This bizarre, hurried cut-and-paste Bluesky clone called "W" (wsocial.eu) says it will fill this huge gap in Europe where no social media platforms exist.
Meanwhile... https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/fediverse-near-me_828094#3/25.80/29.79
And this map shows by far not all instances. Neither the #mastodon instance I use (https://hostsharing.coop), nor my #pixelfed (https://pix.okunah.de) are there.
@jaz Here's maybe a better map of the fediverse in Europe ;)
(source: https://blog.cloud-mercato.com/does-hetzner-beat-the-whole-iaas-market/ )
@jaz genuine question, X reportedly has 94.8M monthly active users (which I take with a large grain of salt). Assuming half are bots, even 10% of the remainder would be 4.74M users, i.e. 2.5x Mastadon's reported MAU. Now, I love Mastadon and what it stands for, but can it really be considered a viable offramp for mass numbers of X users?
@jaz And lest I be considered solely a naysayer, I have 3 spots on my server for X refugees!
:o)
the social web has many options, Mastodon among them. If 5 million Twitterers were looking for alternatives, I don't doubt Mastodon could accommodate their likely share of that audience.
@jaz Maybe it's a nod to the power of the fediverse: all these instances (even m.s) are so small they disappear once you zoom out enough on the map with very little power concentration compared to the logos listed 🙂
@jaz yeah. It's a real bummer living in Europe and not having any access at all to social media isn't it?
@jaz Do we already know what https://www.eurosky.social/ thinks about this? 
@b2c no idea, but I can't imagine they're too worried, they've been doing a great deal of planning and prep to do it well, and no matter what, all press is good press if they spell your name correctly.
@jaz @b2c some people associated with that don't seem to have a very high opinion of it: https://bsky.app/profile/robin.berjon.com/post/3mcx7dz2gfk2a
Personally my opinion of both is equally low...
@jaz The empty spaces on this map are where the good social networks are! 😉
@gimulnautti @jaz And even the rightmost map is 'curated' and misses a great many fine Finnish instances. If you think there is one Finnish Mastodon and two Finnish Pixelfeds, you're doing it wrong.
@jaz @gimulnautti Ah, I see. When the limit is 50 users, that excludes many of them. Still wondering what is wrong with eliitin-some.fi.
@martinvermeer @gimulnautti every once in a while I post a call for additions, and people send me links all the time. I'll add this one to the list for review.
@jaz @martinvermeer Cozy homes on the fedi ftw!!
@jaz Eurobros, aka european techbros.. Just as bad as their American cousins.
They got the money, they got the connections, but they ain’t got the thing.
@jaz I am torn, in the midst of a metaphysical dichotomy. Mastodon is the way it is now because a few do not know or do not want to know about it, but promote it more and we'll have X Mk II or Truth Social god forbid, yes I am a fan of homeostasis.
@byrnensorg I honestly don't think that's the outcome. There are a million Fediverses, all built by people like you and me who connect to and consume from just a portion of the entire thing. Everyone blocks something, almost no-one is connected to all of it.
Add 100 million more people, you don't necessarily have to be exposed to them. Some might call it splintering or fragmenting or decentralising, I call it groups.
@jaz I didn't know TikTok USA was in Mexico
Just don't mis-type the domain name, or you'll get directed to those strange people who write about cats and sheep and Glasgow. (-:
https://mastodon.social/@_elena/115937301398338772
Do you think that the social. top-level domain registry (Leaf Group) allows single-letter registrations like 'w'? (-:
@jaz and that is just the major instances and doesn't account for all the smaller instances as well.
Why do I say it's hurried?
@jaz definitely hurried, they also don't have a security issue reporting flow yet. Which I incidentally discovered yesterday (https://bsky.app/profile/tomkahe.com/post/3mcz77x3wfc26). Had to reach out to one of their engineers who forwarded it onto their ops team.
I do hope they succeed, but this feels like the wrong way to go about it.
@jaz Even more concerning since the founder was Chief Privacy Officer according to the article you linked.
Let's see what's trending on the EU-focused social media platform.
Delroy Lindo - British actor, so thanks for having us back, good to be European again.
Davos Forum - no comment
Trump's Board of Peace - even less comment
Mets Trade - Ah yes, the Malmo Mets. Love 'em.
Swerve Strickland - almost Swedish.
AEW Dynamite - EU sure is - ahem - "wrestling" with digital sovereignty
To be clear, I'm all for any and all platforms pushing for digital sovereignty, but this feels like a brash attempt to undercut Eurosky and get something, anything, on the board for Davos. There appears to be funding.
Governments can't fund what they don't know about.
If European digital sovereignty is important to you, start writing some emails to the people you think might be funding this.
Some background: https://www.bilanz.ch/people/w-social-will-twitter-konkurrenz-machen-899933
@jaz I was just looking at the first picture and asking myself....Where the hell is logo from Mastodon 🫠
