







Even as @wsocial.eu onboards more and more users, they can’t seem to get them to talk to each other 🤐 This atrocious engagement rate (~9%) for users on the W PDS has been steady as a rock since day 1 (here you can see it in the daily totals and percentages). #WhosThereSocial
Elena Rossini ⁂
How is this possible? #WSocial hosts 26k accounts but only 5.4k have provided ID verification (and thus can post). Of those, only 2450 people (as of this AM) have EVER published a SINGLE post or reply. By comparison, on Eurosky (26k accounts) EVERYONE can post. No ID required #WSocialPics
Aug 21, 2026 at 1:26 PM
Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)
Scoop: #WSocial has been experiencing major technical problems for over a week: it is effectively a ghost town, filled with thousands of new accounts that cannot use the platform. Because my new article contains a possible solution to their problem, by the time you read this the issue may have been fixed. Or not. It has been going on for 7+ days, with complete radio silence by its developers and founders. My exclusive: 🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-a-broken-ghost-town/ #SocialMedia #ATproto #RateLimiting
Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image 📝 #WSocial state of the network - Friday July 10th 📣 for those who are curious about it, considering the enthusiastic endorsement by prestigious European institutions #OpenData allows me to crunch numbers. On day 23 since its beta launch in Brussels, W Social has 11291 accounts: - 469 new users since yesterday - 899 users have published one or more posts - 72 new users posting since yesterday - 92% have never* published a single post *may be related to #WIdentity and its 13-step process
Reckoning: Frontend's Lost Decade | Alex Russell | performance.now() 2024
Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)
#WSocial posted a message on their official account talking about "temporary profile issues" for "some W users." Reality (exposed in my latest article): their network was BRICKED for ALL NEW USERS who joined starting on June 22 (some 3100+ accounts out of 5000) for 7+ days. An amateur reporter and self-hosting newbie (aka me) figured out the problem and the solution, bringing attention to this matter. I had to respond: https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mpig4ggkpk2q hope others chime in 🤭
W Social: Hello World!
It appears the w-social client has gone closed source. Any comment on this @janlindblad.bsky.social ? The article linked therein also poses another important question: Are all the components in W Social’s ATproto stack self-hosted in Europe? So, not just the PDS, but also the relay, AppView and moderation.

Commission accused of promoting European social media platform | Euractiv
The Commission announced it will join W social during its beta launch

Commission accused of promoting European social media platform | Euractiv
The Commission announced it will join W social during its beta launch

Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)
📝 #WSocial state of the network 📣 for those who are curious about it, considering the enthusiastic endorsement by prestigious European institutions. #OpenData allows me to crunch numbers (information about Bluesky PDSs is readily available). On day 18 since its beta launch in Brussels, W Social has 7935 accounts: - 90,5% have never* published a single post - 82,2% have 0 followers - 78% follow 0 accounts (may be related to #WIdentity and its 13-step process) LMK if you find this useful
What do Europeans want out of their EUDI Wallets New study sheds light - EU Digital Identity Wallet -
EU Digital Identity Wallets are set to launch at the end of 2026, with the EUDI ecosystem gearing up for the big moment. Issuers, service providers, wallet providers, and other members of the ecosystem, alongside the newest Large Scale Pilots, are hard at work fine-tuning wallets and testing use cases.
I get the impression that the people at @wsocial.eu haven’t grasped the principle of a free and open social network protocol. They look a bit like venture capitalists turning up at Wikipedia and wondering how they can make a fortune there. Poke @anna.wsocial.eu
I get the impression that the people at @wsocial.eu haven’t grasped the principle of a free and open social network protocol. They look a bit like venture capitalists turning up at Wikipedia and wondering how they can make a fortune there. Poke @anna.wsocial.eu
The thought occurred to me (belatedly) that maybe there are other accounts on the promotional website that aren’t actually on W Social yet. Right now, wsocial.news shows me 4 users who are indeed on W Social and 3 who aren’t: @london.gov.uk, @beate.neos.eu, and @teresaribera.ec.europa.eu.
あ
@london.gov.uk is still on wsocial.news and is still not actually on W Social. It’s been long enough to really make it look like it could be the Greta Thunberg thing all over again Sources: pdsls.dev/at://did:plc:axuvbckddrg7lwlp… blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-soci…
Maybe it’s fishy, maybe the site’s just getting comments from bots in general, but anyway, for the record From the comment section of this article: W Social - Eine europäische Alternative zu X startet www1.wdr.de/wirtschaft/w-social-aus-schwe… Stand: 17.06.2026, 05:02 Uhr Von Jörg Schieb, WDR-Digitalexperte.
Katika Kühnreich Fact checking the promise of thinking machines
@v_d_richards@literatur.social provided a screenshot of the same message praising W Social appearing under different names #wsocial #bots #fakehumans #opinionmaking
Around 0.5% of weekly active users are on independent PDSes right now, 1.5% if you count @ap.brid.gy - honestly more than I expected 🙂 (blue.mackuba.eu/stats/)
ben
What proportion of total users is that?