Europe already has an ATproto social network - Eurosky - run by a non-profit foundation - Modal - that is building everything in the open, with full transparency, sharing all the steps in their development roadmap:

And weirdly, there was never a peep about this in the press - while the W Social launch was on national news and a bunch of high-profile EU politicians immediately joined. What's going on here?

Also, for all their talk about human verification, I have 6 accounts under different names :)

[^1]: https://wecanjustdothings.leaflet.pub/3mokohkfb4224

I don't see how this will ever become a success, not because it's going closed source (people here don't care), or because it might have paid features (people here don't care) in the future, or even ands (people here don't care), but because of the name. Who the hell thought "W Social" was a good name for a company?

We are so bad at company names here in the EU it's embarrassing.

I think that last bit explains why European govt orgs have migrated to it, over the open source Eurosky.

Europe already has an ATproto social network - Eurosky

Why is this a different network? Are Eurosky relays not indexing anything outside Eurosky?

1. choose a username

2. choose a password

3. choose your interests

4. download the #WIdentity app to your phone (two options: Apple AppStore or Google Play Store)

5. scan a QR code

6. create a PIN code

optional: enable biometrics; re-enter PIN

7. choose whether you simply want to verify that you're human or if you also want to verify your name

8. choose the verification method (automatic photo review, request a manual review or scan your passport chip)

9. scan your passport's picture page

10. scan your passport's chip

11. take a selfie

12. scan a QR code to link the W Identity to your W Social account

13. enter your PIN code

https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTE...

Or.... How about not? Seriously, join Mastodon!

There's two really good blog posts in these W Social people, with really good research. https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-socia... https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-public-institutions-a...

There's a fantastic thread covering this and many other issues. This seems to go against the core EU directives for self sovereignty, just signing up to a very rogue platform that happens to have some protocol interoperability. Also, lol, they have no cross site scripting protection. https://bsky.app/profile/stollmeyer.eurosky.social/post/3moi...

Given the presence of https://eurosky.tech and https://mu.social, the EU folks going to W over them is either massive out of touch pitiful incompetence, or worse, sharks preferring to go with other sharks they feel they can control, instead of something actually positive and better, but not as directly manipulable.

https://github.com/w-social-eu

But I do kinda wonder the legality of this sort of move anyway. If other people contributed code and didn't agree to some terms of service saying their work would become the property of the project owner, would it even be legal to make it closed source under a different license?

We've seen it so many times.

Learn the lesson. Use Mastodon this time.

From [0]

W Social unveiled at the WEF

That's everything I need to know.

[0] https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/germany-news/german-ceo-l...

And as an not completely unintended side-effect, some nephews of EU bureaucrats will make hay.