Want an update on the Weekend at Bernie’s clown show that is W Social?
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@kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission 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.
@aral @_elena @EUCommission
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
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I'm not even sure w did, they just kissed up to the right politicians at Davos.
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@kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission 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.
@aral @kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission Does this apply to us in Gaza?🤔
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notizie@poliverso.org ha condiviso questa discussione su
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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):
https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mqob7shxks2t
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.“ (https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mqoepm7m2k2z)
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., https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333053823108, etc.
² https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTECDMT2
³ https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ (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: https://codeberg.org/aral/gists/src/branch/main/wsocial-pds-stats.js Also see https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-broken-ghost-town/ and https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/
#WSocial #EU #sovereignty #socialMedia #socialNetworking #mastodon #fediverse #activityPub #ATProto #startups #EUCommission
@aral @_elena That's kinda diabolical for me since @eurosky.social exists, but also sounds like Trump Social but Eurpoean edition to me
see also https://standard-reader.app/a/did:plc:s2rczyxit2v5vzedxqs326ri/3movp4n7tgc2e and https://semble.so/profile/ronentk.me/collections/3moioqfzajj2p
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@aleksei @aral 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: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC144603 you know, European, based on ATproto, but also OPEN SOURCE and not requiring a gov ID 🤷♀️
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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):
https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mqob7shxks2t
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.“ (https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mqoepm7m2k2z)
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., https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333053823108, etc.
² https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTECDMT2
³ https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ (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: https://codeberg.org/aral/gists/src/branch/main/wsocial-pds-stats.js Also see https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-broken-ghost-town/ and https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/
#WSocial #EU #sovereignty #socialMedia #socialNetworking #mastodon #fediverse #activityPub #ATProto #startups #EUCommission
@aral @_elena @EUCommission
ASIDE: I'm fairly skeptical about B Corps but she seems to be expressing a fundamental misunderstanding of what that phrase means. -
@kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission 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.
@aral @kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission
Isn't it weird that the oligarchs attacking democracy & frying the planet can remain anonymous, but they're demanding the identity of the 99% .
It's almost like 1% billionaires are afraid.
https://gizmodo.com/body-bags-found-outside-openai-hq-as-execs-increasingly-fear-for-their-lives-2000786605https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/peter-thiel-secret-society-dialog-58fgcv7dd
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/11/how-dangerous-is-peter-thiel/
https://www.ms.now/opinion/amid-musks-paranoia-u-s-marshals-deputized-his-unqualified-security-staff
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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):
https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mqob7shxks2t
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.“ (https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mqoepm7m2k2z)
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., https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333053823108, etc.
² https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTECDMT2
³ https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ (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: https://codeberg.org/aral/gists/src/branch/main/wsocial-pds-stats.js Also see https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-broken-ghost-town/ and https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/
#WSocial #EU #sovereignty #socialMedia #socialNetworking #mastodon #fediverse #activityPub #ATProto #startups #EUCommission
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@stux @aral it's been the case since June. I suppose they want to imitate the now defunct post.news https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/19/post-news-the-a16z-funded-twitter-alternative-is-shutting-down/ (sorry for the paywall)
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@aral @_elena @EUCommission
ASIDE: I'm fairly skeptical about B Corps but she seems to be expressing a fundamental misunderstanding of what that phrase means.@FeralRobots @_elena @EUCommission Yeah, reads to me like “please don’t think we’re in this to do good.”
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@aral @kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission
Isn't it weird that the oligarchs attacking democracy & frying the planet can remain anonymous, but they're demanding the identity of the 99% .
It's almost like 1% billionaires are afraid.
https://gizmodo.com/body-bags-found-outside-openai-hq-as-execs-increasingly-fear-for-their-lives-2000786605https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/peter-thiel-secret-society-dialog-58fgcv7dd
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/11/how-dangerous-is-peter-thiel/
https://www.ms.now/opinion/amid-musks-paranoia-u-s-marshals-deputized-his-unqualified-security-staff
@Npars01 @aral @kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission Well of course the corrupt don’t want you to know who is corrupting them, you might start getting ideas about stopping it.
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@Npars01 @aral @kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission Well of course the corrupt don’t want you to know who is corrupting them, you might start getting ideas about stopping it.
@aadeacon @Npars01 @kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission Tsk, tsk, we can’t be having that.
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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):
https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mqob7shxks2t
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.“ (https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mqoepm7m2k2z)
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., https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333053823108, etc.
² https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTECDMT2
³ https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ (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: https://codeberg.org/aral/gists/src/branch/main/wsocial-pds-stats.js Also see https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-broken-ghost-town/ and https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/
#WSocial #EU #sovereignty #socialMedia #socialNetworking #mastodon #fediverse #activityPub #ATProto #startups #EUCommission
@aral @_elena @EUCommission 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
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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):
https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mqob7shxks2t
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.“ (https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mqoepm7m2k2z)
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., https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333053823108, etc.
² https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTECDMT2
³ https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ (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: https://codeberg.org/aral/gists/src/branch/main/wsocial-pds-stats.js Also see https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-broken-ghost-town/ and https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/
#WSocial #EU #sovereignty #socialMedia #socialNetworking #mastodon #fediverse #activityPub #ATProto #startups #EUCommission
@aral @_elena @EUCommission ebin :-D
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@aral @_elena That's kinda diabolical for me since @eurosky.social exists, but also sounds like Trump Social but Eurpoean edition to me
see also https://standard-reader.app/a/did:plc:s2rczyxit2v5vzedxqs326ri/3movp4n7tgc2e and https://semble.so/profile/ronentk.me/collections/3moioqfzajj2p
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 -
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):
https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mqob7shxks2t
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.“ (https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mqoepm7m2k2z)
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., https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333053823108, etc.
² https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTECDMT2
³ https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ (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: https://codeberg.org/aral/gists/src/branch/main/wsocial-pds-stats.js Also see https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-broken-ghost-town/ and https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/
#WSocial #EU #sovereignty #socialMedia #socialNetworking #mastodon #fediverse #activityPub #ATProto #startups #EUCommission
@aral 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.
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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
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@aral @kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission Does this apply to us in Gaza?🤔
@Layan2002 @kcarr2015 @_elena @EUCommission 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.
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@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
@_elena I tried signing up through the app and it took forever to try and get verified on the W Identity app, so I cancelled it and totally forgot and then I tried again the other day and my invite code was bad. How many days is the email good for?
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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):
https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mqob7shxks2t
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.“ (https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mqoepm7m2k2z)
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., https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/116770333053823108, etc.
² https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTECDMT2
³ https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ (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: https://codeberg.org/aral/gists/src/branch/main/wsocial-pds-stats.js Also see https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-broken-ghost-town/ and https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/
#WSocial #EU #sovereignty #socialMedia #socialNetworking #mastodon #fediverse #activityPub #ATProto #startups #EUCommission
@aral
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.
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