Want an update on the Weekend at Bernie’s clown show that is W Social? No? Me neither, but here we are…
So before we start, let’s recount the whole dystopian raison d’être of these Davosian clowns: to be a EU®opean “alternative to X” that – cue the 1984 theme tune – verifies your identity to ensure that only “real people” are on it (real is what your government says it is).
Now, let’s fast forward to last week, when TikTok set up an account on W Social.
That’s nice, isn’t it? One surveillance capitalist lending their support to another? Kumbaya and all that. The only problem? (spoiler alert), it wasn’t TikTok. (Shocking, I know.)
The account, Identity Verified™ by EU X – sorry, W Social, was a spam account and immediately labelled as such by BlueSky moderators. (Don’t you love a “decentralised” system where a post on an EU server, accessed from another EU server, is moderated by our benevolent Big Brother in Trumpland, by the way
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Want an update on the Weekend at Bernie’s clown show that is W Social? No? Me neither, but here we are…
So before we start, let’s recount the whole dystopian raison d’être of these Davosian clowns: to be a EU®opean “alternative to X” that – cue the 1984 theme tune – verifies your identity to ensure that only “real people” are on it (real is what your government says it is).
Now, let’s fast forward to last week, when TikTok set up an account on W Social.
That’s nice, isn’t it? One surveillance capitalist lending their support to another? Kumbaya and all that. The only problem? (spoiler alert), it wasn’t TikTok. (Shocking, I know.)
The account, Identity Verified™ by EU X – sorry, W Social, was a spam account and immediately labelled as such by BlueSky moderators. (Don’t you love a “decentralised” system where a post on an EU server, accessed from another EU server, is moderated by our benevolent Big Brother in Trumpland, by the way? I know it just warms the cockles of my heart. So much sovereignty! But I digress…)
So @_elena calls them out (someone has to while @EUCommission is busy preparing for their honeymoon after expressing their undying devotion to W Social recently on every social platform¹):
Anna Zeiter – W CEO, Stanford’s own, and ex-eBay executive (such sovereignty) – replies with this absolute zinger:
> “We are just verifying if some [sic] is a human and at least 18 years old. Users are then free to choose their own user name. This (human) user apparently chose the name TikTok.“ (mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial…)
Read that as many times as you like until it really sinks in.
These incompetent clowns (dangerous competent clowns but incompetent clowns nevertheless) make people go through a ridiculous 13-step identity verification stage² and then… umm… you get to choose whatever identity you want.
🤡🤡🤡
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they’re incompetent. It would be worse if they were competent, given they’re a closed-source venture-capital-funded startup determined to prove your identity.
> “Yes we have a business model, it’s not a philanthropy, we are not a B corp, we actually want to make money.” – Anna Zeiter³
But, what I want to know is this: Why has @EUCommission embraced a proprietary, closed-source, corporate ghost town with 14,300 accounts, 90% of which have not posted even once (in other words, with only 1,259 accounts that have ever posted)⁴ when there is a thriving non-corporate fediverse with millions of active people on it.
Could it have anything to do with identity verification, surveillance, and control?
And if so, why can’t they even get that right?
Looking forward to seeing how long @EUCommission can drag the corpse of W Social around before people realise it’s dead.
Oh, and how does this make the whole “European alternatives” thing look? Not good. Not because there aren’t excellent European alternatives but because the folks at the commission are either too clueless or too corrupt to recognise and support them.
W Social's tagline is "Trust Your Feed" but the company's landing page displays inflated engagement metrics - a misrepresentation that contradicts its own promise.
Needless to say, do not sign up for W or give them your ID information no matter how simple they eventually manage to make it.
You simply don’t need to.
You’re already in a far superior – non-corporate, federated – space.
Do not sign up for W. And warn your friends.
The only time you have any power to stop this is now. If they succeed in gaining network effects, you will be as powerless to stop them as you are with X.
And yes, they’re just another venture capital funded surveillance capitalist, people farmer, and burgeoning Nazi Bar. They just happen to be based in the EU. (As Nazi Bars traditionally have been.)
I don't think copying the US is going to give us "sovereignty" anyway. I'm doing something totally different which works a lot better. EC visited my website a few times in 2014 and 2015. No open support unfortunately.
@kcarr2015 Anonymity is also what allows people to explore aspects of their identity without being tied down to their state-approved one. It’s also what allows whistleblowers to be whistleblowers.
Every dictator and wannabe dictator wants an end to anonymity online. Ideally, your words on social media will be tied to your passport (so we can revoke it if we don’t like what you’re saying to stop you from leaving) and to your home address (so we can drop by and have a few words with you about what you were writing) and to your bank account, etc., so we can show you how bad things can get if your social credit score doesn’t improve.
I mean, if you say something bad enough in public, that can get your passport revoked.
As for the other stuff, that anonymity is usually gotten by some extra effort in real life, not granted automatically, b/c we only have our own faces. Look, if you have a good reason to do something anonymously and it's not illegal, go through the extra effort.
But as far as I can tell, the VAST use case for anonymity right now is to say something inflammatory and then hide.
@kcarr2015 And it takes how many seconds, exactly, to block such a person (either at a moderator level or personally?) We really have to be better at giving up our hard-earned human rights.
Just look at what the Nazis were able to do with just paper-based census information in the Netherlands.
Blocking and moderation was barely an answer on small scale topical forums, it's become almost pointless when scaled to pan regional social media like this, where actors just create a new disposable accounts when the old one is toxic enough.
The response can't always be "look what the Nazis did." The truth is you aren't anonymous on the internet. If a government actually wants to unmask your identity they will.
I'm more concerned with the interpersonal interactions
@kcarr2015 Isn't it weird that the oligarchs attacking democracy & frying the planet can remain anonymous, but they're demanding the identity of the 99% .
Leaked names connected to Dialog include billionaires, Trump officials and Hollywood stars, but many seemed shocked to discover what they might be part of
@Layan2002 @kcarr2015 Layan, you, sadly, have a much worse threat model in Gaza. Gaza is under total surveillance by the occupying Israeli forces.
I would still strongly urge you to use Signal for private communication but you are faced with a malicious state-level entity and the means they have to use on a captive population.
A lot of what we’re discussing is for places where we’re trying to hold off such levels of government surveillance. Because, given half a chance, our own governments would use the exact same techniques and technologies on their own people. In fact, many of them are studying and learning from Israel’s actions in Gaza, and Israel is using Gaza as a human experimentation zone to prove the usefulness of its weapons and surveillance tech; which our governments in the west are very eager to buy.
It’s all very, very fucked up.
Sending you and your family all my love. Stay safe + here’s to finding a path towards brighter days together.
@kcarr2015 Thank you so much, my dear friend @aral Regarding the Signal app, I tried to use it, but I couldn’t manage to complete the process. Could you please help me or guide me on how to use it properly? I would truly appreciate your support. As for surveillance in Gaza, privacy has almost completely disappeared. When a person’s life itself is no longer protected and death continues around us, talking about protecting our information becomes painfully difficult
@kcarr2015 How can we safeguard our private data when our most basic right — the right to live safely — is still under threat? We received your greetings, your love, and your solidarity.
Please know that we are proud of you, and we see your help and support as one of the greatest sources of hope that keeps us going and strengthens our resilience🤍🫂🕊️
@aleksei the EC moved their PDS to W Social when the latter launched their beta phase (which critics characterized more as an early alpha - really buggy that is). I'm not sure if anyone at the EC did any vetting.
What's interesting is that 2 months before, the EC's own scientific service (JRC) recommended to support Eurosky: publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/… you know, European, based on ATproto, but also OPEN SOURCE and not requiring a gov ID 🤷♀️
The report examines the evolving impact of digital technologies on European democracy. In an era of a global struggle to control the information space, this report offers critical insights into the fracturing of perceived realities, the rise of the ”…
it's crazy how real working federation is already here but we're expected to fuck around with trash like.this. it feels like a psyop, like how oil companies promise they're gonna lower their emissions by 20% soon
I took a peek at the projects @EUCommission founded with one of their initiatives a while back. All noname dead in the water stuff. So, I'm not surprised they made a joke out of this as well.
At least we got some representatives to attend FOSDEM now. But the large majority seems to be blind to anything not whispered to them by a lobbyist.
Just a above government governing body with more and more power and weird voting rules. What could possibly go wrong.
Maybe they will start to sell instant access to VDL posts 😀
Anyway, I wonder, I'm just a #bridgyfed guy (which I think is the best we could do, to constantly push good #fediverse narrative there), how's going eurosky in terms of user stats, new users, active users, migrated users. It would be great if we can se them outperform that other thing
@luca I was planning to do a side-by-side comparison once they hit the 20k user mark.
Thing is, the W User feed is remarkably different from the rest of the ATmosphere (or even the fediverse).
As far as I can tell, most verified users are middle aged white men posting links to articles and commenting on them with one-two sentences. I found very little original content there... and new sign-ups have slowed down dramatically
and see what a fuck you in the face shit show looks like when you put the EU Commission in charge of digital sovereignty and press 'go'. An LLM would do better.
»Looking forward to seeing how long @EUCommission can drag the corpse of W Social around before people realise it’s dead.«
Perhaps you've heard of the German "DE-Mail" system that was meant to become de facto mandatory if you wanted to have an email exchange with German authorities. They also had an ID verification process, were a closed-source walled garden and — surprise! — noone was interested.
German government rode that dead horse for over 25 years IIRC, stopping better and more pragmatic alternatives in their tracks.
I wonder if the shareholders were aware that #WSocial have not bothered to implement the entire #ATProto stack, incl. "labeling" (aka the moderation layer)? If you only self-host your PDS, of course you'll remain by default under the jurisdiction of bsky moderators. #Blacksky for eg. have already implemented their own "labeling", so W has no excuse.
craignicol
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Esther Payne
in reply to craignicol • • •I'm not even sure w did, they just kissed up to the right politicians at Davos.
craignicol
in reply to Esther Payne • • •Mike Johnston
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Koos Swart
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •I'm doing something totally different which works a lot better.
EC visited my website a few times in 2014 and 2015.
No open support unfortunately.
Goose was not valued
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •@_elena out here making waves and shaking things up!! 👏
Thx for the post, @aral
It's giving early-days Elon takeover of
Kevin C 🎬
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •I didn't know the EU was doing this. I've always considered anonymity on social media one of the bigger flaws as it encourages unaccountable behavior.
I'm no fan of corporate tracking though.
I'm really curious to see how this shakes out. Hopefully better than Facebook.
Aral Balkan
in reply to Kevin C 🎬 • • •@kcarr2015 Anonymity is also what allows people to explore aspects of their identity without being tied down to their state-approved one. It’s also what allows whistleblowers to be whistleblowers.
Every dictator and wannabe dictator wants an end to anonymity online. Ideally, your words on social media will be tied to your passport (so we can revoke it if we don’t like what you’re saying to stop you from leaving) and to your home address (so we can drop by and have a few words with you about what you were writing) and to your bank account, etc., so we can show you how bad things can get if your social credit score doesn’t improve.
Kevin C 🎬
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •I mean, if you say something bad enough in public, that can get your passport revoked.
As for the other stuff, that anonymity is usually gotten by some extra effort in real life, not granted automatically, b/c we only have our own faces. Look, if you have a good reason to do something anonymously and it's not illegal, go through the extra effort.
But as far as I can tell, the VAST use case for anonymity right now is to say something inflammatory and then hide.
Aral Balkan
in reply to Kevin C 🎬 • • •@kcarr2015 And it takes how many seconds, exactly, to block such a person (either at a moderator level or personally?) We really have to be better at giving up our hard-earned human rights.
Just look at what the Nazis were able to do with just paper-based census information in the Netherlands.
Kevin C 🎬
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Blocking and moderation was barely an answer on small scale topical forums, it's become almost pointless when scaled to pan regional social media like this, where actors just create a new disposable accounts when the old one is toxic enough.
The response can't always be "look what the Nazis did." The truth is you aren't anonymous on the internet. If a government actually wants to unmask your identity they will.
I'm more concerned with the interpersonal interactions
Nicole Parsons
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •@kcarr2015
Isn't it weird that the oligarchs attacking democracy & frying the planet can remain anonymous, but they're demanding the identity of the 99% .
businessinsider.com/senate-rep…
It's almost like 1% billionaires are afraid.
gizmodo.com/body-bags-found-ou…
dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/16…
thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/…
motherjones.com/politics/2021/…
ms.now/opinion/amid-musks-para…
independent.co.uk/news/world/a…
How Peter Thiel’s ‘secret society’ was unmasked by security blunder
Mark Sellman (The Times)Aral Balkan reshared this.
Andrew Deacon
in reply to Nicole Parsons • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Andrew Deacon • • •Layan🍉ayoub🇵🇸
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to Layan🍉ayoub🇵🇸 • • •@Layan2002 @kcarr2015 Layan, you, sadly, have a much worse threat model in Gaza. Gaza is under total surveillance by the occupying Israeli forces.
I would still strongly urge you to use Signal for private communication but you are faced with a malicious state-level entity and the means they have to use on a captive population.
A lot of what we’re discussing is for places where we’re trying to hold off such levels of government surveillance. Because, given half a chance, our own governments would use the exact same techniques and technologies on their own people. In fact, many of them are studying and learning from Israel’s actions in Gaza, and Israel is using Gaza as a human experimentation zone to prove the usefulness of its weapons and surveillance tech; which our governments in the west are very eager to buy.
It’s all very, very fucked up.
Sending you and your family all my love. Stay safe + here’s to finding a path towards brighter days together.
Layan🍉ayoub🇵🇸
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Regarding the Signal app, I tried to use it, but I couldn’t manage to complete the process. Could you please help me or guide me on how to use it properly? I would truly appreciate your support.
As for surveillance in Gaza, privacy has almost completely disappeared. When a person’s life itself is no longer protected and death continues around us, talking about protecting our information becomes painfully difficult
Layan🍉ayoub🇵🇸
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •@kcarr2015 How can we safeguard our private data when our most basic right — the right to live safely — is still under threat?
We received your greetings, your love, and your solidarity.
Please know that we are proud of you, and we see your help and support as one of the greatest sources of hope that keeps us going and strengthens our resilience🤍🫂🕊️
Androcat
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Sensitive content
Aral Balkan
in reply to Androcat • • •Elena Rossini 🌈
in reply to Androcat • • •@androcat dear Androcat, the Louvre called and is asking to frame and hang your toot there. PERFECTION.
@aral
Androcat
in reply to Elena Rossini 🌈 • • •Sensitive content
Elena Rossini 🌈
in reply to Androcat • • •@androcat actually strike that, the Louvre is still posting on ONLY Big Tech platforms - including the fascist cesspool known as X, sigh 😭
@aral
amhrasmussen
in reply to Elena Rossini 🌈 • • •Elena Rossini 🌈
in reply to amhrasmussen • • •Marketing Junto
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aleksei 🇪🇪
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •> Why has @EUCommission embraced a <...> ghost town with 14,300 accounts
It's even better than that because IIRC back then W Social had what, 2k accounts?
Elena Rossini 🌈
in reply to Aleksei 🇪🇪 • • •@aleksei the EC moved their PDS to W Social when the latter launched their beta phase (which critics characterized more as an early alpha - really buggy that is). I'm not sure if anyone at the EC did any vetting.
What's interesting is that 2 months before, the EC's own scientific service (JRC) recommended to support Eurosky: publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/… you know, European, based on ATproto, but also OPEN SOURCE and not requiring a gov ID 🤷♀️
Fractured reality
JRC Publications RepositoryFeralRobots
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Aral Balkan
in reply to FeralRobots • • •stux⚡️
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Huh
So wsocial.eu now redirects to wsocial.news
Elena Rossini 🌈
in reply to stux⚡️ • • •Post News, the a16z-funded Twitter alternative, is shutting down | TechCrunch
Amanda Silberling (TechCrunch)Fluffy Kitty Cat
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •it's crazy how real working federation is already here but we're expected to fuck around with trash like.this. it feels like a psyop, like how oil companies promise they're gonna lower their emissions by 20% soon
Tune out the crap and join the resistance
Aral Balkan reshared this.
Speaktrap
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Milly
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •I took a peek at the projects @EUCommission founded with one of their initiatives a while back. All noname dead in the water stuff. So, I'm not surprised they made a joke out of this as well.
At least we got some representatives to attend FOSDEM now. But the large majority seems to be blind to anything not whispered to them by a lobbyist.
Just a above government governing body with more and more power and weird voting rules. What could possibly go wrong.
~ajhalili2006 (he/they)
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •That's kinda diabolical for me since @eurosky.social exists, but also sounds like Trump Social but Eurpoean edition to me
see also standard-reader.app/a/did:plc:… and semble.so/profile/ronentk.me/c…
W Social (by Ronen Tamari) — Semble
semble.soLuca Sironi
in reply to ~ajhalili2006 (he/they) • • •@ajhalili2006
Maybe they will start to sell instant access to VDL posts 😀
Anyway, I wonder, I'm just a #bridgyfed guy (which I think is the best we could do, to constantly push good #fediverse narrative there), how's going eurosky in terms of user stats, new users, active users, migrated users.
It would be great if we can se them outperform that other thing
@aral @_elena @eurosky.social
Elena Rossini 🌈
in reply to Luca Sironi • • •@luca I was planning to do a side-by-side comparison once they hit the 20k user mark.
Thing is, the W User feed is remarkably different from the rest of the ATmosphere (or even the fediverse).
As far as I can tell, most verified users are middle aged white men posting links to articles and commenting on them with one-two sentences. I found very little original content there... and new sign-ups have slowed down dramatically
@ajhalili2006 @aral @eurosky.social@bsky.brid.gy
happyborg
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Good God, everyone read this ^^
and see what a fuck you in the face shit show looks like when you put the EU Commission in charge of digital sovereignty and press 'go'. An LLM would do better.
What? No, I didn't say that.
#WSocial
@_elena @EUCommission
squareScarletCougar 🐱
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Uwe Küchler
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •»Looking forward to seeing how long @EUCommission can drag the corpse of W Social around before people realise it’s dead.«
Perhaps you've heard of the German "DE-Mail" system that was meant to become de facto mandatory if you wanted to have an email exchange with German authorities. They also had an ID verification process, were a closed-source walled garden and — surprise! — noone was interested.
German government rode that dead horse for over 25 years IIRC, stopping better and more pragmatic alternatives in their tracks.
fionescu(1)
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •