GoKawiilIn the past few months I have unwittingly become an expert on all things W Social: the microblogging platform that is a fork of Bluesky and bills itself as Europe’s alternative to X, with identity verification “to fight bots and misinformation” and data hosted in Europe “to promote European digital sovereignty”. Why am I fascinated by this topic? I find the discrepancies between their public image and the reality behind the scenes truly striking.
Over the course of the past few days I have received sensational information that no media organization has so far reported. So here we go, with another article about W Social on their big week, as they are set to open their public beta to their waiting list later today.
But first: if you missed my previous articles on the topic, you can find them here:
⚠️ Disclaimer:
This article represents my personal opinions, commentary, and conclusions formed through independent research using publicly available sources. Any characterizations, interpretations, or inferences are presented as opinion, not as statements of objective fact. Readers are encouraged to review the referenced materials and draw their own conclusions.
Prominent Institutions and Government Officials Move their Accounts to W Social
On Friday June 12th I received a tip: that the ATproto accounts of the European Commission, its president Ursula von der Leyen, the European Central Bank and its president Christine Lagarde had been migrated from Bluesky PBC to W Social’s servers.
I immediately double-checked the information on the website clearsky.app (which indexes information about ATproto) and saw this for myself:
screenshots from the website clearsky.app which show how the Bluesky accounts of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and Christine Lagarde were very recently moved to W Social's servers
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