated system can still leave its users dependent on a single provider.

There are different risks and different degrees of control.

We need to stop using sovereignty as a binary marketing label and start auditing our actual dependencies.

The Economic Side of Sovereignty

There's another question that sometimes gets lost in the technical debate.

Where does the money go?

Canadian businesses spend advertising dollars with international technology companies. Canadian creators depend on foreign platforms for visibility. Local organizations increasingly rely on systems they neither control nor have much influence over.

TrailMix has made keeping more of that economic activity in Canada part of its mission.

Gander approaches the broader problem through an interoperable technical ecosystem, where independent applications and service providers can potentially participate without everything belonging to one company.

Both companies face the same business reality. Infrastructure, development, security, moderation and support all cost money. Gander and EH! have chosen different technical approaches, but both need business models that support their ambitions over the long term.

How do you keep building without compromising the principles that got you started?

TrailMix's ambitions around community-focused infrastructure raise questions about how ownership and governance will evolve as it expands.

Gander, too, will need to balance financial sustainability with its commitment to independence and interoperability.

Gander has also structured itself as a B.C. Benefit Company, putting a stated public-benefit mission alongside its commercial responsibilities. I'd be interested in how both companies maintain their founding principles as they grow.

Who ultimately controls these companies? Can their missions survive changes in ownership or investment? What obligations do they have to the communities depending on them?

I'd rather see both become sustainable Canadian businesses that retain the principles that attracted their early communities. Growth is good. What happens to ownership, governance and accountability as they grow is worth watching.

Building Something Worth Keeping

Do we need one Canadian social network?

I hope not.

We've spent years watching a handful of American corporations accumulate enormous influence over our online communities. Replacing them with one dominant Canadian platform doesn't seem like much of an improvement.

I'd rather see a few good Canadian alternatives, each doing something useful and giving people a genuine choice.

And that doesn't mean they can't work together.

I've worked with competing businesses before, and I still do. Competition doesn't prevent cooperation when there's something useful to gain. Sometimes working together makes the market bigger for everyone.

There has expressed an openness to future conversations about standards and partnerships. Gander's work with the AT Protocol provides its own opportunities for interoperability. 

The systems couldn't simply connect tomorrow, but I'd be interested to see where the teams might find common ground.

I appreciate Jessica taking the time to answer my questions about EH!'s architecture and ambitions. I've also appreciated my conversations with Ben and the Gander team, which have informed several of my earlier articles.

I've supported both platforms because I want Canadian alternatives to succeed. That doesn't require pretending either has everything figured out. I've been around technology long enough to know better.

What should Canadian digital sovereignty actually guarantee? Is domestic ownership and data residency enough? Should portable identities be an expectation? And how do we support Canadian businesses without building another collection of systems nobody can leave?

I'm interested in what developers, operators and everyday users think.  

I don't believe Canada needs one social network to rule them all. We've had enough experience with digital landlords.

I'd rather see us build a neighbourhood where people have choices, businesses have opportunities, and nobody has to surrender their digital life just because they want to move next door.

Even if the neighbours don't all agree on the plumbing.

Sources and further reading

• Gander - Official website
• Gander - FAQ and infrastructure
• EH! - Canada's Social Network
• TrailMix Technologies - Company strategy
• AT Protocol - Technical overview
• AWS - Canadian data privacy
• AWS - CLOUD Act overview

My thanks to Jessica Glowacki, founder and CEO of EH! and TrailMix Technologies, for answering my questions about the platform's architecture and future direction.

Disclosure: I am an investor in Gander and maintain a paid EH! subscription. I have participated in both communities since their early stages. The opinions expressed here are my own. This is an independent exploration, not an independent security or infrastructure audit.

Information current to October 2026. Platform capabilities and development plans may change.

Jason Butterfield is a Canadian sci-fi author, veteran, technology leader, and developer of Byline.pub. His fiction explores identity, power, ethics, and our uneasy relationship with technology. He is the author of Pejorative: Echoes of a Nation and the forthcoming Simulacrum: Echoes of Humanity.

He writes from Ontario, fuelled by coffee, dry humour, and a healthy distrust of unchecked systems.

Follow on:

Gander: @jgbutterfieldwrites.gander.social

EH! Social: @jasonbu_author

Bluesky: @jasonbu.online

Threads: @jgbutterfieldwrites