#wsocial

I just got an invite from W Social, the anti-disinfo, 'privacy-focused European alternative' to X and other US services controlled by tech loons. Purportedly, all user data is legally stored in the EU & governed by European law. ID required. Anyone have any experience or thoughts about W? #WSocial

someone built a #wsocial page with numbers and something like "relevant yet" or so as domain... does anyone remember?

To become independent from X, @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu is betting on … #WSocial, a sort of revamped BlueSky with exactly 3388 users with at least one post. @elena@aseachange.com is trying to alert people about this comical disaster: https://blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-social/ Which is now even more nonsensical as they inadvertently invented BoratCasting ! https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01M2MQXYZ177XDMX349PBFG7Z2 #WBoratCasting Is Very Nice European Technology for Make Benefits Glorious Nations of Brussels! https://ploum.net/2026-01-22-why-no-european-google.html

Another day, another opportunity to roast #WSocial. Grab your 🍿​ W Social had been hyping up the live broadcast of Ursula von der Leyen's State of the Union address for weeks. "Watch it on W!" (You'd think they had an exclusive). Nah, it was also shown live on YouTube and X and other places. The funniest thing is that co-founder Ingmar Rentzhog bragged in the live chat: "we are doing our best. The boradcast (sic) is truly Made in Europe." You'd think they had built their own live streaming service. Think again: they used stream.place by Eli Mallon, an ATproto developer based in Seattle. Last time I checked, Seattle is in Washington state? U.S.A.? W, the social network of European digital sovereignty! So I put Rentzhog on the spot and he became all defensive: 🔗​: https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mvmmu5gua225 But it gets better! W Social had been bragging that only verified W users could comment in the live chat. Yesterday I found out that people with a blue checkmark by Bluesky could also comment. And I have one! It all went by really fast... At the end of the event I made sure to credit Eli Mallon and stream.place for powering the live stream. If W Social wouldn't do it, well, I would. I find it incredible that their modus operandi is to exploit open source infrastructure, giving the impression they built everything from scratch, without ever crediting anyone. #LSocial = Leech Social. The open social web is a highly collaborative space and it pains me to see the parasitic behavior of certain players who just take, take, take without ever giving anything back. The @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu was in the live chat. Von der Leyen took time out from G7 meetings in June to publicize the W Social launch. I strongly believe they picked the wrong platform, which is openwashing and sovereignwashing. I typically do not tag the EC Mastodon account in posts about W, but this time it's important. (Apologies in advance to their social media interns, I know these choices were not made by you.) We deserve better platforms. I will keep speaking up about W Social, the black flamingo of the open social web. And if you disagree with what they are doing, please speak up too. W Social leaders have started resorting to ad hominem attacks, calling my posts and articles "targeted disinformation." At first I was a lonely voice of dissent against them. Then @pallenberg@mastodon.social joined in. My wish: from a solo, to a duet, to a whole chorus of voices speaking up ⚡​ And if you want to catch up on all the W Social red flags, I wrote a series of blog posts about them: https://blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-social/ (start at the bottom)

@benroyce@mastodon.social @pallenberg@mastodon.social #WSocial doesn't even need inflated fake numbers to "present a glowing, false narrative." Media organizations DO NOT fact check their claims. The European Commission didn't do any due diligence on the tech side. How do I know? W Social CEO Anna Zeiter claimed on the major German TV network SWR on May 28th that they had been onboarding 1000 users a day to prevent a server crash when they'd launch on June 17th. She boasted they had a waitlist of 50,000 users then: https://www.swr.de/swr1/leute/neue-social-media-plattform-w-social-das-steckt-dahinter-100.html How many users were on their PDS on June 17th then? After allegedly onboarding 1000 a day since late May? I know, I download their whole PDS every day. Why do I say the European Commission didn't do any technical due diligence? W Identity, the app required to verify one's identity and post on W Social has terrible reviews. 1.1 star average out of 5 stars on the German Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.widentity.app&hl=de I COME WITH RECEIPTS! And these people have a habit of misrepresenting their company... but media organizations and politicians just happily follow along...

If you were wondering about my progress with learning German, well, "schadenfreude" is already a daily part of my vocabulary 🤗 re: https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01M2J98BTQ8H4FFV85F5N93N2J tagging this with #WSocial for those who avoid the topic entirely (I don't blame you!)

#WSocial state of the network - September 15th, 2026 There is a lot of misinformation regarding W Social and how active/successful it is. So, from time to time, I'd love to share some numbers. The beauty of #opendata! The network endorsed by the #EuropeanCommission may be the darling of Brussels political circles and European media organizations (who simply rehash PR talking points). But the look behind the curtain is really troubling. As @pallenberg@mastodon.social often says, this network is #DOA (dead on arrival). A social media graveyard, or rather, a simple moribund database. There is no way that Zeiter, Rentzhog & co. can start monetizing it in 2027. Numbers from this morning at 10:30am: Accounts on their PDS: 37,531Users with verified ID: 7,492Users with 1+ post: 3,388Users who have never posted: 34,143Users with 0 posts and who follow 0 accounts: 26,444% of users with 0 posts, who follow 0 accounts: 70,4%% of users who have never posted: 90,97% So, whenever you hear someone hyping it up, feel free to forward this post or point people to my articles at https://blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-social/ The one thing I will give W credit for though is how good they are at lobbying and hyping up their image. While this playbook may have worked in the past, not anymore. On an open network, with open data, it's child's play to expose misrepresentations and show the real, raw data. sources: pdsls.dev, clearsky.app, atproto.at and the csv of their full PDS that I download daily 💁‍♀️​

New blog post about #WSocial. I analysed how the EUs new poster child for digital sovereignty is using misleading language about how much of a platform it is, how it is built on dehumanisation and fosters ideas of European and white supremacy. It really is a textbook case for everything wrong with digital sovereignty. https://www.structural-integrity.eu/wsocial-is-a-textbook-case-for-everything-wrong-with-digital-sovereignty/

Happy #DigitalIndependenceDay ans gesamte #Fediverse Seit Jahren gibt es wieder einmal einen richtig knackigen Rant von mir & zwar zur Geisterstadt #Wsocial Fake-Zahlen, rassistische Postings, LGBTQ+ Blocklisten & eine Fuehrungsriege, die all dies auch noch unterstuetzt. Hier mein Podcast 👉 https://share.transistor.fm/s/5ee092c1 vorab. Teilt den gerne weiter. Danke fuer euren Support 🙏

A story in two pictures: An article from Euractiv from July stating "Von der Leyen is expected to use her annual State of the Union speech to unveil plans for EU-wide age restrictions on social media". And then a pic of a W Social post announcing the live-stream of the EC state of the Union speech. This is precisely why I keep speaking up about #WSocial: We are at a dangerous turning point when it comes to online privacy and it seems that the European Commission has chosen this network because of its built-in age verification. Truth is: even if their PDS hosts 28k accounts, only 2612 people (as of this morning) have ever published a single post or reply on W. Their #WIdentity app is so broken, it has mostly one-star ratings on Google Play Store (yes, you read it right, the network of European digital sovereignty requires an app from Google or Apple to verify one's identity). Most egregiously, W Social does NOT do any content moderation to rein in hate speech. I find daily examples of racist, transphobic and xenophobic posts that are simply allowed. Thankfully on the ATmosphere, people can subscribe to Bluesky, Blacksky or Northsky labelers to hide hate speech. W Social leaders believe in "free speech absolutism" and keep saying that everyone is welcome. Alice Weidel of AfD too, by the way. I thought W Social would be in violation of the DSA for allowing these messages to stay up, but apparently they are too small of a platform for this rule to apply. Lately W Social leaders and power users have defined fact-based criticism as "disinformation" and targeted harassment: https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01M0SDV98GRDWQNFF9VHVT9J18 I'm ok with being called a liar and a bully, if my screenshots and video captures of hate speech on the platform can help bring light to this problem. So be warned, there may be bad news coming at the EC State of the Union in September.

Dear friends, Please gather around for a long post about #WSocial and how they are responding to critiques. I have noticed a trend: W Social leaders and staunch supporters are describing any critical posts about the company as "targeted disinformation." Its CEO said they will soon have a technical solution in place for this. Oh?!? 🔗: https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mtqufy6g4s2r I suppose the "targeted disinformation" claims are about recent posts by the likes of me and @pallenberg@mastodon.social about troubling hate speech that is allowed on W Social. Claims backed by hard evidence, in the form of screenshots and video captures. (I am increasingly doing screen recordings of problematic posts and interactions by W Social people because they have a tendency to delete evidence - like an infamous comment on a video by the Instutute for Remigration). ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ Discrediting sources, renaming evidence as "disinformation" and creating a victim narrative has a long, storied history. ⬆️ ⬆️ ⬆️ But I'm digressing. I speak up about W Social because: Mainstream media runs PR fluff about them; Horrid hate speech on the platform is completely unmoderated. W Social is currently showing the limits of free speech absolutism. Its CEO wrote: "We don’t need W to become another echo chamber." Reminds you of something? Atmosphere user @echna.bsky.social astutely remarked that "W Social is on an X speedrun, without ever having been like Twitter." 🔗: https://mu.social/profile/echna.bsky.social/post/3mtqlknzork2t Bluesky, #Blacksky, and #Northsky have mechanisms in place to report hate speech - and I am super thankful for that. As of today, I cannot report to W Social posts by their users that contain hate speech. The W Social moderation list's only purpose is to make a distinction between verified users and bots. Compare it with Blacksky's moderation list and be amazed (see screenshots). What's the big deal about the lack of content moderation on #WSocial? Well, I am haunted by some posts by their users. A repeat offender (routinely posting racist and xenophobic posts) recently commented "Awesome news" to a newspaper article about a Palestinian family drowning in Sussex. His profile is still up and he's followed by W Social's CEO and its co-founder Ingmar Renzhog (yes I have evidence of this, via a video capture - so even if they unfollow him or delete his account, well, I have proof of my claim). I agree with "Echna" that W Social is on an X speedrun, allowing racist, transphobic and xenophobic posts. Evidence: 🔗: https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mth3hwhvzs26 Instead of addressing these critiques head-on - and moderating hate speech - the W Social co-founders are lamenting being subjected to a "targeted disinformation" campaign. Oh ok? IMHO free speech absolutism ultimately only coddles far right extremists and is a very dangerous thing. Would you call this disinformation? Special thanks to my #GoToSocial account for allowing this message all in one go, without having to break it up in a hundred-post thread. TL;DR: W Social is taking a dark turn real fast. #SocialMedia

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

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...

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.