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  • Elena Rossini on GoToSocial ⁂elena@aseachange.com
    Aug 26, 2026, 8:10 AM

    A story in two pictures:

    An article from Euractiv from July stating "Von der Leyen is expected to use her annual State of the Union speech to unveil plans for EU-wide age restrictions on social media". And then a pic of a W Social post announcing the live-stream of the EC state of the Union speech.

    This is precisely why I keep speaking up about #WSocial:

    We are at a dangerous turning point when it comes to online privacy and it seems that the European Commission has chosen this network because of its built-in age verification.

    Truth is: even if their PDS hosts 28k accounts, only 2612 people (as of this morning) have ever published a single post or reply on W.

    Their #WIdentity app is so broken, it has mostly one-star ratings on Google Play Store (yes, you read it right, the network of European digital sovereignty requires an app from Google or Apple to verify one's identity).

    Most egregiously, W Social does NOT do any content moderation to rein in hate speech. I find daily examples of racist, transphobic and xenophobic posts that are simply allowed. Thankfully on the ATmosphere, people can subscribe to Bluesky, Blacksky or Northsky labelers to hide hate speech. W Social leaders believe in "free speech absolutism" and keep saying that everyone is welcome. Alice Weidel of AfD too, by the way.

    I thought W Social would be in violation of the DSA for allowing these messages to stay up, but apparently they are too small of a platform for this rule to apply.

    Lately W Social leaders and power users have defined fact-based criticism as "disinformation" and targeted harassment: https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01M0SDV98GRDWQNFF9VHVT9J18

    I'm ok with being called a liar and a bully, if my screenshots and video captures of hate speech on the platform can help bring light to this problem.

    So be warned, there may be bad news coming at the EC State of the Union in September.

    The screenshot of a post by the W Social official account stating: "We have exciting news: the European Commission State of the Union speech will be broadcast live on W. And there’s more coming around live video on W. Stay tuned!"
    The screenshot of an article from Euractiv with the title: "EXCLUSIVE: EU could announce social media ban for kids in September. Von der Leyen is expected to use her annual state of the Union speech to unveil plans for EU-wide age restrictions on social media"
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  • d@nny disc@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run
    Aug 26, 2026, 8:30 AM

    @elena i'm extremely concerned about the EU commission's designs upon fedi as well particularly pouring immense funding into mastodon after it shipped FEP 044f for the quote post censorship API and it makes me very scared that more will worsen here as well

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  • d@nny disc@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run
    Aug 26, 2026, 9:04 AM

    @elena they're funding specifically eugen rochko and team to mess with our protocols, i'm not concerned about the server

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  • Feyterfeyter@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Aug 26, 2026, 12:22 PM

    @hipsterelectron @elena lol what are you talking about? Even if there is EU founding in play, the little money isn't enough to make them compromise their standards. Actually I think all money that goes into building an open and truly decentralized web is a good investment even if it would come from Donald Trump.

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  • derptroncrazyeddie@mastodon.social
    Aug 26, 2026, 2:27 PM

    @feyter @hipsterelectron @elena

    Hopefully you don't hold any responsibility here then. That's some bad judgment that's bound to end in disaster.

    Come to think of it...I DID take money from Donald Trump. It was mine and he was just putting his name on it to make sure I felt indebted to him. Still, it ended exactly how it was always going to when you take money from the king of the crossroads. Lost my whole country.

    $600

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  • Feyterfeyter@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Aug 26, 2026, 3:47 PM

    @crazyeddie @hipsterelectron @elena
    That's not how it's works.

    As long as there is no existential dependency on the renewed income from a single source, there is no leverage anyone has.

    Mastodon is publishing it's organizational finaces. You can see where the money is coming from. The biggest single donation I am aware of came from the founder of stack overflow (1.5m $). I didn't saw any EU foundings somewhere near that but if you have refreshed numbers I'm open.

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  • Feyterfeyter@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Aug 26, 2026, 5:48 PM

    @hipsterelectron @crazyeddie @elena again I don't see how mastodon (the organization) would be crucially depending on EU fundings. So there is no leverage the EU would have about them. And I don't see how the Team is undermining the activity pub (?) Protocol...

    Actually, sayings like that sound quite conspiracy to me.

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  • derptroncrazyeddie@mastodon.social
    Aug 26, 2026, 7:09 PM

    @feyter @hipsterelectron @elena

    That's not how what works?

    "As long as there is no existential dependency on the renewed income from a single source, there is no leverage anyone has."

    Sure. OK.

    I don't think you've convinced me that I was wrong about your judgment on this matter.

    Note that I never actually said anything at all about Mastodon doing anything and don't even have any idea. If they took money from DJT then ... ooph... can only hope for the best but that was probably a mistake

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  • Feyterfeyter@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Aug 26, 2026, 7:25 PM

    @crazyeddie @hipsterelectron @elena OK, if there are any concerns, that Mastodon could become depending on any single financial source and therefore would be compromised, the best thing would do to donate to it. This ensures that no potential leverage points are created.

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  • GeofCoxGeofCox@climatejustice.social
    Aug 26, 2026, 8:34 AM

    @elena

    I don't think it's mainly about age verification. At bottom, Von der Leyen, in common with most EU leaders, believe in capitalism. They think the US multinational corporation model will always win out, and the only way for Europe to compete is by importing and domesticating this model (despite the fact that many more successful Chinese companies are state or employee-owned). Certainly, they think community-owned or co-operative media is a sideshow that will never be more than marginal.

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  • LukefromDCLukefromDC@kolektiva.social
    Aug 26, 2026, 8:53 AM

    @elena Looks like we are going to need more Tor exit nodes outside Europe. Note that some of the corporate social media sites including of all things Facebook as of a few years ago already were publishing .onion addresses by which they could be reached over Tor without needing an exit node at all: just the entry and intermediate nodes which are far more numerous

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  • AnneHannehargreaves@ioc.exchange
    Aug 26, 2026, 9:38 AM

    @elena What! Tiny user numbers, major hate posts? ID checking? Ew

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  • Dominikdominik@mainz.social
    Aug 26, 2026, 9:53 AM

    @elena

    It's not like eurosky/mu is much better though.

    They are already asking users their age, citing legal requirements but never responded when asked which exactly.

    Collaborate with some EU fund to develop new algorithms for social media.

    And the verification system is basically a club of associates cross verifying everyone and then some, without clear rules or processes.

    They started more than 6 months ago but the default feed is still full of US topics. Follow suggestions are US media

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  • Dominikdominik@mainz.social
    Aug 26, 2026, 9:59 AM

    @elena

    ultimately atproto itself is a pretty risky design in times like these. It gives everyone access to all the data and social graph, no builtin e2ee or ability to control it from the account level.

    Instead of tying a single identity to all your activity online without any form of encryption, a federated approach like mastodon, multiple unrelated identities on topic based instances seem like a much safer choice/less data to the capitalist/fascist creeps out there.

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  • Klaus Frankagowa338@chaos.social
    Aug 26, 2026, 10:25 AM

    @elena

    Ngl, at this point fuck #WSocial, just because of how hard the @EUCommission is trying to push it I'm against it.

    You literally don't need to know anything other than that.

    Also it's just ruled by a different king. So fuck that anti-democratic shit...

    Also the sign up requires ID verification which I'm against at providing for ANY social media...

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  • Gabriele Ponzogippy@mastodon.uno
    Aug 26, 2026, 11:05 AM

    @elena I've never heard about this W Social before. Apart from these weak points that you highlighted, who is behind it? Another private company? Is it open source at least? Does it use the same protocol of the Fediverse (ActivityPub, AFAICR)?

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  • Impie_14Impie_14@universeodon.com
    Aug 27, 2026, 9:09 AM

    @hpod16 I think i already found that online, thank you. And if even you think it doesnt say much i think it doesnt add that much 😊

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