Schools do not need a public square. They need closed classes, staff who can moderate today, and no ads or ranking of pupils. Most groups still land on WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok because that is where families already are.

That is not only which apps people pick. Saura, Casas and Arguelho (2026) say digital sovereignty in schools is also about power and money: who owns the servers, who sets the rules, and whether teachers and families get a say. A public AI project can still depend on big vendors. A free-software school site still fails if staff cannot run it and decide what it is for. Paying the same companies for a “sovereign” cloud is the trap they call sovereignty-as-a-service. The EFF (2026) draws the same line for digital sovereignty more broadly: real control over infrastructure and exit paths, not a vendor label on the same stack (see Sources). The FSFE (2026) pushes Free Software as the model for digital public services — including the school stack — so procurement does not lock classrooms into closed platforms (see Sources). “P2P learning” is not automatically fair either: who picks the topic and who runs the platform still matters (Antoniadis and Pantazis, 2021). This page matches school needs with tools a school can run and moderate — not a nicer skin on someone else’s platform.

Below: usual school needs, then concrete pairings with tools from this dossier. See Sources at the bottom of this page.

Need	Why it matters	Closed default	FLOSS start
Closed classes	Pupils should not be a public audience	Facebook Groups, Instagram class accounts	Bonfire, locked-down Mastodon
Staff moderation	A teacher must act locally, not via a distant ticket	Platform trust and safety	Instance admin, local moderators
Minors and consent	Age, parental consent, no tracking of children	Opaque age-gates	School-run accounts, no ads
No ads, no ranking	Feeds must not optimize for time on platform	Instagram, TikTok, YouTube	Pixelfed, PeerTube, Mastodon
School-controlled hosting	Data and policy stay with the institution	US / cloud SaaS	Self-host, or a hoster the school chose
Parent reach	Families need notices without a pupil Instagram or a mixed WhatsApp group	WhatsApp class groups, Instagram	School-only Mastodon / Bonfire channel
School podcast / radio	Audio from lessons, clubs, or the school station should not live on a commercial recommender	Spotify, YouTube	Castopod
School forum / clubs	Clubs and subject boards need threads, not a public ranking feed	Reddit	Lemmy

School use	Closed (typical today)	FLOSS in this dossier
Class or school channel	Instagram, Facebook	Mastodon, Bonfire, Pixelfed
Lesson or event video	YouTube, TikTok, Twitch	PeerTube
School events	Facebook Events	Mobilizon
Student voice / council	Instagram polls, commercial “civic” apps	Decidim
Parent / family notices	WhatsApp groups, Instagram	Mastodon, Bonfire
School podcast / radio	Spotify, YouTube	Castopod
School forum / clubs	Reddit	Lemmy (school scenario), Flarum

Back to the general tools comparison.

• Saura, G., Casas, J. and Arguelho, M. (2026) ‘Digital sovereignty as a political and economic struggle: the state and social movements in education’, Learning, Media and Technology. doi:10.1080/17439884.2026.2692954 (online 24 June 2026; the publisher PDF is not free, so we link the DOI only).
• Antoniadis, P. and Pantazis, A. (2021) ‘P2P learning’, in M. O’Neil, C. Pentzold and S. Toupin (eds.) The Handbook of Peer Production. Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 197–210. Author’s version (personal, non-commercial, no derivatives): PDF (nethood.org).
• Bortzmeyer, S. (2018) Cyberstructure. L’Internet, un espace politique. Caen: C&F éditions (collection Société numérique). ISBN 978-2-915825-87-9 (print); 978-2-915825-88-6 (epub). The full book is not free, so we do not host it; publisher specimen: PDF; companion site cyberstructure.fr.
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (2026) ‘Digital Sovereignty: What It Is, What It Could Be’. Available at: eff.org (Accessed: 21 September 2026).
• Free Software Foundation Europe (2026) ‘The FSFE calls for Free Software as the model for digital public services’. Available at: fsfe.org (Accessed: 21 September 2026).