W Social (@wsocial.eu)

This is not a leak. It is public information all our users have given consent when they verified

W Social (@wsocial.eu)

As we have communicated. We did the update on Septemebr 17th. Now a question back to you @wdonthavetime.selfhosted.social Who have funded you and what is your connection to other PDS operators? What is your motive to create a site framing public information as a "data-leak" what's your motive?

Facebook Data Privacy Scandal: A Cheat Sheet - TechRepublic

Read about the saga of Facebook's failures in ensuring privacy for user data, including how it relates to Cambridge Analytica, the GDPR, the Brexit campaign, and the 2016 US presidential election.

2021 Facebook leak

In 2021, an internal document leak from Facebook (now Meta Platforms, or Meta) showed it was aware of harmful societal effects from its platforms, yet persisted in prioritizing profit over addressing these harms. The leak, released by whistleblower Frances Haugen, resulted in reporting from The Wall Street Journal in September, as The Facebook Files series from journalist Jeff Horwitz, as well as the Facebook Papers, by a consortium of news outlets the next months.

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…

Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)

Attached: 1 image This was definitely NOT on my bingo card for this year: European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen taking a moment between G7 meetings to promote the launch of the closed-source, for-profit network #WSocial. 🔗 : https://web.archive.org/web/20260617083436/https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rentzhog_kind-of-cool-to-see-ursula-von-der-leyen-ugcPost-7472769475885461504-hwct/ I fear this may be a harbinger of things to come: MANDATORY AGE VERIFICATION for social media across Europe. I hope I'm wrong on this. #privacy #SurveillanceCapitalism #EUBigTech

Elena Rossini on GoToSocial ⁂ (@elena@aseachange.com)

[1 media attachment] #WSocial state of the network - September 15th, 2026 There is a lot of misinformation regarding W Social and how active/successful it is. So, from time to time, I'd love to share some numbers. The beauty of #opendata! The network endorsed by the #EuropeanCommission may be the darling of Brussels political circles and European media organizations (who simply rehash PR talking points). But the look behind the curtain is really troubling. As @pallenberg often says, this network is #DOA (dead on arrival). A social media graveyard, or rather, a simple moribund database. There is no way that Zeiter, Rentzhog & co. can start monetizing it in 2027. Numbers from this morning at 10:30am: - Accounts on their PDS: 37,531 - Users with verified ID: 7,492 - Users with 1+ post: 3,388 - Users who have never posted: 34,143 - Users with 0 posts and who follow 0 accounts: 26,444 - % of users with 0 posts, who follow 0 accounts: 70,4% - % of users who have never posted: 90,97% So, whenever you hear someone hyping it up, feel free to forward this post or point people to my articles at https://blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-social/ The one thing I will give W credit for though is how good they are at lobbying and hyping up their image. While this playbook may have worked in the past, not anymore. On an open network, with open data, it's child's play to expose misrepresentations and show the real, raw data. sources: pdsls.dev, clearsky.app, atproto.at and the csv of their full PDS that I download daily 💁‍♀️

Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)

SCOOP: #WSocial is doctoring metrics on its homepage, inflating the number of comments on posts by prominent people on its network. I suppose a more accurate tagline for them should be "Trust your feed?" My article about it: "W Social, Fictional Metrics and the Beauty of Open Data" 🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/ #blog #BigTech #EUBigTech #TEP #TrustedEuropeanPlatforms #TrustYourFeed

W Social (@wsocial.eu)

And a follow up question. Who are you? Why are you anonymous?

W Social, Fictional Metrics and the Beauty of Open Data

W Social's tagline is "Trust Your Feed" but the company's landing page displays inflated engagement metrics - a misrepresentation that contradicts its own promise.

W Social: Verifiziert heisst veroeffentlicht

Das europaeische Netzwerk verspricht Anonymitaet trotz Ausweispflicht. Seine eigenen Datensaetze erzaehlen etwas anderes. Und die DSGVO hat dazu eine ziemlich klare Meinung. Analyse eines Privacy Fails, der auch die EU-Kommission betreffen duerfte! Wsocial Fail - Wenn Datenschutz kein Feature ist! | MeTacheles Tonspur🚨 W Socials Privacy-Fail! Anonym versprochen, halbes Profil

Facebook-Cambridge Analytica: A timeline of the data hijacking scandal

Facebook is desperately trying to mend its damaged reputation following the continued fallout of a massive data scandal.