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 wouldn't even care if someone would just copy and paste a SM concept and host it in Europe.
This blatant lying about Europe not having Social Media is kind of offensive and a clear sign of a grift.
I don't even think the fediverse is locally the only option, since there are lots of small obscure SM Networks in Europe.
Where no corporate social media platform ready to enshiftify as soon as the userbase is big enough exist.
@jaz Can't believe this rushed bullshit got mass media coverage.
@jaz okay this weird combination of actors behind this has had enough of my attention now... Hopefully for forever.
@jaz I also made https://arewedecentralizedyet.online/map/ to map these kinds of things
@jaz have you tried https://stage.wsocial.eu/ already? I only see Bluesky posts there.
I even says "Bluesky" on Google (at least for that URL). They apparently were in such a hurry, they even forgot to clean up the meta texts in their code 😅
@BrennpunktUA yep, and they kept all the links to Bluesky's ToC, privacy policy and helpdesk etc.
I don’t understand the whole discussion about „we need our own social network in Europe“ either. Something like Mastodon, which is a federated social network, is a great fit for Europe. Why a central network, when we can have in each country, city an Mastodon instance?
The only thing I miss at Mastodon are all the politicians who are calling for sovereignty right now.
W is apparently "verified identity"
so that's not compatible with fediverse or most people's idea of what social media is.
Quite a different proposition.
Whether that will be popular remains to be seen. I doubt it personally. Might be popular with govt accounts and therefore journalists, more broadcast, not really N:N.
@jaz, Perhaps, the reason why the whole Fediverse is left out is its open source + decentralised nature. If I'm not wrong, all social media mentioned on the map is proprietary and that's what EU wants - the same surveillance, data and algorithmic control as US, China or Russia, just EU-centric
@jaz Akkoma, Pleroma, Sharkey, Misskey, GoToSocial, Writefreely...
If you have services you'd like to see added, I've created an intake form.
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/Ric8ThY+rCmnp3FnYh9iDID+btsSuNJHNPyWb-+mNOw/
Well, we don't need media to be social. 😉
@jaz thanks, would you be kind to share the "w" link to that map highlighting the gap in Europe? It seems so stupid to me to not have the fediverse that i would want to see the raw source and couldn't find so far
@jaz
is this a time when i say, i donated to mastodon.
it is weird, money went to germany.
@jaz I'm in the EU and I have an instance. Am I joke to you?
@nlupo the map does not show /all/ instances, it's not a map of everything.
https://jaz.co.uk/projects/mastodon-near-me/#inclusion-criteria
@jaz Sounds like W is a solution in search of a solved problem.
@jaz most convincing CIA op...
@jaz code please?))
@lukalobster did you try hunter2?
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.
I've created an intake form, would you mind testing it out for me?
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/Ric8ThY+rCmnp3FnYh9iDID+btsSuNJHNPyWb-+mNOw/
I see, you're only interested in instances open for registration. Neither is one of the instances is.
@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 That's fair, and if the reporting I've seen that W will be using the ATproto is accurate, the Atmosphere may be getting the lion's share, but I hope Mastodon and other ActivityPub platforms benefit too!
@dan it is very much ATProto, for now it's a Bluesky clone although they have set up a lot of infrastructure to host their own data at some point it seems.
It appears to be politically right or even far right, I doubt this will go very far, or at best become a Swedish or EU truth social of sorts.
@jaz Trying to decide how I feel about that. Ultimately, I think I want federated servers that have varied perspectives/algorithms (or no algorithms) and the ability for users to migrate between them, something that still seems a way off.
@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 🙂
I reckon the map massively under-counts the number of small instances.
My single user one that's just a raspberry pi in my living room and fronted by Cloudflare is unlikely to be tallied, for example.
Great framing!
Great framing!
@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.
I've created an intake form, would you mind testing it out for me?
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/Ric8ThY+rCmnp3FnYh9iDID+btsSuNJHNPyWb-+mNOw/
@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 @gimulnautti don't know peertube.eus, lemmy.eus and paperjale.eus are above 50 active user limit, but I miss them. All of them are part of the basque community and with the clear purpose to strenghten basque speaker density.
All of the servers are part of @abaraska team.
Thanks for the map. Nice to have such a visual tool
@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 I’ve gathered so many receipts of what a botched operation this was! Ouf! Will write about this on Monday…
now I have my hands busy doing last min prep for my child’s birthday party 😅
@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
Mit vielen b-promis, die ihre Kontakte ansprechen ..
." Im Advisory Board sitzen der deutsche Ex-Vizekanzler und Wahlschweizer Philipp Rösler, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Chair des Club of Rome, Cristina Caffara, Chair von EuroStack, der Vereinigung der 300 wichtigsten Tech-CEO, .. "
@jaz it does feel like a grift for public funding.
@jaz it would seem that they're aiming at:
1. No bots allowed
2. Every user proven and verfied
And makes even less sense due to EC having Mastodon presence *shrugs*
Also, interestingly, follows the open letter to Ursula von der Leyen:
https://extranet.greens-efa-service.eu/public/media/file/1/9172
@jaz I was just looking at the first picture and asking myself....Where the hell is logo from Mastodon 🫠
![[AF]2050](https://cdn.masto.host/livellosegretoit/accounts/avatars/108/038/613/412/755/896/original/a8e862dbd10edfd0.png "[AF]2050")
