Notices by Elena Rossini 🌈 (_elena@mastodon.social)

Down the #LinkedIn rabbit hole for research and...

I was reading the feed of a French tech bro who has egregiously cringy daily posts.

I almost spit out my coffee over his advice "Be the CEO of your body" 😂 Thankfully my computer is safe. But I will never drink coffee while browsing LinkedIn ever again.

Oh dear. I had to sign up for #LinkedIn - dummy account of course - in order to do research for articles I am writing and... I am not OK.

Just spending 10 minutes a day on LinkedIn, reading what European tech entrepreneurs* are sharing is... painful. I am CRINGING SO HARD.

(*Not the company you're all thinking about, something else).

That being said, I wish I had 10% of the confidence and lack of self-awareness of these tech bros.

I'm going to retire from this beat soon. It's too much 🫠

Update: the #WSocial landing page STILL shows doctored numbers under recent posts by prominent users - like European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

82 comments shown on W Social's homepage; 4 on ATproto.

I have multiple developer friends double-checking data for me - one is verifying things from INSIDE the W Social portal.

The metrics on their homepage are fabricated to make it appear as if there are more comments.

A poor intern is about to take the blame for this.

SCOOP: #WSocial is doctoring metrics on its homepage, inflating the number of comments on posts by prominent people on its network.

I suppose a more accurate tagline for them should be "Trust your feed?"

My article about it: "W Social, Fictional Metrics and the Beauty of Open Data"

🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-and-the-beauty-of-open-data/

#blog #BigTech #EUBigTech #TEP #TrustedEuropeanPlatforms #TrustYourFeed

🌈 Timeline cleanse ❤️

Wishing you all a lovely morning / afternoon / evening wherever you are!

TIL that the inventor of Care Bears is an American woman named Elena Kucharik:

🔗: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Kucharik

#WSocial: "We want to promote European digital sovereignty. We're made in Europe, for the world!"

@EUCommission: "A strong Europe needs independent digital spaces. Today, we’re expanding our presence to W."

W Social: "You need to verify your identity. Please download our #WIdentity app from Apple's App Store or Google's Play Store"

No further comment necessary.

Check for yourselves (04:30): https://inv.nadeko.net/Vcq4MiabpEQ

#BigTech #OpenWashing #EuropeWashing #SovereigntyWashing

@aral oh I think their GitHub account looks the same. This is where the codebase of their fork used to be: https://github.com/w-social-eu/w-social-atproto I still get a 404...

thanks for being on top of this Aral!

@xChaos @aral the European Commission is openly embracing W Social and von der Leyen took time out of her G7 meetings to promote W!

This is not a drill.

I think the EC sees this as a trial run for a possible mandatory social media age verification across the European Union. We must pay attention and resist.

This is an existential threat to the Fediverse as a whole (which doesn't have systems in place to comply with age verification).

RESIST & SPEAK UP

@vanderbeeken I'm SOOO CONFUSED. Euractiv is a project by Christophe Leclercq who is on W Social's board of advisors.

Today he was presenting in Paris - with Anna Zeiter - the label "Trusted European Platforms."

Euractiv is the one reporting about this? What is going on?!?!?!?!?! 😵💫

@aral

@aral thank you again for your EXCELLENT analysis Aral!

BTW did you see this? 😮

https://mastodon.social/@_elena/116764738020685078

@aral Thanks Aral. I wish I didn't have to write them, but there are literally ZERO journalists investigating W 🥲

#WSocial will open up their beta program today… and I have a SCOOP for you: it appears that they have quietly gone closed-source!

This is ironic, considering that the @EUCommission just unveiled their Tech Sovereignty Package, emphasizing the importance of #OpenSource. And yet they have migrated their main ATproto accounts to W Social - whose code can no longer be inspected!

My full article - with a great analysis by @aral:

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

#FOSS #DigitalSovereignty #BigTech

Me to my husband: « I have haters! »

Husband: « Well maybe it means your work has impact. Who are your haters? »

Me: « Well, I’m told there’s a guy really angry at me for my articles about W Social. He’s posting on ATproto and has blocked me so I can’t see what he says. »

Husband: « Just one? You’re fine! »

Me: « I know. Plus my Fedi friends are an amazing support system. »

Really #GratefulForYou today and every day ❤️

@ErikUden I had a heated discussion at lunchtime with my extended family recently. Everyone - except me - claimed that the US could return to the rule of law, progressive policies and restore a good image abroad by the next presidential elections (!!!) if a Democrat got elected. I kept saying: it will take GENERATIONS to fix all the damage.

And my take was ridiculed by everyone 🫠

To be fair they also told me that I was overreacting and making too big of a deal when 🍊 was elected in 2016

@Blf_tpe well, as @aral pointed out, saying that they're not a B corp but actually only want to make money is pretty revelatory... especially since they kept touting their lofty goals of "saving democracy" and "saving journalism". Plus you should have seen the video for her tone while delivering the line

@Blf_tpe @aral my hunch is that they wanted the video gone because of her lines about using their users' data to train European AI models

Dear Fedi friends, I need your help.

If by any chance any of you have saved the video of #WSocial CEO Anna Zeiter's presentation at the Monaco AI conference (uploaded to YouTube on May 21) I would be ETERNALLY grateful.

OG URL: https://youtu.be/xDNGHaISqs4

The 35 minute video included priceless quotes like: "Yes we have a business model, it's not a philanthropy, we are not a B corp, we actually want to make money."

Following the publication of my exposé, the video has been removed from YouTube!

Dear Fedi friends,

Apologies for another toot about #WSocial but I am genuinely shaking right now.

The @EUCommission and its president Ursula von der Leyen have recently migrated their ATproto (Bluesky) accounts to W Social.

I cannot fathom why they would pick a private enterprise whose leaders didn't even have ATproto accounts 3 months ago... and who are so open to having their users' data mined to train European AI models.

My articles on them:

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

Wow. Just wow.

Good morning Fedi friends!

Today marks the one year anniversary of the release of my video “Introducing the Fediverse: a New Era of Social Media”

🔗: https://aseachange.com/@elena/statuses/01JXCDST00FXKN9KCAQJ1QCMRJ

I’m super grateful towards:

💙 volunteers who translated the subtitles
💚 those who produced foreign-language voice-over narrations
💛 people who showed the video at conferences
🧡 everyone who shared the video
❤️ people who sent in positive feedback

It really takes a village 💜

#TeamFedi #FediLove

@stefano OMG esercizio 196 minuti? Whaaaat?!? E anche i 24000 passi sono impressionanti