🚨 REPLICATION REPORT UPDATE: One year ago, a tweet by John Holbein alerted me, @ollefolke.bsky.social, and @jopieboy.bsky.social to a paper with a shocking result about Sweden’s law criminalizing the purchase of sex.🧵
May 9, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Comment on “Banning the purchase of sex increases cases of rape: evidence from Sweden”
Journal of Population Economics -
Social media scam commodifies women's sexuality to swindle followers | CBC News
Women’s names and photos are being used in duplicate accounts to advertise adult content and trick site visitors into providing their credit card information.
‘Now we don’t have a safe place’: sex workers’ social media site Switter shuts down amid legal fears
Platform says government changes to online safety and defamation laws in Australia, UK and US made it ‘impossible’ to comply
Social media for sex workers, IGF 2019 | Kollektiv.e
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)
📝 #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
Additional evidence on the effects of banning the purchase of sex on cases of rape in Sweden
I discuss (Ciacci J Popul Econ 37:37 2024) and provide additional results of a regression discontinuity in time model showing that the result that the ban affected cases of rape is not robust.
A re-analysis of Ciacci's (2024) "Banning the purchase of sex increases cases of rape: Evidence from Sweden" Journal of Population Economics reveals major issues. A year ago, reproducers Adema, Folke, and Rickne found coding errors driving the paper's key results. Let's unpack this in a 🧵
Really important to notice the sleight of hand here. Nobody reported that @wsocial.eu *leaked* the data (except for W Social saying in their denials that others reported this). We all agree this over-publication was done on purpose, by design, in a way that is not totally clear to everyday users.
heiseonline
Das soziale Netz W Social will sich mit einer Verifizierung aller Konten von der Konkurrenz abheben. Dass einige gesammelte Daten publik sind, sei kein Fehler. #Social Media
Want to know more about the recent bot activity, what we've seen, and what we've done/are doing? Check out our write-up here! ✒️ 🔗 blog.tophhie.cloud/increased-bot-activity-what-w… Special mentions: @revfox84.bsky.social, @michelbestaat.thereforeiam.eu, @bmann.ca, and @baileytownsend.dev.
Increased Bot Activity & What We're Doing About It
blog.tophhie.cloudIn a 🔥 post, @jessicahullman.bsky.social follows up on the recent NHB 'High replicability' paper. "It bugs me (though doesn’t not surprise me) to think that whether questionable practices get called out depends on who exactly is in the author list." tinyurl.com/4yr98zvw
The feel-good open science story versus the preregistration (who do you think wins?) | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
tinyurl.com@palle.eurosky.social just published a powerful exposé about the #WSocial "it's not a leak if we intentionally publish it" ID data controversy. I highly recommend you read it (it's in German, but you could use your browser's translation tool): metacheles.de/w-social-datenskandal/ #WIdentity #GDPR
W Social: Verifiziert heisst veroeffentlicht
www.metacheles.deshoutout to a German court for getting the facts about Bluesky wrong but the interpretation right, in a new ruling that actually has positive implications for open social networks connectedplaces.online/the-algorithm-apparently-chro…
The Algorithm, Apparently Chronological
connectedplaces.online
Laurens
I read the new EU Court ruling on algorithms and social platforms so you don't have to. Turns out to be the most consequential thing a European court has said about recommendation algorithms, and also it just breaks when you apply it to the atmosphere connectedplaces.online/the-algorithm-singular/
