#wsocial

ralf g. @r@social.uninformation.net · 3d ago

Man muss schon über einen ausgeprägten Untertanengeist verfügen, um sich bei so einem staatsnah daherkommenden Social Network mit Ausweispflicht anzumelden. Kein normaler Mensch macht das. Von daher verwundern diese Zahlen nicht. #wsocial #EU #EUDI #SocialMedia Daumenregel: Finger weg, wenn Zensursula und ihre Bürokratengang der Regulierer etwas gut finden. https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KZQVMPKM23E4CERN39947WG6

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Elena Rossini on GoToSocial ⁂ @elena@aseachange.com · 3d ago

Boosted by

Elena Rossini 🌈 @_elena@mastodon.social

Good morning Fedi friends. Is anybody curious about how the #WSocial experiment is going? You know, the private, for profit "European answer to X" endorsed by the European Commission, which is a fork of Bluesky and has quietly gone closed-source before its beta launch (à la #TruthSocial)? I've got numbers for you! Nearly two months in, W Social has almost the same number of accounts as #Eurosky... You know, the European fork of Bluesky that does NOT require government IDs to post. W Social: 23.5k accounts Eurosky: 24.8k accounts In order to post on W Social you need to provide your government ID and go through a 13-step verification process. So far 4.5k accounts are verified but only 2036 (as of this morning) have ever published a single post or reply. There is a handy website - https://pdsls.dev - that allows you to monitor the "firehose" of any ATproto-powered PDS. Inspired by @pallenberg@mastodon.social and his awesome videos (example: https://mu.social/profile/palle.eurosky.social/post/3mskkqrrc522l) I have been comparing the live activities of the two networks. The difference is SHOCKING. W Social is largely a zombie, dormant network, with a high number of accounts that do not interact. Eurosky by contrast shows very lively activity. The screenshot I grabbed yesterday shows a side-by-side comparison of their firehose over a 27 minute period. W Social had a total of 240 events (follows, likes, posts...) whereas Eurosky registered 7596 events in the same time interval. A couple of days ago I downloaded their PDS and saw that 67,8% of their accounts have 0 follows, 0 followers and 0 posts. That's what I mean when I call it a "zombie network." W Social's CEO says they plan to start monetizing by introducing ads in 2027. WITH THESE NUMBERS?!? Sure Jan. I love how with the transparency of open data you can't really use the standard playbook of CEO hype and hubris. Because we can all see their numbers. And they are BAAAAD. I have been feeling very strong second hand embarrassment for the European Commission and especially Ursula von der Leyen - who went so far as to publicize the W launch in between G7 meetings in June. I wonder how they feel about it... and if they are even aware of how badly the network is doing right now. I suspect the network can be on life support for a year or two but things aren't looking good. Thought you should know! For my series of articles about W Social, check out: https://blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-social/ I may have another one coming in the fall...

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Azkel @azkel@mastodon.com.pl · Aug 03, 2026

Dostałem w końcu zaproszenie do #wsocial. Pierwsze wrażenie nie jest jednak zbyt pozytywne. Na plus - da się zarejestrować bez uwierzytelniania danymi osobowymi w trybie "read-only", bez dostępu do edycji profilu ani wysyłania wiadomości. Na minus, jedyna forma uwierzytelnienia to przekazanie im swojego dowodu lub paszportu - łącznie z danymi typu seria dokumentu. Aplikacja jest zfederowana z Bluesky, da się wchodzić w interakcję (chyba, bo nie jestem zwalidowany) z profilami stamtąd. Natomiast krótkie przeszukanie potencjalnych profilów które są explicit na W sprowadziło się u mnie do dwóch - Partii Razem i Gazety Wyborczej. Reszta to głównie konta z Bluesky (w tym m.in. od paru dobrych miesięcy nie aktualizowane konto aktualnego Premiera). Jednocześnie, próbując znaleźć ciekawe posty/osoby do śledzenia wbiłem się w tamtejszy odpowiednik "DIscover" i ustawiłem filtr na Polska. Raczej żadnych danych telemetrycznych nie było jak powiązać, bo na potrzeby rejestracji użyłem nowego maila, ale już na dzień dobry dostałem na polecajki w dziale Kultura... "Porn Election 1987" i "Doda na Weselu". Nie wiem skąd mnie tak sprofilowało, zakładam, że wszyscy to dostają jako domyślne wpisy. Doczekaliśmy się Albicli na poziomie europejskim, proszę państwa.

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Sascha Pallenberg 🇹🇼 ♻️ ⚡ @pallenberg@mastodon.social · Aug 02, 2026

Vorab als Podcast 👉 https://share.transistor.fm/s/0048cc7b zum heutigen #DigitalIndependenceDay

Warum ich via #Eurosky wieder im #Bluesky Kosmos aufgeschlagen bin
Wieso #Wsocial eine absolute Geisterstadt und zum Scheitern verurteilt ist.
Weshalb das #Fediverse bei mir um den Faktor 3 bis 4 mehr Traffic als #Bluesky bringt

Gerne boosten/teilen. Danke fuer euren Support 🙏

#did #diday #SocialMedia

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iSabreman @iSabreman@mastodon.online · Jul 29, 2026

Ugh got an invite to #WSocial it's bad in all the ways you've probably already read on Mastodon. The @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu @digitaleu@ec.social-network.europa.eu got this all badly wrong. W Social isn't social media it's corporate social media obsessed with control, power and massive privacy intrusions.

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Elektropunk @elektropunk@chaos.social · Jul 25, 2026

Ich durfte mit Svenja Bergt von @tazgetroete@mastodon.social über die Plattform W Social sprechen. Der Artikel ist heute in der Printausgabe und im Netz. Danke auch an @_elena@mastodon.social für die ausführliche Recherche! #wsocial #Fediverse #taz https://taz.de/Ist-W-das-bessere-X/!6197674

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Aral Balkan @aral@mastodon.ar.al · Jul 20, 2026

Want an update on the Weekend at Bernie’s clown show that is W Social? No? Me neither, but here we are…

So before we start, let’s recount the whole dystopian raison d’être of these Davosian clowns: to be a EU®opean “alternative to X” that – cue the 1984 theme tune – verifies your identity to ensure that only “real people” are on it (real is what your government says it is).

Now, let’s fast forward to last week, when TikTok set up an account on W Social.

That’s nice, isn’t it? One surveillance capitalist lending their support to another? Kumbaya and all that. The only problem? (spoiler alert), it wasn’t TikTok. (Shocking, I know.)

The account, Identity Verified™ by EU X – sorry, W Social, was a spam account and immediately labelled as such by BlueSky moderators. (Don’t you love a “decentralised” system where a post on an EU server, accessed from another EU server, is moderated by our benevolent Big Brother in Trumpland, by the way? I know it just warms the cockles of my heart. So much sovereignty! But I digress…)

So @_elena@mastodon.social calls them out (someone has to while @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu is busy preparing for their honeymoon after expressing their undying devotion to W Social recently on every social platform¹):

https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mqob7shxks2t

Anna Zeiter – W CEO, Stanford’s own, and ex-eBay executive (such sovereignty) – replies with this absolute zinger:

“We are just verifying if some [sic] is a human and at least 18 years old. Users are then free to choose their own user name. This (human) user apparently chose the name TikTok.“ (https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mqoepm7m2k2z)

Read that as many times as you like until it really sinks in.

These incompetent clowns (dangerous competent clowns but incompetent clowns nevertheless) make people go through a ridiculous 13-step identity verification stage² and then… umm… you get to choose whatever identity you want.

🤡🤡🤡

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they’re incompetent. It would be worse if they were competent, given they’re a closed-source venture-capital-funded startup determined to prove your identity.

“Yes we have a business model, it’s not a philanthropy, we are not a B corp, we actually want to make money.” – Anna Zeiter³

But, what I want to know is this: Why has @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu embraced a proprietary, closed-source, corporate ghost town with 14,300 accounts, 90% of which have not posted even once (in other words, with only 1,259 accounts that have ever posted)⁴ when there is a thriving non-corporate fediverse with millions of active people on it.

Could it have anything to do with identity verification, surveillance, and control?

And if so, why can’t they even get that right?

Looking forward to seeing how long @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu can drag the corpse of W Social around before people realise it’s dead.

Oh, and how does this make the whole “European alternatives” thing look? Not good. Not because there aren’t excellent European alternatives but because the folks at the commission are either too clueless or too corrupt to recognise and support them.

So, yeah, how’s your Monday going?

¹ e.g., https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333053823108 etc.

² https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTECDMT2

³ https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ (from the YouTube video that they since deleted. Nice transparency there, clowns.)

⁴ Run this script in Node 18+ to reproduce the numbers from their PDS yourself: https://codeberg.org/aral/gists/src/branch/main/wsocial-pds-stats.js Also see https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-broken-ghost-town/ and https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/

#WSocial #EU #sovereignty #socialMedia #socialNetworking #mastodon #fediverse #activityPub #ATProto #startups #EUCommission

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Samuel Brinkmann @sabrinkmann@hachyderm.io · Jul 16, 2026

I did read a lot of @_elena@mastodon.social on #wsocial, especially the Ghosttown one. And I had two questions on me: Is the "W" in wsocial for winning? And is this "Ghosttown" winning*? Luckily, wsocial is built on top of Atproto and uses a PDS, and this has a public API. So, I created: https://w-for-winning-questionmark.playground.54gradsoftware.de/ This updates weekly and compares the wsocial account activity numbers to staff of European institutions. *Depending on what the definition of winning is for this VC Funded company, I would not say it is currently very successful. Personally, I would say that a network only for verified accounts can never win, but the numbers are also still quite low. The number of accounts that have at least one post in the last 31 days is, with 1,061 accounts, lower than my "local" Mastodon instance, Norden.social. Please note that the numbers on the website are only as accurate as the publicly available data, and for legal reasons they may not be entirely accurate. You can find the software here: https://github.com/54GradSoftware/w-for-winning-questionmark

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Eugen Rochko @Gargron@mastodon.social · Jul 16, 2026

Boosted by

Trending Bot @trending@homestead.social

It's the third time I am receiving what I can only generously assume to be an automated e-mail from #WSocial trying to convince me, the original founder (and still active advisor and proponent) of one of their competitors, to start posting on their platform.

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Jan-Olof "Osku" Eriksson @jaoler@suomi.social · Jul 15, 2026

The European Commission has joined W Social, a closed-source European platform, weeks after publishing its Open Source Strategy. Megan Kirkwood asks whether the move contradicts the Commission's own goals. @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu https://www.techpolicy.press/europes-w-social-bet-tests-its-vision-of-digital-sovereignty/ #Wsocial #opensource

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kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl · Jul 15, 2026

The much hyped wsocial.eu has entered beta. Anyone seen this? Runs on AT-protocol and being also on Bsky I don’t have any strong emotions about either of them, just curious. #wsocial

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Marcel Waldvogel @marcel@waldvogel.family · Jul 14, 2026

Replying to @marcel@waldvogel.family

*️⃣ @MrClicko@mastodon.social hat sich auch dem Thema W Social angenommen, welches bei DNIP schon mehrfach Thema war. Er ergänzt die Kritik am aktuellen Betriebs- und Geschäftsmodell mit einigen interessanten Vorschlägen, wie ein europäisches Soziales Netzwerk aussehen könnte und erfolgreich sein könnte. #WSocial https://blog.clickomania.ch/2026/07/09/w-social-soziales-netzwerk-aus-europa-test/

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Jan-Olof "Osku" Eriksson @jaoler@suomi.social · Jul 13, 2026

Tämä blogautus kyseenalaistaa W Socialin lupaukset mm. avoimuudesta. En allekirjoita kaikkia sen johtopäätöksiä, mutta pidän keskeistä sanomaa tärkeänä. Luottamus ei synny vain siitä, että palvelu on eurooppalainen. Se syntyy läpinäkyvyydestä ja siitä, että toiminta vastaa annettuja lupauksia. Lukusuositus. #WSocial https://wecanjustdothings.leaflet.pub/3mokohkfb4224

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Sascha Pallenberg 🇹🇼 ♻️ ⚡ @pallenberg@mastodon.social · Jul 08, 2026

Gestern meinen #Bluesky Account rueber zu #Eurosky migriert. Ich denke, dass das ne richtige Entscheidung war. Will natuerlich beobachten, wie das dort weiter funktioniert. Vor allen Dingen auch in Richtung der Closed Source-Klitsche #Wsocial die zum Scheitern verurteilt ist. Problem seit dem Switch: Ich kann weder mein Profil editieren, noch kann ich Posts unpinnen. Schade!

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Arun Shah™ @arunshah240@mastodon.social · Jul 05, 2026

Replying to @_elena@mastodon.social

@_elena@mastodon.social My #Wsocial couldn't verify. They didn't help me verify my account

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JWcph, Radicalized By Decency @jwcph@helvede.net · Jul 02, 2026

RE: https://sfba.social/@markmetz/116850223076964583 It's almost as if being American isn't the only problem with Big Tech... #tech #BigTech #WSocial

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Gaute ⚡ Holmin @gaute@social.gaute.space · Jul 01, 2026

Jeg fikk invite til W Social i den digitale postkassen idag. Jeg har egentlig ingen intensjoner om å være noe aktive på denne Bluesky-lignende kommersielle tjenesten som baserer seg på AT-protocol, men jeg tenkte det var greit å få registrert en konto og sjekke hva det er, om ikke annet for å unngå at noen tar brukernavnet jeg pleier å ha. For å kunne gjøre noe som helst på W Social så må man verifisere identiteten sin. Greit nok, det er konseptet, tillitt basert på identifisering. Så jeg dro opp mitt nasjonale ID-kort som har NFC identifisering. Appen klarte ikke å lese teksten på kortet uansett hva jeg gjorde (jeg har gjort det samme med BankID, så kortet fungerer). Uansett, jeg fant frem det flunka nye passet mitt. Her kom jeg lenger, appen leste teksten og gjenkjente NFC-chippen, men så feilet appen med å lese NFC-chippen (igjen, BankID og LinkedIn klarer dette helt utmerket). Nå kjente jeg at nok var nok. Jeg har fått opprettet brukerkonto, navnet mitt er reservert, men uten å identifisere meg kan jeg ikke gjøre noe mer. Jeg kan egentlig leve helt fint med det

@elena@aseachange.com har skrevet en god del interessant om #WSocial for de som har lyst til å grave mer i hva dette er for noe: https://blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-social/

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brume ⏚ 🤔 ⛵ 🐧 ☮️ 🇵🇸 🍉 @brume@piaille.fr · Jun 30, 2026

Via @aral@mastodon.ar.al Pourquoi la @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu fait elle la promotion agressive d'un outil numérique obscur, #Wsocial, financé par une société de capital risque, à but lucratif, et qui n'est pas open source ? Particulièrement quand une alternative créée en #Europe, libre et gratuite et non-commerciale, qui a déjà des millions d'utilisateurs, #Mastodon, est interopérable avec une initiative internationale appelée #Fediverse ? Cela aurait-il à voir avec la vérification obligatoire de l'identité ? Fuyez #Wsocial : c'est un outil de fichage épouvantable.

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Hardy Erlinger @hardy@social.netspectrum.de · Jun 30, 2026

Replying to @_elena@mastodon.social

@_elena@mastodon.social I can understand both your exhaustion of not wanting to write about this train wreck any longer and the desire to troll them instead. 😇 While I am fully behind initiatives to strengthen European digital independence, #wsocial seems to be no more than wannabe big tech of the US kind with a server hosted in Europe. We don't need these and we can do better. I also think that the importance of your tenacity goes way beyond WSocial, because they are surely not the only US-copycats trying to get a foothold (and funding!) in the new European digital scene. If this project ends in embarrassment for not only the company but also the politicians behind it, they may be willing to have a more thorough look next time. And your articles serve as great documentation for when this time comes. Highly appreciated.

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Aral Balkan @aral@mastodon.ar.al · Jun 30, 2026

Boosted by

Elena Rossini 🌈 @_elena@mastodon.social

RE: https://mastodon.social/@_elena/116837769511681692 Also, please remember that all #WSocial has to do to win is have the benefit of the doubt. Don’t give them that. If they have it, with so much money and political influence, they can scale. If they scale, they can reach network effects. If they reach network effects, there’s zero you can do to stop them. Fine! So what? Well, they have mandatory identity verification. Once they have network effects, the European Commission can say “any social network that doesn’t implement mandatory identity verification is henceforth illegal in the EU. We have our own “sovereign” network, WSocial, that implements it and if any other networks want to operate in the EU, they must too. Facebook, etc., will implement it in a heartbeat. The fediverse? It’ll be illegal. So, yeah, maybe don’t give them the benefit of the doubt. Actively resist them. Don’t engage with people on there. Warn your friends. They’re not building a social network. They’re building the infrastructure for a police state backed by the European Commission. #WSocial #mandatoryIdentityVerification #surveillance #EU #EuropeanCommission

Quoting

Elena Rossini 🌈 @_elena@mastodon.social

#WSocial posted a message on their official account talking about "temporary profile issues" for "some W users." Reality (exposed in my latest article): their network was BRICKED for ALL NEW USERS who joined starting on June 22 (some 3100+ accounts out of 5000) for 7+ days. An amateur reporter and self-hosting newbie (aka me) figured out the problem and the solution, bringing attention to this matter. I had to respond: https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mpig4ggkpk2q hope others chime in 🤭

Open quoted post

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