W Social, public institutions and the theater of European digital sovereignty

pocksuppet

W Social felt extremely shady since their first advertisement on HN. Also, for all their talk about human verification, I have 6 accounts under different names :)

jwr

I don't understand why anyone would want to make the same mistake all over again: jumping onto a private platform owned by a company inevitably results in you becoming the product sold and enshittification. We've seen it so many times. Learn the lesson. Use Mastodon this time.

BigTuna

An unfortunate step backwards. I'm cheering for Eurosky and open networks.

rvz

Another social network with 0 network effect and is dead on arrival. Now being closed makes it far worse than Bluesky and no better than a prototype pre-production version of Threads; with 0 users. From [0] > W Social unveiled at the WEF That's everything I need to know. [0] https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/germany-news/german-ceo-l...

tao_oat

I thought this was a good post on the topic: [W Social is TruthSocial with a European accent.][1] [^1]: https://wecanjustdothings.leaflet.pub/3mokohkfb4224

hahajk

> Europe already has an ATproto social network - Eurosky Why is this a different network? Are Eurosky relays not indexing anything outside Eurosky?

xg15

> Europe already has an ATproto social network - Eurosky - run by a non-profit foundation - Modal - that is building everything in the open, with full transparency, sharing all the steps in their development roadmap: And weirdly, there was never a peep about this in the press - while the W Social launch was on national news and a bunch of high-profile EU politicians immediately joined. What's going on here?

maelito

Just use https://mu.social , it's essentially the same thing, just built in the open by the Eurosky stack.

pixel_popping

W Social isn't built with proper cryptography and so-on, it's amateurish.

3997531578

Regime-aligned social media, just what people needed. And as an not completely unintended side-effect, some nephews of EU bureaucrats will make hay.

rafram

I have a hunch that many - most? - of these European digital sovereignty projects will end up being grifts. Whenever money is being thrown at any crappy, low-effort startup that knows how to speak the right language, you get grifters coming out of the woodwork.

kristianc

Sovereignty is mostly just a protectionist racket. European firms struggle to compete with dominant US platforms, framing industrial policy as "sovereignty" rather than protectionism just sounds more strategic and security-oriented. I've seen US platforms bend over backwards to meet the requirements and they still choose their preferred winner. Predictably the goalposts keep moving.

mortarion

The guy who runs W Social, whilst he has a software developer background, has worked most of his time in the financial world. W social is also an LLC. It's a corporation with shares looking to make a profit somehow. No doubt there will be ads on there, and paid features. I don't see how this will ever become a success, not because it's going closed source (people here don't care), or because it might have paid features (people here don't care) in the future, or even ands (people here don't care), but because of the name. Who the hell thought "W Social" was a good name for a company? We are so bad at company names here in the EU it's embarrassing.

vivzkestrel

- am i the only one or does anyone else think this website is somehow hijacking the scrollbar?

xg15

Looking at the people who immediately joined and this being presented at WEF, this looks less like an EU BlueSky or X and more like an EU Truth Social - i.e. the core users seem to be EU politicians who don't want to depend on a platform owned by their political opponents for reach and so want to have their own platform.

threecheese

“There have been so many red flags with W Social since its hastily cobbled-together *announcement at Davos*” I think that last bit explains why European govt orgs have migrated to it, over the open source Eurosky.

jauntywundrkind

Really sad seeing europa.eu and high profile politicians switching switching to such obviously bullshit low effort hacks. Ursala von der Leyen just joined and fired off a hello, for example. Many agitated replies to it, discussing the matter, with lots and lots of discontent for W Social: https://bsky.app/profile/vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu/post/3moio... There's two really good blog posts in these W Social people, with really good research. https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-socia... https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-public-institutions-a... There's a fantastic thread covering this and many other issues. This seems to go against the core EU directives for self sovereignty, just signing up to a very rogue platform that happens to have some protocol interoperability. Also, lol, they have no cross site scripting protection. https://bsky.app/profile/stollmeyer.eurosky.social/post/3moi... Given the presence of https://eurosky.tech and https://mu.social , the EU folks going to W over them is either massive out of touch pitiful incompetence, or worse, sharks preferring to go with other sharks they feel they can control, instead of something actually positive and better, but not as directly manipulable.

advisedwang

EU bigwigs don't care about Open Source. They care about EU data sovereignty and supporting EU businesses (well the appearance of doing so, anyway).

mystraline

How to create an account on #WSocial in 13 easy steps: 1. choose a username 2. choose a password 3. choose your interests 4. download the #WIdentity app to your phone (two options: Apple AppStore or Google Play Store) 5. scan a QR code 6. create a PIN code optional: enable biometrics; re-enter PIN 7. choose whether you simply want to verify that you're human or if you also want to verify your name 8. choose the verification method (automatic photo review, request a manual review or scan your passport chip) 9. scan your passport's picture page 10. scan your passport's chip 11. take a selfie 12. scan a QR code to link the W Identity to your W Social account 13. enter your PIN code https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTE... Or.... How about not? Seriously, join Mastodon!

CM30

Not sure if the backlash got to them or they got word of potential legal issues caused by doing this, but I can see their GitHub page and its associated repositories just fine now: https://github.com/w-social-eu But I do kinda wonder the legality of this sort of move anyway. If other people contributed code and didn't agree to some terms of service saying their work would become the property of the project owner, would it even be legal to make it closed source under a different license?