Post by @benroyce@mastodon.social

Another day, another opportunity to roast #WSocial. Grab your 🍿​

W Social had been hyping up the live broadcast of Ursula von der Leyen's State of the Union address for weeks.

"Watch it on W!" (You'd think they had an exclusive). Nah, it was also shown live on YouTube and X and other places.

The funniest thing is that co-founder Ingmar Rentzhog bragged in the live chat: "we are doing our best. The boradcast (sic) is truly Made in Europe."

You'd think they had built their own live streaming service. Think again: they used stream.place by Eli Mallon, an ATproto developer based in Seattle. Last time I checked, Seattle is in Washington state? U.S.A.? W, the social network of European digital sovereignty!

So I put Rentzhog on the spot and he became all defensive:

🔗​: https://mu.social/profile/elenarossini.com/post/3mvmmu5gua225

But it gets better!

W Social had been bragging that only verified W users could comment in the live chat.

Yesterday I found out that people with a blue checkmark by Bluesky could also comment.

And I have one!

It all went by really fast... At the end of the event I made sure to credit Eli Mallon and stream.place for powering the live stream. If W Social wouldn't do it, well, I would.

I find it incredible that their modus operandi is to exploit open source infrastructure, giving the impression they built everything from scratch, without ever crediting anyone.

#LSocial = Leech Social.

The open social web is a highly collaborative space and it pains me to see the parasitic behavior of certain players who just take, take, take without ever giving anything back.

The @EUCommission was in the live chat. Von der Leyen took time out from G7 meetings in June to publicize the W Social launch.

I strongly believe they picked the wrong platform, which is openwashing and sovereignwashing. I typically do not tag the EC Mastodon account in posts about W, but this time it's important. (Apologies in advance to their social media interns, I know these choices were not made by you.)

We deserve better platforms.

I will keep speaking up about W Social, the black flamingo of the open social web.

And if you disagree with what they are doing, please speak up too. W Social leaders have started resorting to ad hominem attacks, calling my posts and articles "targeted disinformation."

At first I was a lonely voice of dissent against them. Then @pallenberg joined in. My wish: from a solo, to a duet, to a whole chorus of voices speaking up ⚡​

And if you want to catch up on all the W Social red flags, I wrote a series of blog posts about them:

https://blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-social/

(start at the bottom)