Dear friends who don't speak German: Go to YouTube ASAP, turn on subtitles → autogenerated translation and watch this video! TL;DR: #WSocial is posting legal names, nationalities and approx. birthdays of verified users as a public record on the Atmosphere. Confronted, they claim it's "by design" 🤯
coffeeholic
Hörens- und sehenswerte Folge zur exklusiven Recherche
Oct 9, 2026 at 8:27 AM
Kirsten Fiedler (@kiki.eurosky.social)
🤦♀️ #WSocial is posting legal names, nationalities and approx. birthdays of verified users as a public record on the Atmosphere. Confronted, they claim it's "by design" 🤯
Ingmar Rentzhog (@ingmar.wsocial.eu)
Can you add these details to your site? You seem to have put considerable time and resources into creating a website about W. It would help readers to know who is behind it. Here are my details: Lars Ingmar Stensson Rentzhog 45–49 Swedish Who is behind you, and who is funding the site?
W Social (@wsocial.eu)
1/5 We’ve upgraded W’s verified badge to give you more context about the person behind the keyboard. Real humans. More trust. Your real name stays optional.
W Social (@wsocial.eu)
It is not strange at all. We where among the first users to signed up. As communicated 👇 wsocial.eu/profile/wsoc...
Lucas (@lucasp.eurosky.social)
It says “your name will be public”. Not your Birthdate, nationality and so on.
Alexandre Plennevaux 🇧🇪🇪🇺 (@pixeline.be)
Interesting point: "The only way to make sense of the European Commission's embrace of WSocial is that maybe it sees it as a trial run for MANDATORY age verification for social media across the European Union." @elenarossini.com
W Don't Have Time (@wdonthavetime.selfhosted.social)
#WIdentity is the real product. @wsocial.eu is just a testing ground. #WSocialFacts
W Social: Hello World!
Hello World! 🙂 This category is for discussing W Social, a new member on the AT-protocol federation. Launched in conjunction with the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 19, 2026, the project has sparked a lot of praise, interest, rumors and slander. In fact, our social media monitoring console registered 1 billion post views (across all the main social media) for posts mentioning #wsocial within the first week. As I write this, W Social is not yet open for business. There i...
Real Names and Responsible Speech: The Cases of South Korea, China, and Facebook — Yale Journal of International Affairs
By David Caragliano Human psychology and market incentives make real name registration an unpalatable proposition both to netizens and to online service providers charged with implementing the policy. In time, this article argues, internet policy makers will conclude that real nam
Wimster9030 🇪🇺 🇧🇪 (@wimster9030.wsocial.eu)
@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.
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.socialDear @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
comment published just now, you can't make this stuff up 🤡 dear @ingmar.wsocial.eu, I wish you would credit @iame.li and @stream.place for powering your livestream. Eli is based in Seattle, which, last time I checked, is in the U.S. (and he's so great!) #WLive #SOTEU #SOTEU2026
#WSocial in the news, English version. Thanks to @josefplatil.wsocial.eu for the original post and @corkiejp.github.io for the idea translating it ☺️
Josef Platil
@atproto.berlin oh! We talked about this service tonight and I forgot someone had made an open source version of what I was describing
Lyna
I've built a slightly nicer ATProto Blob proxy that's performs proper validations on blob content and can handle moderation takedowns. The docs include a rough guide for configuring it, alongside steps to use with imgproxy and how to get a similar experience to bskys CDN.
