Dear @wsocial.eu, I found evidence of a spam account posting on your network: @tiktok.wsocial.eu (which is also doing brand impersonation). This account has been verified by a government ID (otherwise it would not have been able to post); it has been labeled as "spam" by @bsky.app. #WSocial
Jul 15, 2026 at 8:06 AM
Aral Balkan (@aral@mastodon.ar.al)
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@mastodon.social calls them out (someone has to while @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu 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@ec.social-network.europa.eu 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@ec.social-network.europa.eu 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
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 on GoToSocial ⁂ (@elena@aseachange.com)
[1 media attachment] Good morning Fedi friends. Is anybody curious about how the #WSocial experiment is going? You know, the private, for profit "European answer to X" endorsed by the European Commission, which is a fork of Bluesky and has quietly gone closed-source before its beta launch (à la #TruthSocial)? I've got numbers for you! Nearly two months in, W Social has almost the same number of accounts as #Eurosky... You know, the European fork of Bluesky that does NOT require government IDs to post. W Social: 23.5k accounts Eurosky: 24.8k accounts In order to post on W Social you need to provide your government ID and go through a 13-step verification process. So far 4.5k accounts are verified but only 2036 (as of this morning) have ever published a single post or reply. There is a handy website - https://pdsls.dev - that allows you to monitor the "firehose" of any ATproto-powered PDS. Inspired by @pallenberg and his awesome videos (example: https://mu.social/profile/palle.eurosky.social/post/3mskkqrrc522l) I have been comparing the live activities of the two networks. The difference is SHOCKING. W Social is largely a zombie, dormant network, with a high number of accounts that do not interact. Eurosky by contrast shows very lively activity. The screenshot I grabbed yesterday shows a side-by-side comparison of their firehose over a 27 minute period. W Social had a total of 240 events (follows, likes, posts...) whereas Eurosky registered 7596 events in the same time interval. A couple of days ago I downloaded their PDS and saw that 67,8% of their accounts have 0 follows, 0 followers and 0 posts. That's what I mean when I call it a "zombie network." W Social's CEO says they plan to start monetizing by introducing ads in 2027. WITH THESE NUMBERS?!? Sure Jan. I love how with the transparency of open data you can't really use the standard playbook of CEO hype and hubris. Because we can all see their numbers. And they are BAAAAD. I have been feeling…
Bluesky follower sales websites
As Bluesky grows, so does the spam industry orbiting it
Katika Kühnreich (@Katika@chaos.social)
Attached: 1 image #SocialMedia of #realnameregistration , oh sorry, they call it real #humans , that advertises with " #AI " #slop #wsocial is more than problematic And already has #bots crawling it's #network Now they show that they are problematic concerning #aesthetics as well & advertise with tasteless #aislop @bildoperationen@tldr.nettime.org #realnameregistration is highly dangerous & if the company that wants to have your most private data can't save there net from bots they're not very trustworthy, are they? #tech
Verified Adult Creator Labeler (@verified.babesky.com)
Subscribe to see adult industry creator labels, verified with AV by @Babesky.com 💖 Platform specific labels are opt-in (remove like to remove label): https://bsky.app/profile/verified.babesky.com/post/3mbtvkjjeak2v 🔗 Browse Directory: club.babesky.com
Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)
Attached: 2 images I just refreshed the #WSocial website and it's showing a MAJOR redesign... with a label at the top stating "built on the open AT-protocol." This is the first time ever they acknowledge this – I know, as I've been visiting their website for MONTHS and also never heard about this in any interviews. So the claims in my exposé stand (the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine would confirm this). Of note: they changed their URL from wsocial.eu to wsocial.news BTW thanks for all your feedback ❤️
@anna.wsocial.eu looks like bluesky is no different to X bot spamfest. Wsocial ABSOLUTELY needs to have a toggle in the settings to HIDE non-verified users. In other words there should be a way to interact ONLY with wsocial users without any other servers on AT.
It looks like W Identity, the part of @wsocial.eu that checks your papers before you go in, has a very basic XSS on its admin backend, found hours after launch. This seems almost too predictable... Cyberfriends, any thoughts on how bad? 23.social/@kantorkel/116767220594438841
kantorkel (@kantorkel@23.social)
23.socialThe 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…
@wsocial.eu - I was one of the first to subscribe after Davos, but now I wonder what's the use of WSocial. We had to show our ID to get access, but now it seems there are many backdoors without the need for verification. Maybe I just go back to Mastodon. Nice try, but I feel a little betrayed.
This is our blog article explaining why @leafplaza.eu filed a complaint against the @ec.europa.eu after their public endorsement of @wsocial.eu and missing transparency in the process. We hope @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu takes this matter seriously. leafplaza.leaflet.pub/3moxlxlfl2s2a
LeafPlaza filed a complaint against the European Commission. Here is why.
leafplaza.leaflet.pub
LeafPlaza • EU-sovereign social platform compatible with the ATP
@leafplaza.eu just presented an official complain. Also, setup a whole chain of official follow ups on this complain. We know our rights, no other European ATP project has been giving the advantage W Social received and that goes against Commission Decision (EU) 2024/3083 - Art. 4.
A new European microblogging app? Used to be the case that meant starting all over again. Not this time: I just logged in with the same @eurosky.social account I use for @bsky.app and it works. Starting to see the potential of decentralised socials.
Eurosky Social
Muve to the beat. Muve the conversation. Muve mountains. Today @eurosky.social announces mu.social, a new microblogging app to experiment with the future of social! 🪩💖
