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pocksuppet 22 hours ago [-]
W Social felt extremely shady since their first advertisement on HN.
Also, for all their talk about human verification, I have 6 accounts under different names :)
sparkling 20 hours ago [-]
Super shady.
The german public broadcaster gave them a 5 minute feature on yesterdays evening news, that felt more like a paid ad than journalism. The report made it sound like it is some kind of semi-official EU-endorsed project, but its just... a closed source, for-profit social network? I guess the folks behind it are just well connected in Brussels.
Thank you but no thank you.
mortarion 20 hours ago [-]
The company is "W Social AB", meaning "aktiebolag" which in Swedish is what you in the USA would call an LLC or "joint stock company.
So they are 100% looking to monetize and turn a profit.
I wouldn't call it shady, but closed source, for-profit sounds accurate.
technothrasher 17 hours ago [-]
> what you in the USA would call an LLC
"Inc" is probably closer than "LLC". While an LLC is a type of joint stock company, it is a specific form with a pass-through tax structure and restrictions on foreign ownership. "Inc" signifies the more general form of corporation in the US.
TazeTSchnitzel 19 hours ago [-]
Aktiebolag is the overwhelmingly most common company form in Sweden and similar to common corporation forms in many other countries. It's not the same thing as a US LLC, which is a strange entity that has pass-through taxation.
Which is to say, there's nothing particularly remarkable about it being an Aktiebolag. It would be more remarkable if it wasn't.
rvba 19 hours ago [-]
You can have an "open" non profit, that is actually closed and is working to turn into a for profit...
so those distinctions dont seem to count much nowadays
KPGv2 16 hours ago [-]
Where is this possible? In the US, it is impossible. Non-profit's do not have owners, so they cannot be sold or changed to for-profit ones, so there are only two ways for a non-profit to "turn into" a for-profit:
* sell non-profit's assets to a for-profit company (so it's not turning into a for-profit company, and ownership of the non-profit can never be sold since it's not owned by anyone that can approve the sale, there are no shares, etc.) This is only legal if sold at fair market value. So the for-profit can't just take the IP, equipment, land, etc. It has to buy it at what anyone else would buy it at. It also has to be approved of by the state's government. Then the proceeds of the sale have to be transferred to another non-profit.
* form a for-profit subsidiary, which is still controlled by the non-profit. And the for-profit is owned by the non-profit, so the profits flow upward to the non-profit to be used to support the non-profit's agenda.
Either way, the non-profit cannot become a for-profit, and it takes corporate governance shenanigans (like the bullshit happening with OpenAI) to even approximate this. Essentially, it requires corruption and a non-profit board that is unaccountable to its stakeholders.
nickff 14 hours ago [-]
The comment you've replied to seems to be referring to OpenAI.
mcfly_c-137 7 hours ago [-]
Saw that interview, too. Biggest red flag to me was the claim, that they would use the mandatory id-document only to initially verify your'e not a bot - then discard it and they would "not store anything". Very hard to believe.
Arainach 6 hours ago [-]
Why is that hard to believe? Plenty of systems work that way today. Holding on to that kind of information is a liability.
chadgpt3 6 minutes ago [-]
not a single big corporation throws away your identity documents, they are very valuable
fp64 4 hours ago [-]
The way verification works requires sharing unique identifiers that a government can always trace back to the real identity. It is not clear whether these identifiers are retained, but I believe it is partially necessary to allow for "decentralization"
tannhaeuser 20 hours ago [-]
Indeed a very odd sight between WC matches. I don't normally watch much TV, but I think this warrants further investigation and inquiry.
No mention of long-term stake of EU in ActivityPub platforms either, as if W would be our savior.
okr 20 hours ago [-]
And probably stuffed with tax money. As usual.
lynx97 3 hours ago [-]
Public broadcasters in .de and .at have generally become very shady. To me it seems they dont have to pretend to do good journalism anymore, because they are financed by a mandatory fee per household anyway. It started to be very visible during COVID times. Unfortunately, since then, it only got worse.
hackerbeat 14 hours ago [-]
The name is terrible too.
boznz 13 hours ago [-]
Yeah, based on the people and organizations moving there, RedSky would be more appropriate.
raffael_de 13 hours ago [-]
it's actually a double-v as in "the vvitch"
darig 20 hours ago [-]
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xg15 21 hours ago [-]
> Europe already has an ATproto social network - Eurosky - run by a non-profit foundation - Modal - that is building everything in the open, with full transparency, sharing all the steps in their development roadmap:
And weirdly, there was never a peep about this in the press - while the W Social launch was on national news and a bunch of high-profile EU politicians immediately joined. What's going on here?
maelito 20 hours ago [-]
It means that marketers won over technical, factual people.
oytis 19 hours ago [-]
Not marketers, lobbyists
pocksuppet 18 hours ago [-]
Probably marketers in this one. Marketers who know how to access politicians adn get invited to WEF.
The distinction: marketers know how to trick people, lobbyists bribe them.
oytis 17 hours ago [-]
That's not lobbyism, that's straight corruption. Lobbyism is, at least in theory, about convincing politicians
calgoo 5 hours ago [-]
Its legalized bribes, basically pay to play these days.
pocksuppet 17 hours ago [-]
In practice it's about bribing them or at least telling them personal gains. Like if you tell a politician he should support the war on Iran because he owns lots of oil stocks and they'll go up.
Marketing is telling a politician this app is the future of EU social chat so you need to be using it.
lenerdenator 14 hours ago [-]
You would have to be exceptionally naïve to think that a good chunk of the "lobbying" done doesn't involve some sort of exchange of something of value.
rapnie 19 hours ago [-]
Both? But yea, if you see the Advisory Board shown in an image lower in the article, you get the general idea.
oytis 19 hours ago [-]
Obama making an account on Twitter is a marketers' success. Twitter became popular first, politicians wanted to appear there second.
WSocial just went to politicians directly,it's not known by general public. Good news is, it rarely helps with commercial success
lenerdenator 14 hours ago [-]
Not lobbyists, bribers.
xg15 20 hours ago [-]
The marketers or the so far unnamed private investors.
RobotToaster 19 hours ago [-]
Mastodon is also European
Cider9986 11 hours ago [-]
Mastodon is too secure and private for them.
jasonvorhe 12 hours ago [-]
They want people to get used to digital id.
tao_oat 21 hours ago [-]
I thought this was a good post on the topic: [W Social is TruthSocial with a European accent.][1]
i wish there was a disclosure about letting LLM write this article
mortarion 20 hours ago [-]
The guy who runs W Social, whilst he has a software developer background, has worked most of his time in the financial world. W social is also an LLC. It's a corporation with shares looking to make a profit somehow. No doubt there will be ads on there, and paid features.
I don't see how this will ever become a success, not because it's going closed source (people here don't care), or because it might have paid features (people here don't care) in the future, or even ands (people here don't care), but because of the name. Who the hell thought "W Social" was a good name for a company?
We are so bad at company names here in the EU it's embarrassing.
sajithdilshan 17 hours ago [-]
I think they just choose W, because it's the letter before X (former twitter). Apart from the EU leaders and politicians stroking each other egos, I hardly think anyone would be there and it would die out in few years.
bolbishvili 4 hours ago [-]
we need a Y social that's just a static website encouraging us to go outside.
throwaway85825 14 hours ago [-]
It will serve it's primary purpose of separating criticism from direct association with EU politicians posts. They also hate community notes.
malmz 18 hours ago [-]
W Social is a Swedish company and therefore not an LLC. It is an Aktiebolag (AB), it is closer to a Corporation (Inc). Still for profit but not necessarily evil, just the most common business type in Sweden.
RobotToaster 19 hours ago [-]
Maybe they just chose the letter before X?
georgemcbay 18 hours ago [-]
This thread is the first time I've even heard of "W Social" so I have no specific insight into their naming, but I'd assume it comes from (gaming/lifestyle) streaming culture where "chatters" will often say "W <thing>" (good, win) or "L <thing>" (bad, lose) as short-form feedback on how they feel about <thing>.
tao_oat 18 hours ago [-]
This would make sense but seems unlikely to me, because the people involved come across as incredibly offline.
hackerbeat 14 hours ago [-]
Yeah, terrible name indeed.
xg15 19 hours ago [-]
Looking at the people who immediately joined and this being presented at WEF, this looks less like an EU BlueSky or X and more like an EU Truth Social - i.e. the core users seem to be EU politicians who don't want to depend on a platform owned by their political opponents for reach and so want to have their own platform.
boznz 6 hours ago [-]
And get confirmation bias on whatever they write from like-minded cronies, without the usual anonymous piss-takers.. kinda sad really!
bborud 19 hours ago [-]
It isn't so much about platform owned by political opponents as platforms now being political and/or that we always have to assume they come with a political agenda.
throwaway85825 14 hours ago [-]
Its about restricting replies to sycophants.
maelito 20 hours ago [-]
Just use https://mu.social, it's essentially the same thing, just built in the open by the Eurosky stack.
jraedisch 3 hours ago [-]
Divide and conquer?! Twitter could have been IT and somehow did not make it. Now we have many contenders and with Europe witnessing being cut off from American services, many are betting on growing public budgets for infrastructure projects.
I paid for Mastodon(.social) for a while and somehow still think, projects funded by users should be the norm, but web B2C always had a hard stance in EU, pitching for public funds seems to remain "the winner"/most viable option in this space.
threecheese 19 hours ago [-]
“There have been so many red flags with W Social since its hastily cobbled-together *announcement at Davos*”
I think that last bit explains why European govt orgs have migrated to it, over the open source Eurosky.
BigTuna 22 hours ago [-]
An unfortunate step backwards. I'm cheering for Eurosky and open networks.
Imustaskforhelp 20 hours ago [-]
Eurosky actually looks like a promising alternative (speaking as non-european) but the AT protocol should have more open friendly competition than just the flagship instance of bluesky. Eurosky seems interesting as well.
danabramov 18 hours ago [-]
Note that “instance” is Mastodon-brained and is a wrong way to think about atproto. The correct parallel is RSS / Google Reader.
Atproto has two types of things: hosting and apps.
- Hosting is like RSS. You can host your data on your own server and broadcast from it. It’s just an open source Docker container.
- Apps are like Google Reader. They aggregate from all hosts and usually build an index so they can show a rich view over the network. That’s what Bluesky, Leaflet, Tangled, etc, so.
So there is no “instance”. There’s hosting and there’s apps.
BigTuna 19 hours ago [-]
In addition to Eurosky there's also Blacksky, Northsky, and Anisota. Plus dozens of other non-microblogging apps. AT is growing pretty quickly now.
kristianc 20 hours ago [-]
Sovereignty is mostly just a protectionist racket. European firms struggle to compete with dominant US platforms, framing industrial policy as "sovereignty" rather than protectionism just sounds more strategic and security-oriented. I've seen US platforms bend over backwards to meet the requirements and they still choose their preferred winner. Predictably the goalposts keep moving.
skrebbel 3 hours ago [-]
This seems a bit tone deaf. Trump can force American tech companies to hand over data or disable accesss of European accounts. Eg a year ago he didn’t like what some judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague (NL) were doing so he had Microsoft block their email access.
Sure it vibes very well with protectionists but the sovereignty angle is real. The USA is no longer a reliable partner.
(And just before someone mistakes my comment as having any stance on W Social, I do not)
oytis 13 hours ago [-]
EU doesn't have enough money to just buy the competition
joe_mamba 12 hours ago [-]
EU had more money than China yet shipped fewer dominant software platforms
oytis 4 hours ago [-]
China doesn't allow foreign social media on their territory at all. US had one for a short time, then panicked and forced them to sell. EU can neither buy American platforms, nor does it want to build a great firewall of Europe, so it's trying to find other ways to get in control
dudisubekti 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah money is just a fancy paper if you can't translate it to actual productivity.
m00dy 5 hours ago [-]
money and credit are different things. EU has credit.
CM30 17 hours ago [-]
Not sure if the backlash got to them or they got word of potential legal issues caused by doing this, but I can see their GitHub page and its associated repositories just fine now:
But I do kinda wonder the legality of this sort of move anyway. If other people contributed code and didn't agree to some terms of service saying their work would become the property of the project owner, would it even be legal to make it closed source under a different license?
fp64 4 hours ago [-]
There's no much there? A fork of some component where the only changes are some lines in config, and a bunch of shell scripts for a docker image?
tancop 16 hours ago [-]
bluesky is mit/apache so they can legally make a closed source fork. what they cant do is sue people who reupload any version before they went closed, even if they used a copyright assignment cla because neither of the licenses can be revoked.
hahajk 21 hours ago [-]
> Europe already has an ATproto social network - Eurosky
Why is this a different network? Are Eurosky relays not indexing anything outside Eurosky?
dutchCourage 20 hours ago [-]
The article explains what's needed to run something like Bluesky (ctrl-f "To be fully sovereign you need").
My understanding is that Eurosky aims to be a non-profit ran alternative, hosted in EU. It integrates with Bluesky seamlessly (Bsky users and EUSky users can interact) but would keep working if Bluesky was taken down. I believe it also gives Eurosky agency when it comes to moderation.
maelito 20 hours ago [-]
They are, it's just a second instance of a realy. For independance, resilience, moderation, and also probably minor technical choices.
mystraline 18 hours ago [-]
How to create an account on #WSocial in 13 easy steps:
1. choose a username
2. choose a password
3. choose your interests
4. download the #WIdentity app to your phone (two options: Apple AppStore or Google Play Store)
5. scan a QR code
6. create a PIN code
optional: enable biometrics; re-enter PIN
7. choose whether you simply want to verify that you're human or if you also want to verify your name
8. choose the verification method (automatic photo review, request a manual review or scan your passport chip)
9. scan your passport's picture page
10. scan your passport's chip
11. take a selfie
12. scan a QR code to link the W Identity to your W Social account
not bad but bluesky/eurosky is just better. activitypub based networks treat instances as sovereign with full control over users data. they can permanently delete your posts and the posts you see depend on who the admin wants to federate with. the only way to be independent is run your own server so non technical users get stuck under reddit style moderation.
at protocol is global by default and puts you in control with full account portability. and it looks like its easier to expand it to new use cases like tangled (github alternative) or rocksky (social listening like last fm).
zoul 6 hours ago [-]
On the other hand, the currently overwhelmingly dominant Bluesky app and infrastructure can control what users see, presenting a centralized chokepoint. It’s nice to own your data but if your social circle uses a single centralized app to view it, shrug.
colesantiago 14 hours ago [-]
> Or.... How about not? Seriously, join Mastodon!
Which decentralised instance?
urbnspacecowboy 12 hours ago [-]
> Which decentralised instance?
any of them
all of them
colesantiago 12 hours ago [-]
> any of them
> all of them
That is the problem.
The paradox of choice stiffles adoption for Mastodon for the regular user and pushes them away.
Choosing the main instance goes against the whole point of Mastodon for federation.
There was even a time Mastodon wanted to promote other federated instances by closing off the main instance, it failed.
You might as well use Bluesky or Threads and be done with it.
slater 12 hours ago [-]
It's true, same goes for e-mail host, just so many options to choose from! /s
rafram 20 hours ago [-]
I have a hunch that many - most? - of these European digital sovereignty projects will end up being grifts. Whenever money is being thrown at any crappy, low-effort startup that knows how to speak the right language, you get grifters coming out of the woodwork.
throwaway85825 14 hours ago [-]
There's billions available for whoever greases the right palms.
advisedwang 18 hours ago [-]
EU bigwigs don't care about Open Source. They care about EU data sovereignty and supporting EU businesses (well the appearance of doing so, anyway).
jauntywundrkind 19 hours ago [-]
Really sad seeing europa.eu and high profile politicians switching switching to such obviously bullshit low effort hacks. Ursala von der Leyen just joined and fired off a hello, for example. Many agitated replies to it, discussing the matter, with lots and lots of discontent for W Social: https://bsky.app/profile/vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu/post/3moio...
There's a fantastic thread covering this and many other issues. This seems to go against the core EU directives for self sovereignty, just signing up to a very rogue platform that happens to have some protocol interoperability. Also, lol, they have no cross site scripting protection.
https://bsky.app/profile/stollmeyer.eurosky.social/post/3moi...
Given the presence of https://eurosky.tech and https://mu.social, the EU folks going to W over them is either massive out of touch pitiful incompetence, or worse, sharks preferring to go with other sharks they feel they can control, instead of something actually positive and better, but not as directly manipulable.
binaryturtle 16 hours ago [-]
The site loads somewhat, burns 100% CPU non-stop, I can't really click any of the buttons. I guess it's not for me. :)
jongjong 5 hours ago [-]
Well I guess it's slightly more honest than US social media. In this case the government doesn't keep their involvement a secret.
teddyh 17 hours ago [-]
Maybe they moved to Codeberg?
DavideNL 16 hours ago [-]
Slightly off topic, but what's the origin / where does the name "W" come from?
trolleski 13 hours ago [-]
European elites are so corrupt and complicit that if they say they will do something, you can rest assured the opposite will take place.
jwr 22 hours ago [-]
I don't understand why anyone would want to make the same mistake all over again: jumping onto a private platform owned by a company inevitably results in you becoming the product sold and enshittification.
We've seen it so many times.
Learn the lesson. Use Mastodon this time.
erxam 20 hours ago [-]
Call me when the Fediverse has a search function that actually fucking works. Most of my time in social media is spent searching for keywords of whatever I'm interested in, which is one thing which Mastodon is absolutely awful at.
Also, while we’re at it, try to make Fediverse culture less insular and more open. There's no point in trying to reply to anyone since everyone hates everyone else. Pointless platform.
dolmen 18 hours ago [-]
> Call me when the Fediverse has a search function that actually fucking works.
Actually that's a feature. If search doesn't work, there is less incentive for bots polluting others people searches.
On the other hand, search works so bad than even connecting to people you know on other networks is painful.
erxam 13 hours ago [-]
It's not even about connecting to other people. I'm a toxic, friendless miserable asshole. I don't have anyone to connect with.
All I use social media for is to look at whatever funny piece of media I'm obsessed with currently and related things.
Unfortunately, Mastodon both has busted search and useless tags. Tumblr's search has been hilariously bad for ages now, but at least the tagging system is so comprehensive it more than makes up for it.
Mastodon is the worst of all worlds in that aspect.
jwr 16 hours ago [-]
I have entirely different experiences and I haven't seen much hating — but having read this, perhaps indeed mastodon isn't for you :-)
erxam 13 hours ago [-]
It's not hating, it's just this general reaction against strangers even seeing your posts.
I haven't actually been subject to this, yet, but I've seen enough people react negatively against others doing this that it saps all my desire to do anything other than just aimlessly scroll every once in a while. I can read the room, you know.
Sometimes I wonder why do instance admins even open up their instances? Just run it for your friends and those who you like and cut the crap.
afavour 21 hours ago [-]
atproto is also open source and in my experience (solely as a user rather than a developer on the API/network) it simply works better than Mastodon.
chadgpt3 2 minutes ago [-]
ATProto is centralized.
mort96 21 hours ago [-]
And what is that experience of yours? Do you have experience from deployments with many independent atproto data servers and relays federating together?
Or do you have experience from bluesky, meaning you're only interacting with one central server and none of the complexities of federation come into play?
danabramov 21 hours ago [-]
That’s like saying that someone using Google Reader doesn’t “experience federation of RSS”.
Yes, my experience using the Bluesky app includes the Bluesky app server aggregating from many independent PDS hosts (because people I follow like that). But it doesn’t show up in user experience because that’s the whole point.
And yes, I can use another aggregator instead of the Bluesky app, or even use a client which has no backend and relies on community-run Constellation index. It all roughly works the same.
mort96 20 hours ago [-]
And it works as smoothly for people on other app servers?
danabramov 20 hours ago [-]
What does “people on other app servers” mean? That’s not a thing.
App servers are aggregators. You can use any to read the network. Here’s a post I wrote, as seen via Bluesky aggregator:
My hosting is managed by Bluesky but it has nothing to do with Bluesky app. Hosting is a separate decoupled thing. I could move hosting to my own Docker container, and all aggregators would see my posts just as fine.
Does this clear things up?
OneDeuxTriSeiGo 9 hours ago [-]
Users of different appviews are just using a different aggregator/backend in effect. The network is still largely the same but there may be minor moderation or feature differences between appviews.
Users of different PDS would be the closest thing to a mastodon instance and there's thousands of different PDS without much issue. I'm on a "third party PDS" and I've had barely any issues.
I use a "third party" PDS, appview, PLC directory mirror, CDN, and client so 99.9% of my interaction with bluesky and atproto at large is independent of bluesky the corporation.
Despite using a third party "basically everything" my experience is essentially the same as a "default" bluesky user if not better in many ways
tao_oat 21 hours ago [-]
If you use bsky.app, you still see posts from other servers (Blacksky, Eurosky, W Social, and so on). But yes, by the protocol's design you're primarily interacting with one central aggregator of everything (Bluesky's AppView).
afavour 20 hours ago [-]
This is exactly why I clarified with "as a user".
I just checked and yes, I follow someone that's on Eurosky. Maybe I follow multiple, I honestly don't know because it isn't at all noticeable. It just works.
mglvsky 21 hours ago [-]
I'd go further - just leave social media
jwr 21 hours ago [-]
No, not necessarily. Mastodon is actually "social media", as opposed to twitter/X, bluewhatever, facebook, or any other commercial outlet, to be honest, all of these have become "feeds" of promoted content designed to maximize "engagement".
Mastodon is social: you follow people, you see their stuff. It's what social media used to be.
pfraze 20 hours ago [-]
Fyi it’s actually called bluesky, not bluewhatever
addedGone 18 hours ago [-]
Bluesky is really lagging in user adoption because the name itself implies some sort of political divide, and from experience, it seems that it's an echo chamber where "right" activists are getting demolished at the first occasion, I wished it would have a mix of people and opinion.
pfraze 18 hours ago [-]
Wcyd? It was the name that Dorsey chose before the PBC was even formed. It's from the technical term of art, like greenfield.
onraglanroad 18 hours ago [-]
I'm guessing that's because blue means left wing in the USA and red means right wing.
Why did you switch them around? Red always meant left wing. Even in the US red meant the Soviets. It's just confusing to everyone else.
tancop 16 hours ago [-]
no one really knows, when broadcasters started using party colors it was all over the place and they settled on blue for dems. i guess its because neither party was socialist so there was no association with red like in europe.
soco 21 hours ago [-]
Which is what eYou is trying to build as well. Including AI fact-checking: far from perfect but interesting to read its fact checks on your own posts.
shermantanktop 20 hours ago [-]
You’re posting that on HN. I consider HN to be social media but lacking the most pernicious features (ads, algorithmic feeds) and benefitting from both strong moderation and self-policing. But it gets to do that by being funded from extrinsic sources, which is itself a compromise.
matteomrj 22 hours ago [-]
Eurosky is also an option.
17383848 22 hours ago [-]
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Landing7610 22 hours ago [-]
But thats just the thing with atproto. The company sucks? Just move your PDS.
RobotToaster 19 hours ago [-]
If they filter you at the relay or appview level that doesn't work.
greenavocado 21 hours ago [-]
There is no lesson to be learned. There are billions of noobs. There is always a cow to milk, it seems.
colesantiago 21 hours ago [-]
Nobody important or worth following uses Mastodon.
Also Mastodon is on the road to enshittification since the previous CEO and founder bowed out for $1M using donations and the main instance federates with Meta's Threads.
The other instances are out of the question since one rogue instance owner can lock and shutdown that instance.
jwr 21 hours ago [-]
I am quite happy with people I follow on Mastodon. Sure, various politicians might not be there, but those are not people I want to hear from.
The rest of your comment seems to be pure speculation, so.
Aachen 21 hours ago [-]
How can you know there's nobody worth following on Mastodon?
bigfishrunning 21 hours ago [-]
I was on mastodon for a year, and the only people there were other dorks looking for someone to follow on mastodon
pferde 3 hours ago [-]
If you actually take the time to look for posts and communities about things you care about, you'll find more than enough of interesting people. It's just that there is no algorithm to feed you content, you have to be active in looking for it, at least initially.
I'm not necessarily saying you made this mistake, but plenty of other people who dip their toe in the fediverse do this - they get in, find nothing in their feed, they shrug and forget about it. A good start is to search for a few hashtags that match your interests, even add a follow for those if you see they're active, and soon you'll start seeing interesting people. I've been on there for years, and I'm always amazed at the small niche discussion threads I find.
Aachen 21 hours ago [-]
Huh, okay. For me there's everything from government updates to industry news to friends and acquaintances active on Mastodon. Meeting new people there as well. Maybe infosec and my friends are just all dorks
deathanatos 17 hours ago [-]
I could name so many projects or people. The Rust language? KDE? Comics like War and Peas, or David Revoy's works? Hackers like Foone, Mara Bos? Technology Connections!
Countless cute kitten pics. Minimal hate or bigotry in my feed. Don't have to log in. Don't even have to sign up. Finite scroll on the homepage.
colesantiago 14 hours ago [-]
You've just described Bluesky?
deathanatos 13 hours ago [-]
But why would I ever choose locked down, corporate Twitter v2 "it'll be different this time!" over Mastodon?
pfraze 10 hours ago [-]
Bluesky is the opposite of locked down
colesantiago 12 hours ago [-]
> But why would I ever choose locked down, corporate Twitter v2 "it'll be different this time!" over Mastodon?
So that you don't have to move from Mastodon instance to Mastodon instance over a petty owner disagreement after they delete the entire server with all your data.
pferde 3 hours ago [-]
And yet, oodles of people continue to happily use it every day. From what I've seen, it's only the assholes who get booted out of everywhere they go.
zerobees 21 hours ago [-]
> Nobody important or worth following uses Mastodon.
So? I don't use social media to receive curated, hourly dispatches from Barack Obama or Taylor Swift (or, more likely, their account managers). And it might feel important to get the latest rage bait and memes from Elon - it's almost like being friends with the world's first trillionaire - but is it really a good use of your time?
I think a healthier way to use social media is to have two-way interactions with some reasonably stable social circle; less about "people who matter" and more about "people who matter to you". Mastodon certainly has the critical mass to make this possible.
oytis 21 hours ago [-]
Terry Tao, Bert Hubert, Michal Zalewski (lcamtuf), Bunny Huang are just a few in my feed. But Mastodon is more about peer-to-peer communication than celebrities farming engagement indeed.
No signs of enshittification either so far, barely any new features being added TBH
jeromegv 21 hours ago [-]
Threads is just another node that connects to ActivityPub, there is no "road" to enshittification.
Mastodon is independant, each instance manages itself, some are bad, some are good, you can even host your own, that's the power of decentralization.
colesantiago 21 hours ago [-]
With this logic, Threads is the biggest 'Mastodon instance' with 500M active users monthly.
Why aren't the general public using the original first 'instance' which is Mastodon if it is just another node?
> Mastodon is independant, each instance manages itself, some are bad, some are good, you can even host your own, that's the power of decentralization.
I think this is where it falls apart.
Nobody wants to waste their time host your own, moving from a rouge instance, trying to search for users to follow and the worst one:
Choosing which instance to sign up to.
It is no wonder that even Bluesky is more active than Mastodon.
If I was going to tell someone what social media to sign up to other than X, it has to be either Threads or Bluesky.
oytis 21 hours ago [-]
Practically, if you choose a big enough server, it's rarely a problem. mastodon.social is the most popular one, maintained by Mastodon the non-profit itself.
Biggest turn off and a killer feature depending on who you ask is a lack of Algorithm. That's why people who move away from Twitter feel disoriented, but people who were never on Twitter in the first place are alright.
Tepix 21 hours ago [-]
I, for one, want to choose for myself whether to block other instances or not. You seem to not tolerate this opinion.
A "main instance" is contrary to the whole idea of a Fediverse anyway.
badgersnake 20 hours ago [-]
> Nobody important or worth following uses Mastodon.
This obviously is total nonsense.
angst_ridden 21 hours ago [-]
Tell me you don't understand the point of Mastodon without telling me you don't understand the point of Mastodon.
colesantiago 21 hours ago [-]
> Tell me you don't understand the point of Mastodon without telling me you don't understand the point of Mastodon.
Yes, many people don't understand the point of Mastodon.
This includes many of the hundreds of users who tried to make Mastodon work as an X alternative but failed because it was too hard to use.
Decentralisation, Federation, self hosting and choosing an instance isn't enough of a point for many people to use it.
pixel_popping 20 hours ago [-]
W Social isn't built with proper cryptography and so-on, it's amateurish.
vivzkestrel 20 hours ago [-]
- am i the only one or does anyone else think this website is somehow hijacking the scrollbar?
bolbishvili 4 hours ago [-]
I don't notice anything with the scrollbar. I tried with and without ublock origin enabled.
rvz 22 hours ago [-]
Another social network with 0 network effect and is dead on arrival. Now being closed makes it far worse than Bluesky and no better than a prototype pre-production version of Threads; with 0 users.
Also, for all their talk about human verification, I have 6 accounts under different names :)
The german public broadcaster gave them a 5 minute feature on yesterdays evening news, that felt more like a paid ad than journalism. The report made it sound like it is some kind of semi-official EU-endorsed project, but its just... a closed source, for-profit social network? I guess the folks behind it are just well connected in Brussels.
Thank you but no thank you.
So they are 100% looking to monetize and turn a profit.
I wouldn't call it shady, but closed source, for-profit sounds accurate.
"Inc" is probably closer than "LLC". While an LLC is a type of joint stock company, it is a specific form with a pass-through tax structure and restrictions on foreign ownership. "Inc" signifies the more general form of corporation in the US.
Which is to say, there's nothing particularly remarkable about it being an Aktiebolag. It would be more remarkable if it wasn't.
so those distinctions dont seem to count much nowadays
* sell non-profit's assets to a for-profit company (so it's not turning into a for-profit company, and ownership of the non-profit can never be sold since it's not owned by anyone that can approve the sale, there are no shares, etc.) This is only legal if sold at fair market value. So the for-profit can't just take the IP, equipment, land, etc. It has to buy it at what anyone else would buy it at. It also has to be approved of by the state's government. Then the proceeds of the sale have to be transferred to another non-profit.
* form a for-profit subsidiary, which is still controlled by the non-profit. And the for-profit is owned by the non-profit, so the profits flow upward to the non-profit to be used to support the non-profit's agenda.
Either way, the non-profit cannot become a for-profit, and it takes corporate governance shenanigans (like the bullshit happening with OpenAI) to even approximate this. Essentially, it requires corruption and a non-profit board that is unaccountable to its stakeholders.
No mention of long-term stake of EU in ActivityPub platforms either, as if W would be our savior.
And weirdly, there was never a peep about this in the press - while the W Social launch was on national news and a bunch of high-profile EU politicians immediately joined. What's going on here?
The distinction: marketers know how to trick people, lobbyists bribe them.
Marketing is telling a politician this app is the future of EU social chat so you need to be using it.
WSocial just went to politicians directly,it's not known by general public. Good news is, it rarely helps with commercial success
[^1]: https://wecanjustdothings.leaflet.pub/3mokohkfb4224
I don't see how this will ever become a success, not because it's going closed source (people here don't care), or because it might have paid features (people here don't care) in the future, or even ands (people here don't care), but because of the name. Who the hell thought "W Social" was a good name for a company?
We are so bad at company names here in the EU it's embarrassing.
I think that last bit explains why European govt orgs have migrated to it, over the open source Eurosky.
Atproto has two types of things: hosting and apps.
- Hosting is like RSS. You can host your data on your own server and broadcast from it. It’s just an open source Docker container.
- Apps are like Google Reader. They aggregate from all hosts and usually build an index so they can show a rich view over the network. That’s what Bluesky, Leaflet, Tangled, etc, so.
So there is no “instance”. There’s hosting and there’s apps.
Sure it vibes very well with protectionists but the sovereignty angle is real. The USA is no longer a reliable partner.
(And just before someone mistakes my comment as having any stance on W Social, I do not)
https://github.com/w-social-eu
But I do kinda wonder the legality of this sort of move anyway. If other people contributed code and didn't agree to some terms of service saying their work would become the property of the project owner, would it even be legal to make it closed source under a different license?
Why is this a different network? Are Eurosky relays not indexing anything outside Eurosky?
My understanding is that Eurosky aims to be a non-profit ran alternative, hosted in EU. It integrates with Bluesky seamlessly (Bsky users and EUSky users can interact) but would keep working if Bluesky was taken down. I believe it also gives Eurosky agency when it comes to moderation.
1. choose a username
2. choose a password
3. choose your interests
4. download the #WIdentity app to your phone (two options: Apple AppStore or Google Play Store)
5. scan a QR code
6. create a PIN code
optional: enable biometrics; re-enter PIN
7. choose whether you simply want to verify that you're human or if you also want to verify your name
8. choose the verification method (automatic photo review, request a manual review or scan your passport chip)
9. scan your passport's picture page
10. scan your passport's chip
11. take a selfie
12. scan a QR code to link the W Identity to your W Social account
13. enter your PIN code
https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTE...
Or.... How about not? Seriously, join Mastodon!
not bad but bluesky/eurosky is just better. activitypub based networks treat instances as sovereign with full control over users data. they can permanently delete your posts and the posts you see depend on who the admin wants to federate with. the only way to be independent is run your own server so non technical users get stuck under reddit style moderation.
at protocol is global by default and puts you in control with full account portability. and it looks like its easier to expand it to new use cases like tangled (github alternative) or rocksky (social listening like last fm).
Which decentralised instance?
any of them
all of them
> all of them
That is the problem.
The paradox of choice stiffles adoption for Mastodon for the regular user and pushes them away.
Choosing the main instance goes against the whole point of Mastodon for federation.
There was even a time Mastodon wanted to promote other federated instances by closing off the main instance, it failed.
You might as well use Bluesky or Threads and be done with it.
There's two really good blog posts in these W Social people, with really good research. https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-socia... https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-public-institutions-a...
There's a fantastic thread covering this and many other issues. This seems to go against the core EU directives for self sovereignty, just signing up to a very rogue platform that happens to have some protocol interoperability. Also, lol, they have no cross site scripting protection. https://bsky.app/profile/stollmeyer.eurosky.social/post/3moi...
Given the presence of https://eurosky.tech and https://mu.social, the EU folks going to W over them is either massive out of touch pitiful incompetence, or worse, sharks preferring to go with other sharks they feel they can control, instead of something actually positive and better, but not as directly manipulable.
We've seen it so many times.
Learn the lesson. Use Mastodon this time.
Also, while we’re at it, try to make Fediverse culture less insular and more open. There's no point in trying to reply to anyone since everyone hates everyone else. Pointless platform.
Actually that's a feature. If search doesn't work, there is less incentive for bots polluting others people searches.
On the other hand, search works so bad than even connecting to people you know on other networks is painful.
All I use social media for is to look at whatever funny piece of media I'm obsessed with currently and related things.
Unfortunately, Mastodon both has busted search and useless tags. Tumblr's search has been hilariously bad for ages now, but at least the tagging system is so comprehensive it more than makes up for it.
Mastodon is the worst of all worlds in that aspect.
I haven't actually been subject to this, yet, but I've seen enough people react negatively against others doing this that it saps all my desire to do anything other than just aimlessly scroll every once in a while. I can read the room, you know.
Sometimes I wonder why do instance admins even open up their instances? Just run it for your friends and those who you like and cut the crap.
Or do you have experience from bluesky, meaning you're only interacting with one central server and none of the complexities of federation come into play?
Yes, my experience using the Bluesky app includes the Bluesky app server aggregating from many independent PDS hosts (because people I follow like that). But it doesn’t show up in user experience because that’s the whole point.
And yes, I can use another aggregator instead of the Bluesky app, or even use a client which has no backend and relies on community-run Constellation index. It all roughly works the same.
App servers are aggregators. You can use any to read the network. Here’s a post I wrote, as seen via Bluesky aggregator:
https://bsky.app/profile/danabra.mov/post/3mol3gyikac2d
A second later, I could see the same post via the Blacksky community aggregator: https://blacksky.community/profile/did:plc:fpruhuo22xkm5o7tt...
Here’s the same post on pdsls which reads it directly from my hosting: https://pdsls.dev/at://did:plc:fpruhuo22xkm5o7ttr2ktxdo/app....
My hosting is managed by Bluesky but it has nothing to do with Bluesky app. Hosting is a separate decoupled thing. I could move hosting to my own Docker container, and all aggregators would see my posts just as fine.
Does this clear things up?
Users of different PDS would be the closest thing to a mastodon instance and there's thousands of different PDS without much issue. I'm on a "third party PDS" and I've had barely any issues.
I use a "third party" PDS, appview, PLC directory mirror, CDN, and client so 99.9% of my interaction with bluesky and atproto at large is independent of bluesky the corporation.
Despite using a third party "basically everything" my experience is essentially the same as a "default" bluesky user if not better in many ways
I just checked and yes, I follow someone that's on Eurosky. Maybe I follow multiple, I honestly don't know because it isn't at all noticeable. It just works.
Mastodon is social: you follow people, you see their stuff. It's what social media used to be.
Why did you switch them around? Red always meant left wing. Even in the US red meant the Soviets. It's just confusing to everyone else.
Also Mastodon is on the road to enshittification since the previous CEO and founder bowed out for $1M using donations and the main instance federates with Meta's Threads.
The other instances are out of the question since one rogue instance owner can lock and shutdown that instance.
The rest of your comment seems to be pure speculation, so.
I'm not necessarily saying you made this mistake, but plenty of other people who dip their toe in the fediverse do this - they get in, find nothing in their feed, they shrug and forget about it. A good start is to search for a few hashtags that match your interests, even add a follow for those if you see they're active, and soon you'll start seeing interesting people. I've been on there for years, and I'm always amazed at the small niche discussion threads I find.
Countless cute kitten pics. Minimal hate or bigotry in my feed. Don't have to log in. Don't even have to sign up. Finite scroll on the homepage.
So that you don't have to move from Mastodon instance to Mastodon instance over a petty owner disagreement after they delete the entire server with all your data.
So? I don't use social media to receive curated, hourly dispatches from Barack Obama or Taylor Swift (or, more likely, their account managers). And it might feel important to get the latest rage bait and memes from Elon - it's almost like being friends with the world's first trillionaire - but is it really a good use of your time?
I think a healthier way to use social media is to have two-way interactions with some reasonably stable social circle; less about "people who matter" and more about "people who matter to you". Mastodon certainly has the critical mass to make this possible.
No signs of enshittification either so far, barely any new features being added TBH
Mastodon is independant, each instance manages itself, some are bad, some are good, you can even host your own, that's the power of decentralization.
Why aren't the general public using the original first 'instance' which is Mastodon if it is just another node?
> Mastodon is independant, each instance manages itself, some are bad, some are good, you can even host your own, that's the power of decentralization.
I think this is where it falls apart.
Nobody wants to waste their time host your own, moving from a rouge instance, trying to search for users to follow and the worst one:
Choosing which instance to sign up to.
It is no wonder that even Bluesky is more active than Mastodon.
If I was going to tell someone what social media to sign up to other than X, it has to be either Threads or Bluesky.
Biggest turn off and a killer feature depending on who you ask is a lack of Algorithm. That's why people who move away from Twitter feel disoriented, but people who were never on Twitter in the first place are alright.
A "main instance" is contrary to the whole idea of a Fediverse anyway.
This obviously is total nonsense.
Yes, many people don't understand the point of Mastodon.
This includes many of the hundreds of users who tried to make Mastodon work as an X alternative but failed because it was too hard to use.
Decentralisation, Federation, self hosting and choosing an instance isn't enough of a point for many people to use it.
From [0]
> W Social unveiled at the WEF
That's everything I need to know.
[0] https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/germany-news/german-ceo-l...
And as an not completely unintended side-effect, some nephews of EU bureaucrats will make hay.