W Social, public institutions and the theater of European digital sovereignty
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
W Social, a closed-source for-profit fork of Bluesky, has attracted European Commission accounts, raising sovereignty concerns.
The European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Central Bank, and Christine Lagarde migrated their Bluesky accounts to W Social's servers. W Social is a private, for-profit company controlled by Swedish entrepreneurs. The author discovered that W Social removed its public GitHub repository, suggesting it has become closed-source. This conflicts with the EU's Tech Sovereignty Package, which promotes open source. Eurosky, a non-profit ATproto alternative, operates transparently. W Social's advisory board includes Big Tech executives, including a Tools for Humanity (Worldcoin) executive.
What commenters are saying
Commenters overwhelmingly view W Social as shady, criticizing its closed-source, for-profit nature and questioning its claim to European digital sovereignty. Many see contradictions between the EU's tech sovereignty package and moving official accounts to a for-profit platform. Several users promote Mastodon and Eurosky as better alternatives. A German public broadcaster feature on W Social is described as feeling like a paid ad. Some commenters argue that atproto's portability mitigates some concerns.