@hannes99 @_elena I think it's some kind of an advisory board that they've tried to fill to the brim with influential government connected people so not really on the payroll probably but it could still be a conflict of interest

@_elena it's pretty interesting they still really want to avoid saying "Bluesky" and only say "AT-proto".

Almost every other project goes as far as including "sky" in their name and repeatedly mentions Bluesky because that's the thing some people might know at this point so it's good marketing...

Except if you're trying to present yourself as the new European social platform that replaces the US ones such as Bluesky I guess.

@ikuturso yes, because her role is to protect privacy – and ID checks are quite the opposite of that. But even if she worked for Mastodon, that would still be a conflict of interests, imho.

@_elena

@alpacamale you mean Monnett?

@andypiper where do they talk about this trusted feed? is it just a feed of users local to w and thus id verified or something else?

@_elena

@_elena@mastodon.social

Some relevant updates.

Between March 26 and 29, we had the AtmosphereConf in Vancouver. People from W Social and Eurosky were there, and they even did presentations.
I feel like W Social relationship with Atproto devs is more amicable now, compared to their first impression, which wasn't that good.
During the conference, Eurosky announced they will take the infrastructure path, not building a social media themselves, but instead offering the infrastructure for European builders (for both atproto and activity pub btw).

Eurosky presentation: https://atmosphereconf.org/event/ja4ooAa

W Social lightning talk: https://atmosphereconf.org/event/000WSocial

Both links have video recording available bellow the description.

@simonzerafa@infosec.exchange @_elena@mastodon.social

You can kinda think of Blacksky's app as a truly different instance of Bluesky, if that helps understand it in fediverse terms (though it's not a perfect translation since both protocols have very different approaches to infrastructure).

Blacksky started as a community and safe space for black people inside Blueksy, they started as a feed and moderation service. But today they are much bigger than that. They have their own app totally independent from Blueksy but it is compatible with communicating with people using Blueksy.

Their app started as a fork from Bluesky's but they are expanding and exploring different features for some time already (like having a way that a post is only visible on Blacksky and Blacksky users, pronouns displayed for everyone, and are now developing integration with long-format blog posts that already exist on atproto).

They also launched Acorn, which is a super toolkit for communities to have a similar structure as they have (app branding, moderation, statistics…) with less friction of building from zero.

@_elena@mastodon.social

They are less reluctant to say they are using atproto now because they even showed up to the atproto conference back in March

This other reply of mine has more info and valuable video footage of W Social's lightning talk at the conference

Victoria (vicwalker@app.wafrn.net)

Some relevant updates. Between March 26 and 29, we had the AtmosphereConf in Vancouver. People from W Social and Eurosky were there, and they even did presentations. I feel like W Social relationship with Atproto devs is more amicable now, compared to their first impression, which wasn't that good.

app.wafrn.net (app.wafrn.net)

@ikuturso @_elena it's in the screenshot of the website Elena posted - trust your feed - the implication being that the feed is trustworthy, presumably through ID verification.

@_elena wasn't the fact they are building on top of AT-proto know for a long time...?