Elena Rossini 🌈May 8

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

W Social uncovered: the reality behind the hype

An article dispelling myths about W Social, the new European platform that aims to rival X: it is a fork of Bluesky that shares many similarities with Eurosky and requires government ID to sign up.

Elena Rossini
Show threadElena Rossini 🌈May 8

Regarding my W Social exposé: it was months in the making and I could have written a LOT more, showing additional examples of technical blunders, but I kept it "brief" at 3500 words 😅

I ran out of characters to tag all the awesome people I mentioned in the piece: @doktorzjivago (thanks for the top notch meme), @tom @mapache and @Em0nM4stodon

And special thanks to people who volunteered to proof-read a draft and gave me fantastic feedback: @bitzero and @DataKnightmare

It takes a village ❤️

Show threadElena Rossini 🌈May 8

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 ❤️

Show threadOblomov

@_elena still no mention of Mastodon or the Fediverse, LOL. That .news TLD really brings back to memory that failed attempt to capture the Xodus and the short-lived post.news experiment (shut down in 2024)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/19/post-news-the-a16z-funded-twitter-alternative-is-shutting-down/

Taking bets on how long W will last!

Post News, the a16z-funded Twitter alternative, is shutting down | TechCrunch

Post was backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Scott Galloway, an NYU professor and tech commentator, but the platform never disclosed how much it raised.

TechCrunch
May 8 at 5:58pmWeb