alt.hn

6/18/2026 at 12:46:04 PM

W Social, public institutions and the theater of European digital sovereignty

 https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-public-institutions-and-the-theater-of-european-digital-sovereignty/

by nemoniac

6/18/2026 at 2:09:08 PM

> Europe already has an ATproto social network - Eurosky - run by a non-profit foundation - Modal - that is building everything in the open, with full transparency, sharing all the steps in their development roadmap:

And weirdly, there was never a peep about 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?

by xg15

6/18/2026 at 2:16:57 PM

It means that marketers won over technical, factual people.

by maelito

6/18/2026 at 3:33:33 PM

Not marketers, lobbyists

by oytis

6/18/2026 at 5:08:44 PM

Probably marketers in this one. Marketers who know how to access politicians adn get invited to WEF.

The distinction: marketers know how to trick people, lobbyists bribe them.

by pocksuppet

6/18/2026 at 5:29:08 PM

That's not lobbyism, that's straight corruption. Lobbyism is, at least in theory, about convincing politicians

by oytis

6/18/2026 at 5:59:39 PM

In practice it's about bribing them or at least telling them personal gains. Like if you tell a politician he should support the war on Iran because he owns lots of oil stocks and they'll go up.

Marketing is telling a politician this app is the future of EU social chat so you need to be using it.

by pocksuppet

6/19/2026 at 5:43:37 AM

Its legalized bribes, basically pay to play these days.

by calgoo

6/18/2026 at 8:47:58 PM

You would have to be exceptionally naïve to think that a good chunk of the "lobbying" done doesn't involve some sort of exchange of something of value.

by lenerdenator

6/18/2026 at 3:54:02 PM

Both? But yea, if you see the Advisory Board shown in an image lower in the article, you get the general idea.

by rapnie

6/18/2026 at 4:01:22 PM

Obama making an account on Twitter is a marketers' success. Twitter became popular first, politicians wanted to appear there second.

WSocial just went to politicians directly,it's not known by general public. Good news is, it rarely helps with commercial success

by oytis

6/19/2026 at 3:47:18 PM

NGOs are also lobbyists, and of the worse kind.

by CurryFurry

6/18/2026 at 8:45:53 PM

Not lobbyists, bribers.

by lenerdenator

6/18/2026 at 2:58:56 PM

The marketers or the so far unnamed private investors.

by xg15

6/18/2026 at 3:34:21 PM

Mastodon is also European

by RobotToaster

6/18/2026 at 11:46:45 PM

Mastodon is too secure and private for them.

by Cider9986

6/18/2026 at 10:47:59 PM

They want people to get used to digital id.

by jasonvorhe

6/19/2026 at 3:41:26 PM

There’s no money or power to be had in providing free/libre tools to the masses

So there’s no chance a politician or marketer or anyone who has commerce as their primary motivation will spend any effort promoting it

by AndrewKemendo

6/19/2026 at 7:44:35 PM

The incentive is control.

by Geezus_42

6/18/2026 at 12:56:54 PM

W Social felt extremely shady since their first advertisement on HN.

Also, for all their talk about human verification, I have 6 accounts under different names :)

by pocksuppet

6/18/2026 at 2:25:08 PM

Super shady.

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.

by sparkling

6/18/2026 at 3:00:17 PM

The company is "W Social AB", meaning "aktiebolag" which in Swedish is what you in the USA would call an LLC or "joint stock company.

So they are 100% looking to monetize and turn a profit.

I wouldn't call it shady, but closed source, for-profit sounds accurate.

by mortarion

6/18/2026 at 5:43:39 PM

> what you in the USA would call an LLC

"Inc" is probably closer than "LLC". While an LLC is a type of joint stock company, it is a specific form with a pass-through tax structure and restrictions on foreign ownership. "Inc" signifies the more general form of corporation in the US.

by technothrasher

6/18/2026 at 3:38:04 PM

Aktiebolag is the overwhelmingly most common company form in Sweden and similar to common corporation forms in many other countries. It's not the same thing as a US LLC, which is a strange entity that has pass-through taxation.

Which is to say, there's nothing particularly remarkable about it being an Aktiebolag. It would be more remarkable if it wasn't.

by TazeTSchnitzel

6/18/2026 at 4:04:55 PM

You can have an "open" non profit, that is actually closed and is working to turn into a for profit...

so those distinctions dont seem to count much nowadays

by rvba

6/18/2026 at 6:19:35 PM

Where is this possible? In the US, it is impossible. Non-profit's do not have owners, so they cannot be sold or changed to for-profit ones, so there are only two ways for a non-profit to "turn into" a for-profit:

* sell non-profit's assets to a for-profit company (so it's not turning into a for-profit company, and ownership of the non-profit can never be sold since it's not owned by anyone that can approve the sale, there are no shares, etc.) This is only legal if sold at fair market value. So the for-profit can't just take the IP, equipment, land, etc. It has to buy it at what anyone else would buy it at. It also has to be approved of by the state's government. Then the proceeds of the sale have to be transferred to another non-profit.

* form a for-profit subsidiary, which is still controlled by the non-profit. And the for-profit is owned by the non-profit, so the profits flow upward to the non-profit to be used to support the non-profit's agenda.

Either way, the non-profit cannot become a for-profit, and it takes corporate governance shenanigans (like the bullshit happening with OpenAI) to even approximate this. Essentially, it requires corruption and a non-profit board that is unaccountable to its stakeholders.

by KPGv2

6/18/2026 at 8:42:39 PM

The comment you've replied to seems to be referring to OpenAI.

by nickff

6/19/2026 at 3:37:04 AM

Saw that interview, too. Biggest red flag to me was the claim, that they would use the mandatory id-document only to initially verify your'e not a bot - then discard it and they would "not store anything". Very hard to believe.

by mcfly_c-137

6/19/2026 at 4:25:02 AM

Why is that hard to believe? Plenty of systems work that way today. Holding on to that kind of information is a liability.

by Arainach

6/19/2026 at 6:34:29 AM

The way verification works requires sharing unique identifiers that a government can always trace back to the real identity. It is not clear whether these identifiers are retained, but I believe it is partially necessary to allow for "decentralization"

by fp64

6/19/2026 at 2:34:52 PM

Yes, absolutely. No argument on that. What I meant is, I find it hard to trust them on that claim:

>we don't store anything except an encrypted token to prevent s.o. from opening multiple accounts. Authorities will not be able to identify users.

The current political climate in Germany is quite the opposite: Less anonymity. More access for authorities. So why this wave of support from politics?

I really would not mind to be wrong, though.

But Elena Rossini points out a lot of things in her 3 posts that confirm my skepticism.

Link to the interviews from german tv which I'm referring to[0]. Not sure if that helps.

[0] https://www.zdfheute.de/politik/deutschland/w-social-nachric...

by mcfly_c-137

6/19/2026 at 10:38:56 AM

not a single big corporation throws away your identity documents, they are very valuable

by chadgpt3

6/19/2026 at 1:32:26 PM

> 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?

This is so stupid. It’s really like truth social. Having a private company with closed source pretending to be open and sovereign (whatever that means), adding ID verification by scanning your passport, it’s like.. gasoline for conspiracy theories. They’re so incredibly tone deaf. It’s like being back in the early 2000s when the older generation didn’t understand the internet. But it’s 2026…

Just skip the extra steps of putting social media makeup on a centralized mouthpiece, and make it an official EU site with broadcast only comms. Like public announcements and the like. That would at least serve some value. You can’t have both the social part and the control of the narrative.

by klabb3

6/19/2026 at 4:13:40 PM

> They’re so incredibly tone deaf.

What more do you expect from German and EU leadership?

>Just skip the extra steps of putting social media makeup on a centralized mouthpiece, and make it an official EU site with broadcast only comms. Like public announcements and the like.

Yeah but then nobody would ever read it. Which is why EU leaders want to coerce private platforms that are already highly successful with the public be their mouthpieces.

Germany's own government had dozens of meetings in secret with Google in order to discuss censorship. https://dailysceptic.org/2026/06/08/google-met-top-german-go...

by joe_mamba

6/18/2026 at 3:00:43 PM

Indeed a very odd sight between WC matches. I don't normally watch much TV, but I think this warrants further investigation and inquiry.

No mention of long-term stake of EU in ActivityPub platforms either, as if W would be our savior.

by tannhaeuser

6/19/2026 at 7:19:50 AM

Public broadcasters in .de and .at have generally become very shady. To me it seems they dont have to pretend to do good journalism anymore, because they are financed by a mandatory fee per household anyway. It started to be very visible during COVID times. Unfortunately, since then, it only got worse.

by lynx97

6/19/2026 at 7:18:39 PM

>they are financed by a mandatory fee per household anyway

That pisses me the fuck off as well. Not only is it forced coercion to have to pay an extra tax for receiving state propaganda, not only are their fees higher than what the brits pay for the BBC, they also don't produce any valuable IP for all that money they get from us, like the BBC does (Dr. WHo, Top Gear, etc). And in UK only people with TV have to pay whereas every household in AT has to pay regardless if you have a TV or not.

Nobody managed to convince me that the mandatory austrian broadcast fee is not a massive scam and a jobs program for the politically connected people to hire themselves, their friends and their family into insanely lucrative public sector jobs with golden benefits on the taxpayer's expense.

by joe_mamba

6/18/2026 at 2:51:13 PM

And probably stuffed with tax money. As usual.

by okr

6/18/2026 at 8:52:10 PM

The name is terrible too.

by hackerbeat

6/18/2026 at 9:31:23 PM

Yeah, based on the people and organizations moving there, RedSky would be more appropriate.

by boznz

6/19/2026 at 3:02:41 PM

Are you alluding to the association of "W" with George W Bush?

Not sure that's really a thing outside the USA. And as far as I heard that reference, it was always pronunced "Dubya" not "Double-You"

by SoftTalker

6/19/2026 at 4:20:55 PM

this is sarcasm, right?

by bjord

6/18/2026 at 9:22:26 PM

it's actually a double-v as in "the vvitch"

by raffael_de

6/19/2026 at 8:24:47 PM

I thought it was a reference to the Weimar Republic.

by sunshine-o

6/18/2026 at 2:22:21 PM

[dead]

by darig

6/18/2026 at 1:21:49 PM

I thought this was a good post on the topic: [W Social is TruthSocial with a European accent.][1]

[^1]: https://wecanjustdothings.leaflet.pub/3mokohkfb4224

by tao_oat

6/18/2026 at 9:11:31 PM

i wish there was a disclosure about letting LLM write this article

by croisillon

6/18/2026 at 3:19:33 PM

Looking at the people who immediately joined and this being presented at WEF, this looks less like an EU BlueSky or X and more like an EU Truth Social - i.e. the core users seem to be EU politicians who don't want to depend on a platform owned by their political opponents for reach and so want to have their own platform.

by xg15

6/19/2026 at 4:28:20 AM

And get confirmation bias on whatever they write from like-minded cronies, without the usual anonymous piss-takers.. kinda sad really!

by boznz

6/18/2026 at 3:38:55 PM

It isn't so much about platform owned by political opponents as platforms now being political and/or that we always have to assume they come with a political agenda.

by bborud

6/18/2026 at 8:49:55 PM

Its about restricting replies to sycophants.

by throwaway85825

6/18/2026 at 2:53:47 PM

The guy who runs W Social, whilst he has a software developer background, has worked most of his time in the financial world. W social is also an LLC. It's a corporation with shares looking to make a profit somehow. No doubt there will be ads on there, and paid features.

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.

by mortarion

6/18/2026 at 6:13:29 PM

I think they just choose W, because it's the letter before X (former twitter). Apart from the EU leaders and politicians stroking each other egos, I hardly think anyone would be there and it would die out in few years.

by sajithdilshan

6/19/2026 at 10:47:09 AM

Given how bad X was as a company/product name, basing your own company name off that certainly seems like an interesting choice. X at least has the fact it's rebranded Twitter bringing in attention.

by CM30

6/19/2026 at 6:27:07 AM

we need a Y social that's just a static website encouraging us to go outside.

by bolbishvili

6/20/2026 at 4:39:37 AM

Why not go straight to the top with A?

by misfitgentleman

6/18/2026 at 8:48:54 PM

It will serve it's primary purpose of separating criticism from direct association with EU politicians posts. They also hate community notes.

by throwaway85825

6/18/2026 at 5:12:32 PM

W Social is a Swedish company and therefore not an LLC. It is an Aktiebolag (AB), it is closer to a Corporation (Inc). Still for profit but not necessarily evil, just the most common business type in Sweden.

by malmz

6/18/2026 at 3:31:30 PM

Maybe they just chose the letter before X?

by RobotToaster

6/18/2026 at 4:27:32 PM

This thread is the first time I've even heard of "W Social" so I have no specific insight into their naming, but I'd assume it comes from (gaming/lifestyle) streaming culture where "chatters" will often say "W <thing>" (good, win) or "L <thing>" (bad, lose) as short-form feedback on how they feel about <thing>.

by georgemcbay

6/18/2026 at 4:43:44 PM

This would make sense but seems unlikely to me, because the people involved come across as incredibly offline.

by tao_oat

6/19/2026 at 10:45:23 AM

Haha. uvWXyz .still bad, agreed. Also if you somewhat fluent in german: "vögeln" as replacement for twitter with a dating platform twist.

by NonHyloMorph

6/18/2026 at 8:53:50 PM

Yeah, terrible name indeed.

by hackerbeat

6/18/2026 at 2:20:26 PM

Just use https://mu.social, it's essentially the same thing, just built in the open by the Eurosky stack.

by maelito

6/18/2026 at 3:36:49 PM

“There have been so many red flags with W Social since its hastily cobbled-together *announcement at Davos*”

I think that last bit explains why European govt orgs have migrated to it, over the open source Eurosky.

by threecheese

6/18/2026 at 1:00:13 PM

An unfortunate step backwards. I'm cheering for Eurosky and open networks.

by BigTuna

6/18/2026 at 2:21:17 PM

Eurosky actually looks like a promising alternative (speaking as non-european) but the AT protocol should have more open friendly competition than just the flagship instance of bluesky. Eurosky seems interesting as well.

by Imustaskforhelp

6/18/2026 at 4:27:31 PM

Note that “instance” is Mastodon-brained and is a wrong way to think about atproto. The correct parallel is RSS / Google Reader.

Atproto has two types of things: hosting and apps.

- Hosting is like RSS. You can host your data on your own server and broadcast from it. It’s just an open source Docker container.

- Apps are like Google Reader. They aggregate from all hosts and usually build an index so they can show a rich view over the network. That’s what Bluesky, Leaflet, Tangled, etc, so.

So there is no “instance”. There’s hosting and there’s apps.

by danabramov

6/18/2026 at 4:09:41 PM

In addition to Eurosky there's also Blacksky, Northsky, and Anisota. Plus dozens of other non-microblogging apps. AT is growing pretty quickly now.

by BigTuna

6/19/2026 at 7:25:00 AM

Divide and conquer?! Twitter could have been IT and somehow did not make it. Now we have many contenders and with Europe witnessing being cut off from American services, many are betting on growing public budgets for infrastructure projects. I paid for Mastodon(.social) for a while and somehow still think, projects funded by users should be the norm, but web B2C always had a hard stance in EU, pitching for public funds seems to remain "the winner"/most viable option in this space.

by jraedisch

6/18/2026 at 2:44:18 PM

Sovereignty is mostly just a protectionist racket. European firms struggle to compete with dominant US platforms, framing industrial policy as "sovereignty" rather than protectionism just sounds more strategic and security-oriented. I've seen US platforms bend over backwards to meet the requirements and they still choose their preferred winner. Predictably the goalposts keep moving.

by kristianc

6/18/2026 at 9:28:32 PM

EU doesn't have enough money to just buy the competition

by oytis

6/18/2026 at 10:18:40 PM

EU had more money than China yet shipped fewer dominant software platforms

by joe_mamba

6/19/2026 at 6:31:46 AM

China doesn't allow foreign social media on their territory at all. US had one for a short time, then panicked and forced them to sell. EU can neither buy American platforms, nor does it want to build a great firewall of Europe, so it's trying to find other ways to get in control

by oytis

6/19/2026 at 3:28:07 PM

> nor does it want to build a great firewall of Europe

Oh yes they are. Just more stealthily via ID doxing age verification and speech censorship regulations.

by joe_mamba

6/19/2026 at 4:36:04 PM

That's a huge stretch. Age verification is a worrying, but a wordwide trend, several US states introduced it as well.

The first country to introduce it was Australia, which is only related to Europe by participating in Eurovision

by oytis

6/19/2026 at 7:04:59 PM

>That's a huge stretch.

It isn't.

> but a wordwide trend

And that's supposed to make it ... FINE?

LIke "Hey, the entire world is becoming an authoritarian surveillance state, what do you expect the EU to do? NOT do it?"

YES! That's what I expect. I don't want the EU becoming China but with a blue flag.

by joe_mamba

6/19/2026 at 3:58:02 AM

Yeah money is just a fancy paper if you can't translate it to actual productivity.

by dudisubekti

6/19/2026 at 5:54:23 AM

money and credit are different things. EU has credit.

by m00dy

6/19/2026 at 7:36:23 AM

This seems a bit tone deaf. Trump can force American tech companies to hand over data or disable accesss of European accounts. Eg a year ago he didn’t like what some judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague (NL) were doing so he had Microsoft block their email access.

Sure it vibes very well with protectionists but the sovereignty angle is real. The USA is no longer a reliable partner.

(And just before someone mistakes my comment as having any stance on W Social, I do not)

by skrebbel

6/18/2026 at 2:40:13 PM

I have a hunch that many - most? - of these European digital sovereignty projects will end up being grifts. Whenever money is being thrown at any crappy, low-effort startup that knows how to speak the right language, you get grifters coming out of the woodwork.

by rafram

6/18/2026 at 8:52:10 PM

There's billions available for whoever greases the right palms.

by throwaway85825

6/18/2026 at 1:51:09 PM

> Europe already has an ATproto social network - Eurosky

Why is this a different network? Are Eurosky relays not indexing anything outside Eurosky?

by hahajk

6/18/2026 at 2:21:55 PM

The article explains what's needed to run something like Bluesky (ctrl-f "To be fully sovereign you need").

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.

by dutchCourage

6/18/2026 at 2:18:15 PM

They are, it's just a second instance of a realy. For independance, resilience, moderation, and also probably minor technical choices.

by maelito

6/18/2026 at 4:48:28 PM

How to create an account on #WSocial in 13 easy steps:

1. choose a username

2. choose a password

3. choose your interests

4. download the #WIdentity app to your phone (two options: Apple AppStore or Google Play Store)

5. scan a QR code

6. create a PIN code

optional: enable biometrics; re-enter PIN

7. choose whether you simply want to verify that you're human or if you also want to verify your name

8. choose the verification method (automatic photo review, request a manual review or scan your passport chip)

9. scan your passport's picture page

10. scan your passport's chip

11. take a selfie

12. scan a QR code to link the W Identity to your W Social account

13. enter your PIN code

https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01KVD55YBYVM3B46ACQTE...

Or.... How about not? Seriously, join Mastodon!

by mystraline

6/18/2026 at 6:50:43 PM

> Seriously, join Mastodon!

not bad but bluesky/eurosky is just better. activitypub based networks treat instances as sovereign with full control over users data. they can permanently delete your posts and the posts you see depend on who the admin wants to federate with. the only way to be independent is run your own server so non technical users get stuck under reddit style moderation.

at protocol is global by default and puts you in control with full account portability. and it looks like its easier to expand it to new use cases like tangled (github alternative) or rocksky (social listening like last fm).

by tancop

6/19/2026 at 4:43:41 AM

On the other hand, the currently overwhelmingly dominant Bluesky app and infrastructure can control what users see, presenting a centralized chokepoint. It’s nice to own your data but if your social circle uses a single centralized app to view it, shrug.

by zoul

6/18/2026 at 8:22:02 PM

> Or.... How about not? Seriously, join Mastodon!

Which decentralised instance?

by colesantiago

6/18/2026 at 10:31:22 PM

> Which decentralised instance?

any of them

all of them

by urbnspacecowboy

6/18/2026 at 10:42:26 PM

> any of them

> all of them

That is the problem.

The paradox of choice stiffles adoption for Mastodon for the regular user and pushes them away.

Choosing the main instance goes against the whole point of Mastodon for federation.

There was even a time Mastodon wanted to promote other federated instances by closing off the main instance, it failed.

You might as well use Bluesky or Threads and be done with it.

by colesantiago

6/18/2026 at 10:45:55 PM

It's true, same goes for e-mail host, just so many options to choose from! /s

by slater

6/18/2026 at 4:45:42 PM

EU bigwigs don't care about Open Source. They care about EU data sovereignty and supporting EU businesses (well the appearance of doing so, anyway).

by advisedwang

6/18/2026 at 3:49:43 PM

Really sad seeing europa.eu and high profile politicians switching switching to such obviously bullshit low effort hacks. Ursala von der Leyen just joined and fired off a hello, for example. Many agitated replies to it, discussing the matter, with lots and lots of discontent for W Social: https://bsky.app/profile/vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu/post/3moio...

There's two really good blog posts in these W Social people, with really good research. https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-socia... https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-public-institutions-a...

There's a fantastic thread covering this and many other issues. This seems to go against the core EU directives for self sovereignty, just signing up to a very rogue platform that happens to have some protocol interoperability. Also, lol, they have no cross site scripting protection. https://bsky.app/profile/stollmeyer.eurosky.social/post/3moi...

Given the presence of https://eurosky.tech and https://mu.social, the EU folks going to W over them is either massive out of touch pitiful incompetence, or worse, sharks preferring to go with other sharks they feel they can control, instead of something actually positive and better, but not as directly manipulable.

by jauntywundrkind

6/18/2026 at 5:48:55 PM

Not sure if the backlash got to them or they got word of potential legal issues caused by doing this, but I can see their GitHub page and its associated repositories just fine now:

https://github.com/w-social-eu

But I do kinda wonder the legality of this sort of move anyway. If other people contributed code and didn't agree to some terms of service saying their work would become the property of the project owner, would it even be legal to make it closed source under a different license?

by CM30

6/19/2026 at 6:42:31 AM

There's no much there? A fork of some component where the only changes are some lines in config, and a bunch of shell scripts for a docker image?

by fp64

6/19/2026 at 10:52:10 AM

I suspect they didn't actually make many changes at all. Their product is literally a rebranded version of Bluesky, to the point the original test login didn't even change the background image or text.

by CM30

6/19/2026 at 10:55:02 AM

They at least need to add the ID verification somehow to the backend, which is why I'd be really curious seeing how that is implemented

by fp64

6/18/2026 at 6:41:13 PM

bluesky is mit/apache so they can legally make a closed source fork. what they cant do is sue people who reupload any version before they went closed, even if they used a copyright assignment cla because neither of the licenses can be revoked.

by tancop

6/18/2026 at 6:59:26 PM

The site loads somewhat, burns 100% CPU non-stop, I can't really click any of the buttons. I guess it's not for me. :)

by binaryturtle

6/18/2026 at 6:45:12 PM

Slightly off topic, but what's the origin / where does the name "W" come from?

by DavideNL

6/19/2026 at 5:20:31 AM

Well I guess it's slightly more honest than US social media. In this case the government doesn't keep their involvement a secret.

by jongjong

6/18/2026 at 6:01:33 PM

Maybe they moved to Codeberg?

by teddyh

6/18/2026 at 12:59:19 PM

I don't understand why anyone would want to make the same mistake all over again: jumping onto a private platform owned by a company inevitably results in you becoming the product sold and enshittification.

We've seen it so many times.

Learn the lesson. Use Mastodon this time.

by jwr

6/18/2026 at 2:25:07 PM

Call me when the Fediverse has a search function that actually fucking works. Most of my time in social media is spent searching for keywords of whatever I'm interested in, which is one thing which Mastodon is absolutely awful at.

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.

by erxam

6/18/2026 at 4:48:38 PM

> Call me when the Fediverse has a search function that actually fucking works.

Actually that's a feature. If search doesn't work, there is less incentive for bots polluting others people searches.

On the other hand, search works so bad than even connecting to people you know on other networks is painful.

by dolmen

6/18/2026 at 9:37:29 PM

It's not even about connecting to other people. I'm a toxic, friendless miserable asshole. I don't have anyone to connect with.

All I use social media for is to look at whatever funny piece of media I'm obsessed with currently and related things.

Unfortunately, Mastodon both has busted search and useless tags. Tumblr's search has been hilariously bad for ages now, but at least the tagging system is so comprehensive it more than makes up for it.

Mastodon is the worst of all worlds in that aspect.

by erxam

6/18/2026 at 6:29:33 PM

I have entirely different experiences and I haven't seen much hating — but having read this, perhaps indeed mastodon isn't for you :-)

by jwr

6/18/2026 at 9:41:04 PM

It's not hating, it's just this general reaction against strangers even seeing your posts.

I haven't actually been subject to this, yet, but I've seen enough people react negatively against others doing this that it saps all my desire to do anything other than just aimlessly scroll every once in a while. I can read the room, you know.

Sometimes I wonder why do instance admins even open up their instances? Just run it for your friends and those who you like and cut the crap.

by erxam

6/18/2026 at 1:15:28 PM

atproto is also open source and in my experience (solely as a user rather than a developer on the API/network) it simply works better than Mastodon.

by afavour

6/18/2026 at 1:32:29 PM

And what is that experience of yours? Do you have experience from deployments with many independent atproto data servers and relays federating together?

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?

by mort96

6/18/2026 at 1:52:06 PM

That’s like saying that someone using Google Reader doesn’t “experience federation of RSS”.

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.

by danabramov

6/18/2026 at 2:19:43 PM

And it works as smoothly for people on other app servers?

by mort96

6/18/2026 at 2:57:49 PM

What does “people on other app servers” mean? That’s not a thing.

App servers are aggregators. You can use any to read the network. Here’s a post I wrote, as seen via Bluesky aggregator:

https://bsky.app/profile/danabra.mov/post/3mol3gyikac2d

A second later, I could see the same post via the Blacksky community aggregator: https://blacksky.community/profile/did:plc:fpruhuo22xkm5o7tt...

Here’s the same post on pdsls which reads it directly from my hosting: https://pdsls.dev/at://did:plc:fpruhuo22xkm5o7ttr2ktxdo/app....

My hosting is managed by Bluesky but it has nothing to do with Bluesky app. Hosting is a separate decoupled thing. I could move hosting to my own Docker container, and all aggregators would see my posts just as fine.

Does this clear things up?

by danabramov

6/19/2026 at 4:15:57 PM

(Update: I actually have moved my hosting today but it seems like Blacksky is caching resolution too aggressively so it might not resolve it for a few more hours.)

by danabramov

6/19/2026 at 1:19:00 AM

Users of different appviews are just using a different aggregator/backend in effect. The network is still largely the same but there may be minor moderation or feature differences between appviews.

Users of different PDS would be the closest thing to a mastodon instance and there's thousands of different PDS without much issue. I'm on a "third party PDS" and I've had barely any issues.

I use a "third party" PDS, appview, PLC directory mirror, CDN, and client so 99.9% of my interaction with bluesky and atproto at large is independent of bluesky the corporation.

Despite using a third party "basically everything" my experience is essentially the same as a "default" bluesky user if not better in many ways

by OneDeuxTriSeiGo

6/18/2026 at 1:38:10 PM

If you use bsky.app, you still see posts from other servers (Blacksky, Eurosky, W Social, and so on). But yes, by the protocol's design you're primarily interacting with one central aggregator of everything (Bluesky's AppView).

by tao_oat

6/18/2026 at 2:35:32 PM

This is exactly why I clarified with "as a user".

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.

by afavour

6/19/2026 at 10:42:43 AM

ATProto is centralized.

by chadgpt3

6/18/2026 at 1:39:11 PM

I'd go further - just leave social media

by mglvsky

6/18/2026 at 1:45:15 PM

No, not necessarily. Mastodon is actually "social media", as opposed to twitter/X, bluewhatever, facebook, or any other commercial outlet, to be honest, all of these have become "feeds" of promoted content designed to maximize "engagement".

Mastodon is social: you follow people, you see their stuff. It's what social media used to be.

by jwr

6/18/2026 at 2:17:08 PM

Fyi it’s actually called bluesky, not bluewhatever

by pfraze

6/18/2026 at 4:45:27 PM

Bluesky is really lagging in user adoption because the name itself implies some sort of political divide, and from experience, it seems that it's an echo chamber where "right" activists are getting demolished at the first occasion, I wished it would have a mix of people and opinion.

by addedGone

6/18/2026 at 4:57:09 PM

Wcyd? It was the name that Dorsey chose before the PBC was even formed. It's from the technical term of art, like greenfield.

by pfraze

6/18/2026 at 5:08:15 PM

I'm guessing that's because blue means left wing in the USA and red means right wing.

Why did you switch them around? Red always meant left wing. Even in the US red meant the Soviets. It's just confusing to everyone else.

by onraglanroad

6/18/2026 at 6:58:13 PM

no one really knows, when broadcasters started using party colors it was all over the place and they settled on blue for dems. i guess its because neither party was socialist so there was no association with red like in europe.

by tancop

6/18/2026 at 2:06:02 PM

Which is what eYou is trying to build as well. Including AI fact-checking: far from perfect but interesting to read its fact checks on your own posts.

by soco

6/18/2026 at 3:05:48 PM

You’re posting that on HN. I consider HN to be social media but lacking the most pernicious features (ads, algorithmic feeds) and benefitting from both strong moderation and self-policing. But it gets to do that by being funded from extrinsic sources, which is itself a compromise.

by shermantanktop

6/18/2026 at 1:11:51 PM

But thats just the thing with atproto. The company sucks? Just move your PDS.

by Landing7610

6/18/2026 at 3:36:42 PM

If they filter you at the relay or appview level that doesn't work.

by RobotToaster

6/18/2026 at 1:04:08 PM

Eurosky is also an option.

by matteomrj

6/18/2026 at 1:09:15 PM

[dead]

by 17383848

6/18/2026 at 1:30:22 PM

There is no lesson to be learned. There are billions of noobs. There is always a cow to milk, it seems.

by greenavocado

6/18/2026 at 1:27:23 PM

Nobody important or worth following uses Mastodon.

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.

by colesantiago

6/18/2026 at 1:46:44 PM

I am quite happy with people I follow on Mastodon. Sure, various politicians might not be there, but those are not people I want to hear from.

The rest of your comment seems to be pure speculation, so.

by jwr

6/18/2026 at 1:34:53 PM

How can you know there's nobody worth following on Mastodon?

by Aachen

6/18/2026 at 1:40:54 PM

I was on mastodon for a year, and the only people there were other dorks looking for someone to follow on mastodon

by bigfishrunning

6/19/2026 at 7:20:58 AM

If you actually take the time to look for posts and communities about things you care about, you'll find more than enough of interesting people. It's just that there is no algorithm to feed you content, you have to be active in looking for it, at least initially.

I'm not necessarily saying you made this mistake, but plenty of other people who dip their toe in the fediverse do this - they get in, find nothing in their feed, they shrug and forget about it. A good start is to search for a few hashtags that match your interests, even add a follow for those if you see they're active, and soon you'll start seeing interesting people. I've been on there for years, and I'm always amazed at the small niche discussion threads I find.

by pferde

6/18/2026 at 1:57:33 PM

Huh, okay. For me there's everything from government updates to industry news to friends and acquaintances active on Mastodon. Meeting new people there as well. Maybe infosec and my friends are just all dorks

by Aachen

6/18/2026 at 2:06:05 PM

> Nobody important or worth following uses Mastodon.

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.

by zerobees

6/18/2026 at 5:54:28 PM

I could name so many projects or people. The Rust language? KDE? Comics like War and Peas, or David Revoy's works? Hackers like Foone, Mara Bos? Technology Connections!

Countless cute kitten pics. Minimal hate or bigotry in my feed. Don't have to log in. Don't even have to sign up. Finite scroll on the homepage.

by deathanatos

6/18/2026 at 8:25:39 PM

You've just described Bluesky?

by colesantiago

6/18/2026 at 10:13:04 PM

But why would I ever choose locked down, corporate Twitter v2 "it'll be different this time!" over Mastodon?

by deathanatos

6/19/2026 at 1:02:54 AM

Bluesky is the opposite of locked down

by pfraze

6/18/2026 at 11:06:24 PM

> But why would I ever choose locked down, corporate Twitter v2 "it'll be different this time!" over Mastodon?

So that you don't have to move from Mastodon instance to Mastodon instance over a petty owner disagreement after they delete the entire server with all your data.

by colesantiago

6/19/2026 at 7:23:07 AM

And yet, oodles of people continue to happily use it every day. From what I've seen, it's only the assholes who get booted out of everywhere they go.

by pferde

6/18/2026 at 1:39:52 PM

Terry Tao, Bert Hubert, Michal Zalewski (lcamtuf), Bunny Huang are just a few in my feed. But Mastodon is more about peer-to-peer communication than celebrities farming engagement indeed.

No signs of enshittification either so far, barely any new features being added TBH

by oytis

6/18/2026 at 1:46:57 PM

Threads is just another node that connects to ActivityPub, there is no "road" to enshittification.

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.

by jeromegv

6/18/2026 at 1:54:29 PM

With this logic, Threads is the biggest 'Mastodon instance' with 500M active users monthly.

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.

by colesantiago

6/18/2026 at 2:08:53 PM

Practically, if you choose a big enough server, it's rarely a problem. mastodon.social is the most popular one, maintained by Mastodon the non-profit itself.

Biggest turn off and a killer feature depending on who you ask is a lack of Algorithm. That's why people who move away from Twitter feel disoriented, but people who were never on Twitter in the first place are alright.

by oytis

6/18/2026 at 2:12:24 PM

I, for one, want to choose for myself whether to block other instances or not. You seem to not tolerate this opinion.

A "main instance" is contrary to the whole idea of a Fediverse anyway.

by Tepix

6/18/2026 at 2:30:04 PM

> Nobody important or worth following uses Mastodon.

This obviously is total nonsense.

by badgersnake

6/18/2026 at 1:52:03 PM

Tell me you don't understand the point of Mastodon without telling me you don't understand the point of Mastodon.

by angst_ridden

6/18/2026 at 1:58:57 PM

> Tell me you don't understand the point of Mastodon without telling me you don't understand the point of Mastodon.

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.

by colesantiago

6/18/2026 at 1:05:52 PM

Another social network with 0 network effect and is dead on arrival. Now being closed makes it far worse than Bluesky and no better than a prototype pre-production version of Threads; with 0 users.

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...

by rvz

6/19/2026 at 7:08:53 PM

>That's everything I need to know.

Careful, you'll be branded a conspiracy theorist if you notice WEF involvement as dangerous.

by joe_mamba

6/18/2026 at 9:37:43 PM

European elites are so corrupt and complicit that if they say they will do something, you can rest assured the opposite will take place.

by trolleski

6/18/2026 at 2:25:17 PM

W Social isn't built with proper cryptography and so-on, it's amateurish.

by pixel_popping

6/18/2026 at 3:07:21 PM

- am i the only one or does anyone else think this website is somehow hijacking the scrollbar?

by vivzkestrel

6/19/2026 at 6:42:42 AM

I don't notice anything with the scrollbar. I tried with and without ublock origin enabled.

by bolbishvili

6/18/2026 at 8:36:42 PM

Typical EU corrupt bureaucracy at work.

by wazoox

6/18/2026 at 2:33:48 PM

Regime-aligned social media, just what people needed.

And as an not completely unintended side-effect, some nephews of EU bureaucrats will make hay.

by 3997531578

6/19/2026 at 8:31:15 PM

The whole * media industry got so bad we just assume it will be controlled, whether it is on a piece of paper, TV or the Internet.

Sad.

by sunshine-o

6/18/2026 at 2:23:36 PM

[flagged]

by pedromlsreis