will require identification and photo validation

With all the privacy issues in the past few years, it's "dead on arrival" as they say.

Uh, Mastodon exists?

will require identification and photo validation

Straight from the book "How to kill your app before launch", page 1.

data privacy at its core

Looks like they haven't seen the obvious conflict with requiring id + photo, unless they plan on manually review every application.

After reading the article, it sounds like they're just making yet another xitter clone with the hopes that govt figures will use it. Govts could just spin their own mastodon or similars for a similar effect.

I hate X, but good luck with this:

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

Spyware disguised as a "social media platform", hard pass.

cough cough Mastodon.

@EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu

The shit some people will go to to avoid an open platform.

Isn't this just some random company trying to cash in a little from controversy surrounding Xitter?

They named themselves W but those draconian ID requirements are an L

There is no future in social media unless it's decentralized. Gonna assume this is dead on arrival.

I am staying on mastodon for the micro blogging, not interested in centralized shit. Also, recommander systems are a plague.

I know Europe might seem like a country of you’re illiterate, but um it isn’t. W is a Swedish company with a dumb idea at the core of its app

Governments making this stuff instead of the people? Really bad idea.

Looks like W is being built on ATProto.

https://atprotocol.dev/w-for-atproto/

https://bsky.app/profile/ducky.ws/post/3md2b73w3g22j

Anna Zeiter, CEO of W, has told Bilanz.ch that W stands for “We.” Meanwhile, the first of the Vs that make up W stands for “Values,” and the second for “Verified.”

“The fact that W comes before X in the alphabet is certainly also a welcome coincidence,” Zeiter said.

Was curious if the”W” had a deeper meaning to it. Turns out it’s actually two V’s that form a “W”

So a Mastodon ripoff, but its instances hosted by a single entity (effectively centralized): ensuring all instances residing within the European jurisdiction (allowing for full control over it). I don't see how they genuinely believe, to have humans do the photo validation, when competing at the scale of X; especially when you run all the instances. Perhaps they could recruit volunteers to socialize the losses, as the platform privatizes the profits. Nothing but a privacy-centric approach however: said the privacy expert...

Zeiter emphasized that systemic disinformation is eroding public trust and weakening democratic decision-making ... W will be legally the subsidiary of “We Don’t Have Time,” a media platform for climate action ... A group of 54 members of the European Parliament [primarily Greens/EFA, Renew, The Left] called for European alternatives

If that doesn't sound like a recipe, for swinging the pendulum to the other extreme (once more), I don't know what does... Because can you imagine, a modern social media platform, not being a political echo chamber: not promoting extremism by use of filter bubbles, and instead allowing for deescalation through counter argumentation. One would almost start to think, for it all to be intentional: as a deeply divided population will never stand united, against their common oppressor.

I genuinely thought this was an Onion post.

Y'all will enjoy this: https://w-social.eu/