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  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...

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  #WSocial state of the network - September 15th, 2026 There is a lot of misinformation regarding W Social and how active/successful it is. So, from time to time, I'd love to share some numbers. The beauty of #opendata! The network endorsed by the #EuropeanCommission may be the darling of Brussels political circles and European media organizations (who simply rehash PR talking points). But the look behind the curtain is really troubling. As @pallenberg@mastodon.social often says, this netwo...

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  A story in two pictures: An article from Euractiv from July stating "Von der Leyen is expected to use her annual State of the Union speech to unveil plans for EU-wide age restrictions on social media". And then a pic of a W Social post announcing the live-stream of the EC state of the Union speech. This is precisely why I keep speaking up about #WSocial: We are at a dangerous turning point when it comes to online privacy and it seems that the European Commission has chosen this netw...

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  Dear friends, Please gather around for a long post about #WSocial and how they are responding to critiques. I have noticed a trend: W Social leaders and staunch supporters are describing any critical posts about the company as "targeted disinformation." Its CEO said they will soon have a technical solution in place for this. Oh?!? 🔗: https://mu.social/profile/anna.wsocial.eu/post/3mtqufy6g4s2r I suppose the "targeted disinformation" claims are about recent posts by the li...

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  Good morning Fedi friends. Is anybody curious about how the #WSocial experiment is going? You know, the private, for profit "European answer to X" endorsed by the European Commission, which is a fork of Bluesky and has quietly gone closed-source before its beta launch (à la #TruthSocial)? I've got numbers for you! Nearly two months in, W Social has almost the same number of accounts as #Eurosky... You know, the European fork of Bluesky that does NOT require government IDs to po...

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  #3GoodThings 🏃‍♀️​ I started running using the 5k Runner app as motivator. My average daily step count has been over 10k for 7 YEARS now (yes, you read that right), but some family members were bugging me it's not enough cardio (fair) and that "I may be out of shape" (what the heck?) So now I run. Delighted to report that at the end of each run - using 5k Runner - I gave as feedback that it was too easy. This for 3 days in a row, after multiple adjustments. So 5k Runner is making me...

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  Come join me and @Gina@fosstodon.org in Luxembourg this October! #OSCL26 (Open Source Conference Luxembourg) has a brand new track devoted to “Decentralized Technologies for Digital Sovereignty”: 🔗: https://conference.opensource.lu We are looking for speakers interested in discussing these topics: Federated technologies in the public sectorDecentralized platforms for video, chat, communications, code, etc.Fediverse successes and challengesSelf-hosted solutions for individuals and institutions...

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  📣​ New post 📝​ "A newbie's guide to self-hosting: GoToSocial part 1 (installation and set-up)" 🔗​: https://blog.elenarossini.com/a-newbies-guide-to-self-hosting-gotosocial-part-1-installation-and-set-up/ Basically a visual guide showing how to install #GoToSocial via #YunoHost and set it up with some basic security. ⏱️​ From start to finish, it should take about 25-30 minutes. It's my act of resistance against tech bros... I love the idea of teaching people how to self-host...

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  Dear Fedi friends, I know I had promised you a step-by-step tutorial for the installation of #GoToSocial on YunoHost... well, chapter one is 99% written. Thing is, I just discovered a potential little bug and I gave a heads-up to the YunoHost folks (something related to open registrations). If I don't hear back by tomorrow I may use CLI to go look into it in Terminal and try to change the setting that way (even if by default it's set to "false", I found that in reality the l...

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  #Signal troubleshooting - very odd support conversation Yesterday afternoon I had a quick video call with someone using Signal and then I went to pick up my child from an afternoon summer program. When I got home I realized that my phone wasn't receiving any new messages on Signal... but my computer was. Signal on my phone was completely frozen. I followed a prompt and sent the most recent log to their support email. Then carried on with my life. At some point, 2 hours later, I had a eur...

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  Good morning Fedi friends! On the agenda today: writing a first draft explaining to newbies how to self-host #GoToSocial with the help of #YunoHost. Now, to do a step-by-step installation guide I need to create a brand new account, so I can document everything. I'm a little stressed out thinking of which domain name to use and the fact it would be something like my 20th - yes TWENTIETH - ActivityPub account!!! 🫠 The things you do for the love of the fediverse 😅​ #MySoCalledSudoLife #Sel...

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  European institutions seem to be all in when it comes to introducing age verification mandates for citizens in member states: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-sets-out-common-approach-eu-wide-age-verification-technologies I now have daily anxiety thinking about the future of the fediverse. So how do I channel this fear and turn it into something constructive? I'm going back to writing #selfhosting guides for newbies. It's a great distraction, which gives me...

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  Dear Fedi friends, It may be time for a re-introduction: I'm Elena, an Italian creative (writer, photographer, filmmaker) living in Paris, France. You may have initially gotten to know me for my advocacy for the Fediverse (like my Fedi intro video: https://blog.elenarossini.com/fediverse-video/ or my blog or my Fediverse stock photo). So, you may have been a bit confused lately, over all my critical posts about the new network W Social. Why do I keep bringing it up? I believe that W Socia...

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  Dear Fedi friends, Yesterday I posted a toot about #WSocial on this account (I typically talk about them on Mastodon, but I needed more than 500 characters, so I switched here). It was widely shared and discussed. Some of you may have missed my articles critiquing W Social. I have been following them - with a critical eye - and collecting evidence since their soft launch at Davos in January: https://blog.elenarossini.com/tag/w-social/ Anyway, some of you mistook the tone of yesterday's to...

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  How to create an account on #WSocial in 13 easy steps: choose a usernamechoose a passwordchoose your interestsdownload the #WIdentity app to your phone (two options: Apple AppStore or Google Play Store)scan a QR codecreate a PIN code optional: enable biometrics; re-enter PINchoose whether you simply want to verify that you're human or if you also want to verify your namechoose the verification method (automatic photo review, request a manual review or scan your passport chip)scan your passpo...

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  Asking for a friend: who is the most prominent dev you know on the Fediverse, who is seen as neutral and is great at explaining things to newbies, ELI5-style? #AskFedi

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  I'm officially one of you. Whenever I see graphics about digital sovereignty and moving away from Big Tech, I go: "well, actually" - especially when I see Signal suggested as an alternative to WhatsApp. My first thought: Signal is pretty centralized, #DeltaChat would be a far superior alternative 🙈​🙉​🙊​ Disclaimer: I use both (Signal and DeltaChat) but I really wish I could move all my convos to @Delta@chaos.social. Slowly convincing one person at a time... #MySoCalledSudoLife #...

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  The sheer ignorance of some tech "journalists" INFURIATES me. Today the NYTimes featured on its homepage an article about how "The Netherlands blocked a U.S. company from buying a Dutch firm that handles its national ID system." 🔗​: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/technology/solvinity-kyndryl-blocked-deal-us-europe-rift.html So far, so good. But the journalist behind the article wrote in the comments section: "More and more, countries in Europe want to disentangl...

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  File under: AI Resistance I'm reading – and enjoying immensely – @emilymbender@dair-community.social and @alex@dair-community.social's book #TheAICon. I've been learning a lot of things and something that really stood out recently is the need to be careful about the language we use to describe these systems. Bender and Hanna helpfully explain: "It matters what words we use when we talk about these technologies. For instance, in our writing, we don’t use the term “hallucinatio...

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  Dear Fedi friends, You know how grateful I am for your help and expertise. I have a burning question and I know some of you may have the correct answer. Long story short, I had been doing a deep dive into #WSocial. My exposé published on Friday got 830 boosts! I am working on a follow-up piece and there's something I don't understand. The homepage of W Social is now redirecting - from wsocial.eu to wsocial.news If I put wsocial.news in WHOIS databases, I'm finding very little inf...

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  One of my biggest regrets from the past few years was losing the habit of reading books. All the usual excuses: child to look after, too tired, not enough time… I didn’t read a ton, but I had an average of 30 books a year. Last year I must have read 6. This year in early April I was at 0… and the realization shook me to my core. Something had to be done. I found out about KOreader and SimpleUI - having on an e-reader homepage a bar with reading stats would be an incredible motivator… I though...

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  Asking for a friend: do you remember the fantastic https://w-social.eu website that explained to people what the Fediverse is and why it's a much better alternative to #WSocial? Sadly it appears to be offline / with an expired SSL cert. Do you know who is behind it? Any chances of reviving it? The folks behind W Social are launching the site this Saturday... they already got TV coverage in Germany last night 😒​ #AskFedi

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  Good morning Fedi friends! Now that the stress of preparing for my keynote speech at #2MR in Hamburg is out of the way, I can return to #MySoCalledSudoLife adventures. What's next? More mesh experiments with my Heltec (now in Paris), hopefully trying to reach @leonieke@squilla.vitaulium.eu in the Netherlands. And getting an education in #ReticulumNetwork. But this morning I have the pleasure of speaking with some fellow Italians about bringing municipalities to the Fediverse. Onwards and...

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  A must read post by @xavier about how to prepare your website for the Fediverse server stampede: 🔗​: https://www.xvello.net/blog/caching-fedi-stampede/ #webdevs #CDN #caching #blogs

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  👩🏻‍💻 my so-called sudo life - day 497: Mastodon stampede edition 🐘​ Dear Fedi friends, You may remember how last year I was dealing with self-DDoS attacks every time I shared a link to my Wordpress or Ghost sites. Well, I solved the issue with Ghost (#VinylCache is brilliant) but I never found a solution for my Wordpress site... not even with #BunnyCDN. I guess I wasn't tweaking the right settings. This is a pity because TBH the ActivityPub for Wordpress plugin is SO COOL and works flawlessl...

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  👩🏻‍💻 my so-called sudo life - day 489: new experiments edition 🧪 A blog post that chronicles what I have been up to since December... namely: advocating for the Fediverse, creating #selfhosting guides for newbies and experimenting with e-reader jailbreaks and off-grid mesh radio communications 🔗​: https://blog.elenarossini.com/my-so-called-sudo-life/my-so-called-sudo-life-day-489-new-experiments-edition/ #MySoCalledSudoLife #KindleJailbreak #KOreader #SimpleUI #meshtastic #blog #tech #resistance

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  🏕️ my adventures in self-hosting: day 365 (milestone edition) 🎂 Good morning Fedi friends! Feeling a little emotional today as I reflect back on one year of #selfhosting. This toot from December 17 2024 shows off my excitement over signing up for my first VPS and installing #YunoHost: https://mastodon.social/@_elena/113667636910565210 If you check out the full thread you can see some of the challenges I faced in the early days. It's only been a year but it feels like a lifetime ago. When...

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  Sad to see that mastodon.social is under a DDoS attack... but as @tferrer wrote, the beauty of the fediverse is that there are thousands of independent instances chugging along. This includes my little self-hosted corner of the Fediverse running #GoToSocial 🪴 This is what TRUE decentralization looks like. And I LOVE it and I'm forever grateful for it :fediverse:​ :ActivityPub:​

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  Oh what a day! Earlier today I managed to communicate via mesh networks with my friend @stereo@freiburg.social in Germany... some 400+ km away. It only took 6 hops... the third one in the chain was the iconic Jungfraujoch radio relay station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungfraujoch_radio_relay_station). So exciting! I can't thank Ralf enough for his help with this... I would have been completely lost without his guidance. Let the fun mesh adventures begin! #mesh #MeshCommunication #...

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  Forget trad wives, the new influencer trend should be #NerdWives. "Hey honey, I turned our old computer into a server so I could set up a #fediverse instance for our child and her friends." "Hey all, today I am showing you #NextCloud as an alternative to #Dropbox and #GoogleDrive." "Get ready with me! Today I am showing you how I check in with my friends with off-grid mesh radio first thing in the morning." How awesome would this be? I mean, finally a trend wher...