it angers me that VDL and Lagarde jumped on this bandwagon apparently without any vetting – just based on some weird backroom Davos connections and apparently hold themselves too good for and too high and mighty for a presence on the open democratic #fediverse. 😠

They should plusOne the Fediverse.
#plusOne

> some W Social user complaints on X

How you know when you have truly failed.

@jwildeboer

Two pieces of good news for W Social:

1) I may have found the problem that has bricked their network for the past week.

2) This may very well be the LAST article I ever write about them. It's exhausting and stressful and I want to retire from this beat and go back to promoting the Fediverse.

Thank you all for your support and encouragement. And to my trusted source (a Fedi friend) who found and shared with me brilliant gems: THANK YOU! It's been a real honor collaborating with you ❤️

I believe their devs are busy on some algorithm and don't have time for troubleshooting. It's something like:

showReplyNumbers = realReplyNumbers^3;
showBoostNumbers = realBoostNumbers^4;
showLikesNumbers = realLikesNumbers * 3;

Currently, they are working to add some sort of random(); to make it look less obvious while their management intensifies marketing efforts.

/1!11

Thank you for this article, Elena.

To sum up: People on the #fediverse, the network that European career politicians decided was beneath them, help VC-backed #wsocial get their act together.

Fedi, you are too good for this world.

@EUCommission

EU Commission, please read Elena's article – and, if possible, let us know what you have to say about this:

“European institutions moved their accounts to W Social in order to have their data "hosted in Europe" but aside from their PDS, everything affecting their accounts is still relying on American infrastructure owned by Bluesky PBC. At least when they had their accounts on Bluesky, they were on an open network…”

Endlich ein soziales Netzwerk für Jugendliche. Man kann sich registrieren, aber nicht anmelden. Absolut sicher! /s

#wsocial

Fabulous, supportive article, Elena.

(I am not a fan of WSocial at all. They claim to be the solution while they are not)

Thanks @_elena! Wonderful insights and thanks for investing your energies into this research.

Another take away for me pertains how the Fediverse is 'complicated' to get into and stick around. Seeing how many political and institutional actors moved to #WSocial overly quick tells me that it isn't healthy either, to not know what's happening behind the scenes. Apparently, these actors haven't learned a thing, neither about the past, nor about network infrastructures. At least with the bit of friction you have with the fediverse, you have a didactic moment of realising that servers are somebody else's computer.

Only slightly related, but to make it easier to redact parts of screenshots, I once wrote this extension that might be helpful: addons.mozilla.org/firefox/add…

(Idea came from this Mastodon post: chaos.social/@maris/1083793924…)

Obfuscate – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

Download Obfuscate for Firefox. Make web page text unreadable

^{addons.mozilla.org}

That solution "Stop doing {waves arms all around W} all this"

:D

"This begs the question: are developers and managers aware of the issue? And are they doing anything to fix it?"

Do they have developers? Or only C*Os that vibe coded that thing and are now running out of tokens?

I will miss your coverage of this topic. It was always fun to read and well researched! Thanks for all the write ups!

This entire shitshow is just so bad in all possible respects it makes one wonder whether we're actually looking at something totally different than just a failed-from-the-start social media project?

I mean what is this really? Some cover operation to launder money? Some weird Russian information operation?

Because a social media project this just can't be.

@leanderlindahl

Do you know any journalist that could take your information and run with it?

@EUCommission
Why?

"More ironic: European institutions moved their accounts to W Social in order to have their data "hosted in Europe" but aside from their PDS, everything affecting their accounts is still relying on American infrastructure owned by Bluesky PBC. At least when they had their accounts on Bluesky, they were on an open network whose code can be inspected. By moving to W Social, European institutions migrated their accounts from an open to a closed-source network ..."

You have been referenced in a German IT magazine on that issue (behind paywall): social.heise.de/@ct_Magazin/11…

Edit: They said you were one of the first documenting the disappearing source code

I could imagine some of the following might be interested (and more than capable) to follow up (and/or might know some colleagues who'd be):

• journalist @adfichter of @republik_magazin and dnip.ch
• free journalists @sveckert & @evawolfangel (both of «They Talk Tech»)
• editor @markusreuter of netzpolitik.org
• author and activist @anneroth
• publicist @afelia

@deadsuperhero

Magazin - Das Netz ist politisch

Auf dieser Plattform schreiben wir regel­mässig über netz­politische Themen und veröffent­lichen exklusive Recherchen, Erklär­stücke und Kommentare, die es

^{Carolina Flores (avongunten)}

I guess its more: w social is not relevant enough for most of the tech journalists...that's why most of them are writing about the press release and not digging further.

my colleague @nohillside did btw also an excellent analysis. dnip.ch/2026/06/19/social-medi…

@deadsuperhero

Social Media: Now It's Europe's Turn! - Das Netz ist politisch

(English version of Social Media: jetzt ist Europa dran!, translation partially done by Deepl and Kagi Translate)

^{Patrick Seemann (avongunten)}

@adfichter @nohillside @deadsuperhero

Jeez whiz… all these so-called tech journalists gush about AI, which is a black box, and yet the Fediverse with its two @@ symbols may as well be Swahili…