will require identification and photo validation
With all the privacy issues in the past few years, it’s “dead on arrival” as they say.
Yup. It will fail spectacularly.
Too bad cuz it could have legit beaten Xitter.
It will probably fail silently, if it doesn’t pick up enough momentum. * Sad failed platform noises *
W formerly known as useless garbage nobody asked for.
Uh, Mastodon exists?
I’m assuming they want to compete with X/Twitter.
If they built out a Mastodon network with government support, then it would.
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.
Yup. Nothing and I say nothing makes a service less secure for privacy than requiring your ID and photo. That data will get leaked. It always does.
Considering the amount of bots and trolls everywhere I can see a certain appeal on an app that requires an id verification to be honest.
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,
Isn’t this just some random company trying to cash in a little from controversy surrounding Xitter?
Yes, and stupid people are going to lap it up.
They named themselves W but those draconian ID requirements are an L
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
Oh sorry, I forgot Sweden is in Africa. Or that referring to an app as European implies that Europe is a country. Luckily there are still people like you to educate us all /s
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”
Stupid name, vv, or vave would’ve been better. Besides, it’s not like they’ll register v.v as a domain, or even www.w.vv
Looks like W is being built on ATProto.
For non-believers in that format of social media, is ATProto good or bad?
The basic building block of the Fediverse is the instance, right? Every instance is its own self-contained, centralized social media service that optionally interacts with other instances. EG Trump’s Truth Social is a Mastodon instance that does not federate.
ATProto takes a more radical approach. Everything is modular. There is no instance or anything that is complete in itself. It’s more like the WWW. You can make websites in different ways. These are made findable through search engines like Google or Bing, which are not affiliated with companies offering web hosting.
ATProto takes everything apart. It tries to avoid choke points or lock-in as far as possible to thwart monopolies. You have a server that stores your data (posts, etc …), called a PDS. You can move your data to a different server. An identity provider tells others where your account is at any moment. A relay collects all the posts that people make and makes them available for further processing. This can be used to create algorithmic feeds, or moderation (aka labelling). These things are independent of each other and can be independently offered by different parties. You can pick and chose which to use, though there isn’t a whole lot of choice yet.
ETA: No idea what W wants to offer in that regard.
Thanks for taking the time to explain.
Follow-up question : doesn’t ATProto run into the same issue as Bluesky for example, where even though the protocol allows for decentralization, the vast majority of users are on the same servers, thus negating the pros of decentralization?
I feel like this would be the case here where one server will contain all the modules.
The company Bluesky Social PBC created the microblogging service Bluesky and the ATProtocol. It’s like the company Mastodon created the microblogging service Mastodon. There are other services built on ATproto that are EG like Reddit/Lemmy. But these have not taken off significantly.
The ecosystem is mature enough so that you can participate in Bluesky without using services offered by Bluesky Social PBC and without making sacrifices. For the most part, you can move without abandoning your account.
It is true that the servers are mostly run by the Bluesky company, but so what? Email is mostly run by Google and no one seems to think that’s a problem.
More and more people are moving away from tech giants because of their shitty behaviour. So I think it is important to note how the data is used and stored, thus my follow-up question.
Thanks for the detailed response.
how the data is used and stored
That’s a tricky one and will potentially cause a lot of problems to open social media in Europe. Just know that there is no such thing as “looking” at a post, comment, or profile. It gets downloaded to your device and stored for as long as it’s needed, or maybe longer.
I understand that. Just like Lemmy where all the instances that are federated have a copy of the posts and comments you make.
However, you have the option to create your own instance and federate or not with any community you want.
If there is one mega instance, deferating from it effectively kills the social media. Thus my train of thoughts.
More and more people are moving away from tech giants because of their shitty behaviour. So I think it is important to note how the data is used and stored, thus my follow-up question.
Thanks for the detailed response.
Y’all will enjoy this: https://w-social.eu/
If it’s not federated then it’s not a good thing.
Anna Zeiter, CEO of W
Oh goodie. Useful idiots need scumbags profiting off of their stupidity to get onboard.
We are?
Hold my hand and let’s say yes together.
only Ws in the chat, guys 😎
Checkmate, Elon Musk.
Should’ve called it Z. Is just as good as X. In fact, is two better.
We make platform now. Users come next week*.
Y tho
*Comrade has entered the chat*
