Slightly off topic, but what's the origin / where does the name "W" come from?

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

  today at 2:25 PM

  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

    today at 3:00 PM

    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

      today at 5:43 PM

      > 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

      today at 3:38 PM

      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

      today at 4:04 PM

      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

        today at 6:19 PM

        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.

  • tannhaeuser

    today at 3:00 PM

    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

    today at 2:51 PM

    And probably stuffed with tax money. As usual.

• darig

  today at 2:22 PM

  [dead]

> 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?

• RobotToaster

  today at 3:34 PM

  Mastodon is also European

• maelito

  today at 2:16 PM

  It means that marketers won over technical, factual people.

  • oytis

    today at 3:33 PM

    Not marketers, lobbyists

    • pocksuppet

      today at 5:08 PM

      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

        today at 5:29 PM

        That's not lobbyism, that's straight corruption. Lobbyism is, at least in theory, about convincing politicians

        • pocksuppet

          today at 5:59 PM

          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.

    • rapnie

      today at 3:54 PM

      Both? But yea, if you see the Advisory Board shown in an image lower in the article, you get the general idea.

      • oytis

        today at 4:01 PM

        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

  • xg15

    today at 2:58 PM

    The marketers or the so far unnamed private investors.

I thought this was a good post on the topic: [W Social is TruthSocial with a European accent.][1]

[^1]: https://wecanjustdothings.leaflet.pub/3mokohkfb4224

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

  today at 6:13 PM

  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.

• malmz

  today at 5:12 PM

  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

  today at 3:31 PM

  Maybe they just chose the letter before X?

  • georgemcbay

    today at 4:27 PM

    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

      today at 4:43 PM

      This would make sense but seems unlikely to me, because the people involved come across as incredibly offline.

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.

• bborud

  today at 3:38 PM

  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.

Just use https://mu.social, it's essentially the same thing, just built in the open by the Eurosky stack.

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:

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?

• tancop

  today at 6:41 PM

  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.

“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.

An unfortunate step backwards. I'm cheering for Eurosky and open networks.

• Imustaskforhelp

  today at 2:21 PM

  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.

  • BigTuna

    today at 4:09 PM

    In addition to Eurosky there's also Blacksky, Northsky, and Anisota. Plus dozens of other non-microblogging apps. AT is growing pretty quickly now.

  • danabramov

    today at 4:27 PM

    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.

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).

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

13. enter your PIN code

https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTE...

Or.... How about not? Seriously, join Mastodon!

Maybe they moved to Codeberg?

> Europe already has an ATproto social network - Eurosky

Why is this a different network? Are Eurosky relays not indexing anything outside Eurosky?

• dutchCourage

  today at 2:21 PM

  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

  today at 2:18 PM

  They are, it's just a second instance of a realy. For independance, resilience, moderation, and also probably minor technical choices.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

  today at 2:25 PM

  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.

  • jwr

    today at 6:29 PM

    I have entirely different experiences and I haven't seen much hating — but having read this, perhaps indeed mastodon isn't for you :-)

  • dolmen

    today at 4:48 PM

    > 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.

• afavour

  today at 1:15 PM

  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.

  • mort96

    today at 1:32 PM

    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

      today at 1:52 PM

      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

        today at 2:19 PM

        And it works as smoothly for people on other app servers?

        • danabramov

          today at 2:57 PM

          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:

          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?

    • tao_oat

      today at 1:38 PM

      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

      today at 2:35 PM

      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

  today at 1:39 PM

  I'd go further - just leave social media

  • jwr

    today at 1:45 PM

    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

      today at 2:17 PM

      Fyi it’s actually called bluesky, not bluewhatever

      • addedGone

        today at 4:45 PM

        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

          today at 4:57 PM

          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

          today at 5:08 PM

          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.

    • soco

      today at 2:06 PM

      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

    today at 3:05 PM

    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

  today at 1:04 PM

  Eurosky is also an option.

  • 17383848

    today at 1:09 PM

    [dead]

• Landing7610

  today at 1:11 PM

  But thats just the thing with atproto. The company sucks? Just move your PDS.

  • RobotToaster

    today at 3:36 PM

    If they filter you at the relay or appview level that doesn't work.

• greenavocado

  today at 1:30 PM

  There is no lesson to be learned. There are billions of noobs. There is always a cow to milk, it seems.

• colesantiago

  today at 1:27 PM

  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.

  • deathanatos

    today at 5:54 PM

    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.

  • jwr

    today at 1:46 PM

    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

    today at 1:34 PM

    How can you know there's nobody worth following on Mastodon?

    • bigfishrunning

      today at 1:40 PM

      I was on mastodon for a year, and the only people there were other dorks looking for someone to follow on mastodon

      • Aachen

        today at 1:57 PM

        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

  • zerobees

    today at 2:06 PM

    > 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.

  • jeromegv

    today at 1:46 PM

    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

      today at 1:54 PM

      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

        today at 2:08 PM

        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.

  • oytis

    today at 1:39 PM

    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

  • Tepix

    today at 2:12 PM

    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.

  • angst_ridden

    today at 1:52 PM

    Tell me you don't understand the point of Mastodon without telling me you don't understand the point of Mastodon.

    • colesantiago

      today at 1:58 PM

      > 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.

  • badgersnake

    today at 2:30 PM

    > Nobody important or worth following uses Mastodon.

    This obviously is total nonsense.

- am i the only one or does anyone else think this website is somehow hijacking the scrollbar?

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.

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...

W Social isn't built with proper cryptography and so-on, it's amateurish.

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