Do you remember the surprise announcement of a new social network in Davos this past January?

Do you remember the surprise announcement of a new social network in Davos this past January? Something that promised to be the "first" European social network?

Its name is #WSocial and it's a fork of #Bluesky. Its founders have ties with European politicians - but there is no official involvement by the EU.

You wouldn't know any of this from media reports because they all rehashed their talking points. So I wrote a post about it, dispelling some myths:

W Social uncovered: the reality behind the hype

An article dispelling myths about W Social, the new European platform that aims to rival X: it is a fork of Bluesky that shares many similarities with Eurosky and requires government ID to sign up.

Elena Rossini (blog.elenarossini.com)

#OpenWashing

Regarding my W Social exposé: it was months in the making and I could have written a LOT more, showing additional examples of technical blunders, but I kept it "brief" at 3500 words

I ran out of characters to tag all the awesome people I mentioned in the piece: @doktorzjivago (thanks for the top notch meme), @tom @mapache and @Em0nM4stodon

And special thanks to people who volunteered to proof-read a draft and gave me fantastic feedback: @bitzero and @DataKnightmare

It takes a village ️

@_elena @tom @mapache @Em0nM4stodon @bitzero @DataKnightmare Haha my pleasure. Thank you for being awesome

@doktorzjivago that meme is absolute PERFECTION, thanks again

@_elena are you sure it is / was a hype ? To be honest, beside you, I never heard about W Social, at least from the people I follow, the news sites in my RSS reader, ...

@michaelmathy

@_elena move to Belgium then ! Nobody knows here

@_elena

I have a very partial view on #atmosphere based on bridged accounts.
Of all the people I know reporting to being interested in this w thing, no one did effectively mentioned or tried #eurosky , that is already available and people can migrate to at no social cost.

@_elena and big shortcut, by nobody, I mean me

@luca there is so much ignorance and misinformation around W Social. Nobody's fault except: journalists who didn't ask any questions and just ran with what the W founders told them...

W totally copied many of the Eurosky concepts and then did a big launch at Davos that surprised the Eurosky folks.

I didn't think they would get any traction (W) but with all the discussions about age verification for social media, I think they'll be around for a while - sigh

@michaelmathy

@_elena
„Issue no.1: How W Social ignored existing European initiatives“

I would say: They ignored all non-commercial media. And mastodon = european? Mostly. But it doesn’t mather. „Es gibt keine Nationalstaaten mehr“ is a trent un SF shows
#wsocial #raumpatrouille

@_elena great article! What I expect is that many ppl will just go for it! "It's European and screw it that they need my ID." The only issue is that I can theoretically create Bluesky account and still communicate with W social accounts. So what's the point of checking ppl if you can still enter through window if door requires an ID. Also I think Mastodon/Fediverse needs some lobby in EC and European parliament, that's something we can learn from W Chat case.

@_elena what pissed me off even more is the kind of conversation I heard in a podcast (do not remember which one but a replay from a french radio show) where they said "it is really sad that no social network exists where we can have unfiltered posts and for which the business model is not driven by ads".

@michaelmathy @_elena
It swapped over to several peeople around me, at least. But yes, not via RSS

@_elena wow, very nice post, Elena! You really nailed it . I think in 2026, it’s pretty hard to sweep things like what you found under the rug. In the EU digital community—like we have on Mastodon—we sniff out things, kind of like opening Pandora’s boxes, much faster

@_elena Thanks for the deep dive.
It does leave me asking: what can we learn from this to help us promote the Fediverse?
Perhaps a spoof website called "Euro Social" that just links to Fediverse

@_elena the worst thing about WSocial is that it's criminaly boring.

@MrLee someone back in January registered w-social.eu and created a website encouraging people to check out the Fediverse. Sadly it's offline now but you can still see it via the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20260122071830/https://w-social.eu/