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):

mu.social/profile/elenarossini…

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.

So, yeah, how’s your Monday going?

¹ e.g., mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333…, etc.

² aseachange.com/@elena/statuses…

³ blog.elenarossini.com/the-unto… (from the YouTube video that they since deleted. Nice transparency there, clowns.)

⁴ Run this script in Node 18+ to reproduce the numbers from their PDS yourself: codeberg.org/aral/gists/src/br… Also see blog.elenarossini.com/w-social… and blog.elenarossini.com/w-social…

#WSocial #EU #sovereignty #socialMedia #socialNetworking #mastodon #fediverse #activityPub #ATProto #startups #EUCommission

W Social, Fictional Metrics and the Beauty of Open Data

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.

^{Elena Rossini}

Aral Balkan

2026-06-18 09:11:20

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.)

#WSocial #NoWNoX #surveillance #capitalism #BigTech #VC @_elena mastodon.social/@_elena/116770…

@desertorea “Inspiring” is one word for it.

mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333…

#WSocial #warning

Aral Balkan

2026-06-18 09:11:20

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.)

#WSocial #NoWNoX #surveillance #capitalism #BigTech #VC @_elena mastodon.social/@_elena/116770…

Jeg fikk invite til W Social i den digitale postkassen idag. Jeg har egentlig ingen intensjoner om å være noe aktive på denne Bluesky-lignende kommersielle tjenesten som baserer seg på AT-protocol, men jeg tenkte det var greit å få registrert en konto og sjekke hva det er, om ikke annet for å unngå at noen tar brukernavnet jeg pleier å ha.

For å kunne gjøre noe som helst på W Social så må man verifisere identiteten sin. Greit nok, det er konseptet, tillitt basert på identifisering. Så jeg dro opp mitt nasjonale ID-kort som har NFC identifisering.

Appen klarte ikke å lese teksten på kortet uansett hva jeg gjorde (jeg har gjort det samme med BankID, så kortet fungerer).

Uansett, jeg fant frem det flunka nye passet mitt. Her kom jeg lenger, appen leste teksten og gjenkjente NFC-chippen, men så feilet appen med å lese NFC-chippen (igjen, BankID og LinkedIn klarer dette helt utmerket).

Nå kjente jeg at nok var nok. Jeg har fått opprettet brukerkonto, navnet mitt er reservert, men uten å identifisere meg kan jeg ikke gjøre noe mer. Jeg kan egentlig leve helt fint med det

@elena har skrevet en god del interessant om #WSocial for de som har lyst til å grave mer i hva dette er for noe:

blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-so…

RE: mastodon.social/@_elena/116837…

Also, please remember that all #WSocial has to do to win is have the benefit of the doubt.

Don’t give them that.

If they have it, with so much money and political influence, they can scale.

If they scale, they can reach network effects.

If they reach network effects, there’s zero you can do to stop them.

Fine! So what?

Well, they have mandatory identity verification.

Once they have network effects, the European Commission can say “any social network that doesn’t implement mandatory identity verification is henceforth illegal in the EU. We have our own “sovereign” network, WSocial, that implements it and if any other networks want to operate in the EU, they must too. Facebook, etc., will implement it in a heartbeat. The fediverse? It’ll be illegal.

So, yeah, maybe don’t give them the benefit of the doubt.

Actively resist them.

Don’t engage with people on there.

Warn your friends.

They’re not building a social network. They’re building the infrastructure for a police state backed by the European Commission.

#WSocial #mandatoryIdentityVerification #surveillance #EU #EuropeanCommission

Elena Rossini 🌈

2026-06-30 07:01:19

#WSocial posted a message on their official account talking about "temporary profile issues" for "some W users."

Reality (exposed in my latest article): their network was BRICKED for ALL NEW USERS who joined starting on June 22 (some 3100+ accounts out of 5000) for 7+ days.

An amateur reporter and self-hosting newbie (aka me) figured out the problem and the solution, bringing attention to this matter.

I had to respond: mu.social/profile/elenarossini… hope others chime in 🤭

Elena Rossini ⁂ (@elenarossini.com)

I'm glad that my article helped bring attention to this problem - which had bricked your network for all new users who had joined starting on June 22 (3000+ accounts, for 7+ days - I've got .csv records to prove it).

^mu