A story in two pictures:
An article from Euractiv from July stating “Von der Leyen is expected to use her annual State of the Union speech to unveil plans for EU-wide age restrictions on social media”. And then a pic of a W Social post announcing the live-stream of the EC state of the Union speech.
This is precisely why I keep speaking up about #WSocial:
We are at a dangerous turning point when it comes to online privacy and it seems that the European Commission has chosen this network because of its built-in age verification.
Truth is: even if their PDS hosts 28k accounts, only 2612 people (as of this morning) have ever published a single post or reply on W.
Their #WIdentity app is so broken, it has mostly one-star ratings on Google Play Store (yes, you read it right, the network of European digital sovereignty requires an app from Google or Apple to verify one’s identity).
Most egregiously, W Social does NOT do any content moderation to rein in hate speech. I find daily examples of racist, transphobic and xenophobic posts that are simply allowed. Thankfully on the ATmosphere, people can subscribe to Bluesky, Blacksky or Northsky labelers to hide hate speech. W Social leaders believe in “free speech absolutism” and keep saying that everyone is welcome. Alice Weidel of AfD too, by the way.
I thought W Social would be in violation of the DSA for allowing these messages to stay up, but apparently they are too small of a platform for this rule to apply.
Lately W Social leaders and power users have defined fact-based criticism as “disinformation” and targeted harassment: aseachange.com/@elena/…
I’m ok with being called a liar and a bully, if my screenshots and video captures of hate speech on the platform can help bring light to this problem.
So be warned, there may be bad news coming at the EC State of the Union in September.
