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

@_elena

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

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:

https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-uncovered-the-reality-behind-the-hype/

#OpenWashing

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 WSocial and Eurosky.Social are not a fork of BlueSky. In fact all of them are AT protocol instances. Which btw. you could also host yourself. Basically very comparable with the many ActivityPub instances. I think we in the Fediverse should keep being fair.

Definitely better at AT protocol is, that you can move your account including your posts. You can even keep your handle if you have an own domain. Something that the Fediverse could do better.

@juergen nah, W Social was just a Bluesky instance in the beginning (several users tested it), but the moment you beginn to alter the code and to implement ID verification, it becomes less interoperable and a fork.

@_elena

@_elena wondering how do they expect people to pronounce it... If it's supposed to be "double-you-social", it's a bit of a silly choice for something supposedly made for a very linguistically diverse community...

@_elena Seems like your exposé triggered this change of mind.
Powerful woman

@hannes99 No, it will not become less interoperable, they change the way you can create an account: It will need ID verification. Even if it is a fork does not mean it is less interoperable. Same as with ActivityPub, there are many independent Projects and also bunch of forks of those projects. Still you can communicate between all of them.
As long as WSocial or Eurosky supports AT Protocol, they can communicate.
As I said, we should keep being fair.

@_elena

@juergen but you can't freely move your account anymore, contrary to what you stated before. W Social wants to limit anonymity and free social media on their own platform at the one hand, but grant access to Bluesky posts on the other, to become more relevant.

@_elena

@hannes99 Let’s wait how this evolves. Seems you have a glassball that I don’t have.

@_elena

@hannes99 Let’s wait how this evolves. Seems you have a glassball that I don’t have.

@_elena

@hannes99 And btw. also in the Fediverse you cannot move freely. Every instance has it’s own rules to allow registration. Some allow direct registration, others need to manually approve or even do not allow new members at all. That’s all fine, isn’t it?

Same for federation, look how different the block lists on Fediverse instances are. You really need to take care before you register with a new instance.

Stay fair!

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:

https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-uncovered-the-reality-behind-the-hype/

#OpenWashing

@_elena wondering how do they expect people to pronounce it... If it's supposed to be "double-you-social", it's a bit of a silly choice for something supposedly made for a very linguistically diverse community...

@_elena there's also https://europetalking.wsocial.news/, maybe only since today.

@_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?

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 ️

@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 Monet being like: Am I a joke to you?