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Discussion (60 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Also, for all their talk about human verification, I have 6 accounts under different names :)
The german public broadcaster gave them a 5 minute feature on yesterdays evening news, that felt more like a paid ad than journalism. The report made it sound like it is some kind of semi-official EU-endorsed project, but its just... a closed source, for-profit social network? I guess the folks behind it are just well connected in Brussels.
Thank you but no thank you.
So they are 100% looking to monetize and turn a profit.
I wouldn't call it shady, but closed source, for-profit sounds accurate.
Which is to say, there's nothing particularly remarkable about it being an Aktiebolag. It would be more remarkable if it wasn't.
No mention of long-term stake of EU in ActivityPub platforms either, as if W would be our savior.
I think that last bit explains why European govt orgs have migrated to it, over the open source Eurosky.
[^1]: https://wecanjustdothings.leaflet.pub/3mokohkfb4224
And weirdly, there was never a peep from 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?
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.
Why is this a different network? Are Eurosky relays not indexing anything outside Eurosky?
My understanding is that Eurosky aims to be a non-profit ran alternative, hosted in EU. It integrates with Bluesky seamlessly (Bsky users and EUSky users can interact) but would keep working if Bluesky was taken down. I believe it also gives Eurosky agency when it comes to moderation.
We've seen it so many times.
Learn the lesson. Use Mastodon this time.
Also, while we’re at it, try to make Fediverse culture less insular and more open. There's no point in trying to reply to anyone since everyone hates everyone else. Pointless platform.
Or do you have experience from bluesky, meaning you're only interacting with one central server and none of the complexities of federation come into play?
Yes, my experience using the Bluesky app includes the Bluesky app server aggregating from many independent PDS hosts (because people I follow like that). But it doesn’t show up in user experience because that’s the whole point.
And yes, I can use another aggregator instead of the Bluesky app, or even use a client which has no backend and relies on community-run Constellation index. It all roughly works the same.
I just checked and yes, I follow someone that's on Eurosky. Maybe I follow multiple, I honestly don't know because it isn't at all noticeable. It just works.
Mastodon is social: you follow people, you see their stuff. It's what social media used to be.
Also Mastodon is on the road to enshittification since the previous CEO and founder bowed out for $1M using donations and the main instance federates with Meta's Threads.
The other instances are out of the question since one rogue instance owner can lock and shutdown that instance.
The rest of your comment seems to be pure speculation, so.
Mastodon is independant, each instance manages itself, some are bad, some are good, you can even host your own, that's the power of decentralization.
Why aren't the general public using the original first 'instance' which is Mastodon if it is just another node?
> Mastodon is independant, each instance manages itself, some are bad, some are good, you can even host your own, that's the power of decentralization.
I think this is where it falls apart.
Nobody wants to waste their time host your own, moving from a rouge instance, trying to search for users to follow and the worst one:
Choosing which instance to sign up to.
It is no wonder that even Bluesky is more active than Mastodon.
If I was going to tell someone what social media to sign up to other than X, it has to be either Threads or Bluesky.
So? I don't use social media to receive curated, hourly dispatches from Barack Obama or Taylor Swift (or, more likely, their account managers). And it might feel important to get the latest rage bait and memes from Elon - it's almost like being friends with the world's first trillionaire - but is it really a good use of your time?
I think a healthier way to use social media is to have two-way interactions with some reasonably stable social circle; less about "people who matter" and more about "people who matter to you". Mastodon certainly has the critical mass to make this possible.
Yes, many people don't understand the point of Mastodon.
This includes many of the hundreds of users who tried to make Mastodon work as an X alternative but failed because it was too hard to use.
Decentralisation, Federation, self hosting and choosing an instance isn't enough of a point for many people to use it.
No signs of enshittification either so far, barely any new features being added TBH
A "main instance" is contrary to the whole idea of a Fediverse anyway.
This obviously is total nonsense.
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...