I just refreshed the #WSocial website and it's showing a MAJOR redesign... with a label at the top stating "built on the open AT-protocol."

This is the first time ever they acknowledge this – I know, as I've been visiting their website for MONTHS and also never heard about this in any interviews. So the claims in my exposé stand (the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine would confirm this).

Of note: they changed their URL from wsocial.eu to wsocial.news

BTW thanks for all your feedback ️

@_elena still no mention of Mastodon or the Fediverse, LOL. That .news TLD really brings back to memory that failed attempt to capture the Xodus and the short-lived post.news experiment (shut down in 2024)

Post News, the a16z-funded Twitter alternative, is shutting down | TechCrunch

Post was backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Scott Galloway, an NYU professor and tech commentator, but the platform never disclosed how much it raised.

TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

Taking bets on how long W will last!

@_elena on LinkedIn I asked if it would speak activitypub. No answer yet after 2 days. That's bad for a hot launch...

@_elena that’s better. I still think the thing will fail. I also highly suspect it is vibe-coded, at the very least the website front-end is.

@meneer they are based on a different protocol... Bluesky's ATproto, so it's normal they won't implement ActivityPub. Remains to be seen if BridgyFed can be enabled for their accounts

@_elena AT Proto ? sad

@_elena Their website is so laggy on mobile. High quality engineering

@_elena @jwildeboer High time we all start to follow that account

@_elena

I didn't pay attention to Davos so I missed it. To many rich people high-giving each other for being rich.

Thank you for digging into what is going on behind the scenes. Are the investors just more techbros, just European?

@_elena

And sadly, https://w-social.eu doesn't exist any more ;(

@_elena

Félicitations, Elena Bly* Rossini.

(* Nellie Bly, trailblazing female figure in investigative journalism.)

@_elena yes, I noticed the (probably only temporary) redirect to wsocial.news, too. They must have set it only today in the afternoon, as confirms https://web.archive.org/web/20260506062956/https://wsocial.eu/public/signup, too.

More things I noticed:

1) they advertise with random Bluesky posts as one from Annalena Baerbock, also the "topic chart" refers to Bluesky, while some very first WSocial server posts exist.

2) they explicitly advertise an article about W Social from the now pro-Russian, far-right German newspaper "Berliner Zeitung".

@_elena

3) they indeed list the (current!) German Federal Government's Data Protection Commissioner Louisa Specht-Riemenschneider as part of their team - that's shady AF.

@mpb they didn’t receive any public money - it’s all private funding

@meneer @_elena

Well, since Eurosky stated it "... explicitly seeks integration between AT Protocol and ActivityPub as a way of moving toward an open social web that can serve everyone." a valid question, I would say.

@_elena like genuinely, there's nothing more european of a social network than @Mastodon ! But they're trying so hard to fit and blend into America and anything related to it

@_elena I mean that is good, if they reconsider some of their things is always good

@_elena glad you clarified it in your blog. When they announced it on LI I had not made the BS connection. Just Wanderer about this announcement, with a website geared towards Investors...

@_elena the "trusted feed" thing will be interesting. I'm trying out eYou Social - mobile-only for now, fully proprietary, but, it also promises an EU-based, trusted platform. The "trust" element comes via an AI verification that happens on *every* post; and it gets tripped up (?) on certain things... just imagine posting about the rights of certain groups in society - opinion, or fact? Hmm! It's a dangerous and tricky path, and those AIs are not always great at that.

Let's see how W does.

@_elena for 2), Anna Zeiter might not know, if she isn't familiar with the German media landscape.

As regards 3), I'd like to add that two former German Federal Data Protection Commissioners on , @ulrichkelber (2019-2024) and @PWS_1 (2003-2013), aren't euphoric about #WSocial at all. Why is the current one, which works for the probably most conservative German federal government since World War II?

And wouldn't working for a private social media company be illegal in her position?