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Europeans set to launch an alternative to X. It’s called W (cybernews.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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European organizations are about to launch their own social media platform, W, amid rising tensions with the United States.

The new platform, W, will require identification and photo validation to ensure that its users are both humans and who they claim to be, Danish news media outlet Politiken.dk reports.

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[–] 123 points 6 months ago (8 children)

I wish Europe would just embrace the fediverse. The techno oligarchs are not your friends and most of them are invested in the US.

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  • [–] 44 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

    It's kinda sad.

    The European Commission even has their own Mastodon instance (https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/), but it seems they can't get any of the Commission employees or Parliament MPs to use it. It only has 10 accounts and from what I can see, only one "real" active user, Veronica Gaffey the Director-General, for Digital Services (DIGIT), who isn't even posting on her real account but under the title @EC_DIGIT_director_general

    As far as I know none of the EU member countries have their own Mastodon servers and most politicians at least here in Sweden seem to be using either X or (the technically minded "progressives") Bluesky, while they complain about American Big Tech.

    As always with politicians, actions don't correspond to rhetoric.

    Regarding this "W" social media launch though - There's a post on the CEO's LinkedIn about a "pre-launch" in Davos, and that links to an German article saying the same thing - but there's no link to this launched site anywhere. ¯\(ツ)/¯

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    There are a bunch of governmental servers for the countries as well - both France, Germany and the Netherlands have one afaik. But they're in a similar situation - leaders and politicians prefer their accounts hosted on something else.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Ah, thanks I wasn't aware of those instances. I guess it's the same old, same old story as always - politicians (in general), even in EU are not really looking to do the "right thing". They're looking to do the most populistic thing.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    The politicians go where the people are, not the other way around. It sounds weird but I think a social media platform has to be a good place for folk with low tech literacy to post and chat about cute cat videos before it can ever be politically relevant. I've yet to come across a fedi client that I think my mom in her 60s could handle/would find appealing, and I kinda think you need something like that for widespread adoption. If you had a fedi client like that and some incentive to sign up like free lotteries run on the eu server for the first few months to catalyze a critical mass of users, I bet you'd have a fighting chance at breaking away from US social media walled gardens

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    As far as I know none of the EU member countries have their own Mastodon servers and most politicians at least here in Sweden seem to be using either X or (the technically minded “progressives”) Bluesky, while they complain about American Big Tech.

    Ireland has Mastadon.ie, it's not official but it is at least a server there.

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  • [–] [S] 13 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    This is what's frustrating me the most.

    We have a working infrastructure. It's open source. Please adopt.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    I am somewhat-cynically wondering if the optimal political strategy is to sit on Twitter (which has more European voters to see one's actions) and loudly complain about a lack of Twitter alternatives (which probably scores points with European voters) than to actually use a Twitter alternative.

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    • [–] 67 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    The new platform, W, will require identification and photo validation to ensure that its users are both humans and who they claim to be

    apparently we are now supposed to think that that is a good thing, huh

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  • [–] 15 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Not something for general users but, for organisations and public figures, having a platform with only verified entities is valuable.

    For general users: Mastodon and the Fediverse.

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago

    I am a huge proponent of privacy, anonymity and freedom of information and I also totally support this idea.

    A public place where people have to speak as their public selves is useful to have and doesn't mean other spaces have to be removed. Especially for official communication from public entities, I prefer them to use this than some other sites that are rampant with bots, imposters and the like.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    This depends on how the verification is done, in my opinion, as well as whether there is a presence of more anonymous alternatives.

    If the EU has a system which does not rely on third parties for verification and allows the platform to verify directly with a government-run service, then the only real issue there is lack of anonymity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing on a platform if there are also popular anonymous alternatives people can use when they want to.

    The article doesn't go into how ID verification will work though. If it's through third parties like how the US does it, then that's disgusting and waiting to be breached.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    If the EU has a system which does not rely on third parties for verification and allows the platform to verify directly with a government-run service

    The EU has been driving union wide "Digital Identity Wallet" It's documented here: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EUDIGITALIDENTITYWALLET/pages/694487738/EU+Digital+Identity+Wallet+Home

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago*

    A government endpoint would also be a very spicy target, even if (and that's a big IF) they programmed it correctly and didn't store any verification info outside of RAM and had the internal data references locked down tight.

    It might take getting people actual digital keys that are theirs and using those with proper cryptographic processes instead of PII before such a target might end up hardened enough to not be a time bomb waiting to happen.

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    • [–] 13 points 6 months ago

    X is no longer a public square

    A group of 54 members of the European Parliament called for European alternatives to the dominant social media platforms on Monday.

    IIRC the EC actually paid for some of the development of Kbin (now Mbin) with a grant.

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    [–] 10 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Why would we want another Twitter? Look at the first one. Screw that. Maybe social media should not exist in that format for a reason.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    The Threadiverse is also social media. I mean, it's distributed and not owned by a single company, and much of it is funded by donations, but...

    EDIT: And Mastodon is a direct competitor to Twitter, and it also runs on the Fediverse.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I think they mean microblogging as a format

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    Well...I mean...even assume that they did. Mastodon fits that, and was built specifically to be a Twitter alternative. Heck, even on the Threadiverse, Mbin supports both formats, does both Reddit-style Lemmy/PieFed Threadiverse communities and Twitter-style Mastodon microblogging.

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    • [–] 4 points 6 months ago

    Hey now. We had W in the early 2000's. Was just as racist as X. Maybe more.

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    [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    The initiative to create the social media platform W is supported by an advisory board and former ministers and business representatives, primarily from Sweden.

    Welp, that URL's borked.

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    [+] 1 point 6 months ago
    [deleted]
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