I know, Daniel, but that's not the way WSocial "sold" it to us. We could only access trough ID-verification so we know for 100% they are EU and a "real person". That was the whole point. So we went trough that process, but now it seems that the backdoor are the other ATProt platforms to get in too.
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.
Ricardo J. Méndez (@ricardo.bsky.social)
If WSocial sold people on the idea that everyone they would interact with is ID-verified, then indeed, every single open ATProto community would act as a back door of sorts. The only way for them to deliver would be to de-federate entirely. And it's always a bad idea to bet against openness.
I Was Right About ATProto Key Management - nora's notes
Note: this post has been revised to be split into two sections: a description of what happened, and my analysis. I hope to make it clear that, while I do not like ATProto in general, I am trying to make good-faith critcisms of specific design decisions and outcomes, and in fact, this post getting updoots on HackerNews appears to have gotten the attention of the team, so, mission accomplished. ref, ref My account has since been manually reinstated; this has not happened for any of the other users that have had this issue, as far as I know.
Who Actually Owns Your ATProto Identity? Hint: It's Probably Not You
ATProto gives your PDS operator full control of your signing and rotation keys, letting them impersonate you across every app in the ecosystem or kill
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: 2 images Dear Fedi friends, Apologies for another toot about #WSocial but I am genuinely shaking right now. The @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu and its president Ursula von der Leyen have recently migrated their ATproto (Bluesky) accounts to W Social. I cannot fathom why they would pick a private enterprise whose leaders didn't even have ATproto accounts 3 months ago... and who are so open to having their users' data mined to train European AI models. My articles on them: 🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-social/ Wow. Just wow.
hexmani.ac/atproto-migrator
ai-generated junk tool for migrating atproto identities in-browser
Registering Identity Recovery Keys via PDS, using goat | bryan newbold
One of the big design goals for atproto is for users to "own their network identity". If something goes wrong with a hosting provider, it should be possible recover accounts by independently updating their identity to point at a new home. Every account in the network has both a handle and a DID. Th...
@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.
If WSocial sold people on the idea that everyone they would interact with is ID-verified, then indeed, every single open ATProto community would act as a back door of sorts. The only way for them to deliver would be to de-federate entirely. And it's always a bad idea to bet against openness.
Wimster9030 🇪🇺 🇧🇪
I know, Daniel, but that's not the way WSocial "sold" it to us. We could only access trough ID-verification so we know for 100% they are EU and a "real person". That was the whole point. So we went trough that process, but now it seems that the backdoor are the other ATProt platforms to get in too.
@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.
Ursula von der Leyen
Warm Welcome to all followers on W 👌 User friendly 🔓 Open source AT Protocol 🔒 Privacy preserving 🧑🤝🧑 Humans only / No bots And 🇪🇺 European!
Pleased to announce that an Authenticated Transfer Protocol (ATP) working group has been created at the IETF! Grateful to everybody who participated in the BoF and chartering process. Details on next steps and how to get involved inside. atproto.com/blog/kicking-off-the-atp-work…
Kicking off the ATP Working Group at the IETF - AT Protocol
atproto.com@masnick.com I’m listening to your interview with @reckless.bsky.social. This third party doctrine is interesting. Do you think that atproto data would be considered properly owned by the account individual? Would be interesting implications if that public data fall under search and seizure rights.
