The EU’s upcoming social media platform W represents everything wrong with centralized, state-adjacent technology projects. It’s a cautionary tale of regulatory hubris meeting market reality, wrapped in the sanctimonious language of “fighting disinformation”, W is being framed as Europe’s principled alternative to X. In reality, it is a state-aligned communications platform born out of geopolitical anxiety, not user demand. Announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20th, a venue that itself symbolizes elite technocratic governance divorced from market realities, W is less a social network than a digital instrument of institutional reassurance, in other words it’s a way for European power centers to feel back in control of the narrative terrain. Let us explore why this platform is architecturally, philosophically, and economically doomed before it even launches.
A Platform Built to Serve Power, Not Users
W’s founding mission is its original sin. CEO Anna Zeiter frames the platform as a solution to “systemic disinformation eroding public trust” but let’s decode what this actually means. The platform’s core mechanism is mandatory identity verification and photo validation to ensure users “are both humans and who they claim to be.” This isn’t user-centric design, far from it. This is panopticon design.
Every successful social platform begins with a user-centric “why.” Twitter gave us real-time information flow, Instagram gave us visual storytelling, TikTok gave us algorithmic content discovery. What problem does W solve for users? It doesn’t. It solves a problem for governments, the “problem” that people can speak anonymously online. W begins with the premise that users are the problem.
The requirement that users submit ID and photo verification before speaking reveals the platform’s true orientation, which is that W is not built on the assumption that users are sovereign individuals. It is built on the assumption that users are potential risks whose speech must be pre-legitimized. As Julian Assange argued in Cypherpunks, systems that require identity to speak inevitably centralize power over speech. They do not eliminate abuse; they merely ensure that abuse becomes selectively enforceable.
W does not begin by asking, “How do we help people speak, connect, and create?” It begins by asking, “How do we make speech legible, attributable, and governable?” That is the philosophy of the state, not the market, not the user, and certainly not the internet. Dissidents in authoritarian regimes, whistleblowers, activists, and everyday people discussing sensitive topics all rely on the ability to speak without state surveillance. W explicitly rejects this from day one.
Even the platform’s very name betrays its mission: “We, Values, Verify”, notice how “Values” conveniently positions the platform as arbiter of acceptable discourse. Whose values? The state’s values. The values of the European political establishment.
Zeiter also echoed this sentiment even further when she commented that “If political Brussels starts posting on W instead of X, we’ll have already achieved a great deal.” Coming from the ceo, this is a stunning admission that they define success not as:
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User growth
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Engagement
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Cultural relevance
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Creator adoption
…but as elite institutional migration. That alone tells you who W is really for.
From a product standpoint, this is backwards. Platforms become relevant bottom-up, then institutions follow. Twitter did not become influential because governments adopted it; governments adopted it because it was where people already were.
W flips this dynamic entirely. It assumes that if EU institutions move first, users will follow. They seem to forget that users do not chase institutions. Institutions chase users. Designing a platform around the posting habits of Brussels bureaucrats is a near-guarantee of cultural irrelevance and dismal failure
Ignoring Network Effects: Bringing a Knife to a Tank Fight
W’s architects seem incapable of processing and understanding that switching costs on social networks are existentially high. People do not switch social platforms the way they switch note-taking apps. They switch networks, not interfaces. Users need to find their existing communities immediately, or they leave. W will launch to an empty room, ask people to show their government ID and photograph at the door, and then wonder why nobody’s dancing.
W is attempting to compete on the hardest possible terrain of raw user acquisition against entrenched network effects, but they’re not offering any technological superiority or novel features. Their differentiator is... mandatory ID and photo verification? That’s not a feature; but rather a tax on participation. It’s a barrier to entry, not a value proposition.
X still has approximately 102 million users in the EU, one in four Europeans is already there, not to mention the fact that Bluesky and Mastodon proved that ideological motivation alone is not enough for users to switch. Yet W offers no overwhelming product advantage to justify those switching costs. No radically better discovery, no superior creator monetization. no protocol-level interoperability, no feature that makes users say: “I can’t live without this.”
Instead, it competes on compliance and moral signaling, the weakest possible axis in a market governed by network effects. W is trying to compete head-on with X on X’s terrain, while stripping away the very freedoms that made social media compelling in the first place
Even if “political Brussels starts posting on W instead of X” (as Zeiter hopes represents achievement), the numbers tell the story; Ursula von der Leyen has 1.6 million followers on X versus 120,600 on Bluesky. The audience isn’t there, the engagement isn’t there and the network isn’t there.
Europeans stay on X not because they love Musk, but because that’s where the conversation is, including conversations with Americans, journalists, dissidents, and critics. Ironically, by withdrawing into a Europe-only platform, W weakens Europe’s voice globally. A European journalist on X can challenge narratives at the source. A European journalist posting into W’s walled garden is preaching to the choir.
The powers that be in Brussels who are used to regulating everything and calling it innovation seem to forget that, you cannot decree network effects into existence through regulatory fiat. This is central planning applied to social networks, and it will fail for the same reasons central planning always fails: it ignores revealed preferences and market dynamics.
The fact that 54 Members of the European Parliament felt compelled to write an open letter calling for “European alternatives to dominant social media platforms” is itself an admission of market failure. If there were genuine demand for such alternatives, the market would have produced them. Instead, we have politicians demanding alternatives because they’ve lost control of the narrative on existing platforms.
Verification as Architecture = Censorship as Default
Let’s call this what it is, W is a EU propaganda platform disguised as a social network. The framing around “fighting disinformation” and “misinformation” is perhaps the most asinine aspect of W’s design philosophy. W’s intended purpose is not about protecting users from bots or fake accounts. It’s about creating a platform where “the right kind” of political speech is amplified and “the wrong kind” is suppressed.
Who determines what constitutes disinformation? The platform that requires you to verify your identity with a government ID and photo, that’s who. This creates a perfect storm for political censorship. Edward Snowden warned in his book, Permanent Record, that surveillance doesn’t need to be total to be effective, it only needs to be possible. W bakes this chilling effect directly into the foundation of the platform.
The result will not be healthier discourse. It will be flatter, safer, more sterile speech, optimized for bureaucratic acceptability, not truth-seeking. We’ve seen how “disinformation” becomes a catch-all for suppressing inconvenient truths from vaccine efficacy discussions, economic policy critiques, to questioning climate policy orthodoxy.
Let’s never forget that most of what was classified as misinformation or disinformation during the covid era was actually the truth or at the very least sensible. Regardless of how sensible or truthful these assertions were, they still got censored because they were contrary to the narrative that the politicos were interested in pushing. You don’t have to be a genius to see how this story unfolds on W in the unfortunate event of another plandemic coming our way.
Further to this, the EU’s hostile regulatory environment amplifies this problem. The Digital Services Act gives governments broad latitude to pressure platforms about “illegal content” and “disinformation.” A platform that’s explicitly positioned as the EU’s answer to X, backed by former ministers and announced at a gathering of global elites, will be under constant pressure to demonstrate its “anti-disinformation” bona fides through aggressive content moderation.
Centralization: The Architectural Failure
W claims it will have “data hosted decentrally in Europe by European companies” and adhere to “strict EU data protection laws.” But let’s examine what this actually means versus what genuine decentralization looks like.
Geographic distribution is not architectural decentralization. Having servers scattered across Europe but all controlled by one entity (W, legally a subsidiary of “We Don’t Have Time” climate media platform) is still centralized control. The data may be physically distributed, but the power isn’t. Data localization is not decentralization, but it’s actually jurisdictional consolidation.
Bitcoin succeeded because no single entity controls it. Nostr (the decentralized social protocol) is gaining traction precisely because it’s censorship-resistant and interoperable. Even Bluesky, for all its flaws, at least has the AT Protocol attempting federation.
W, by contrast, appears to be following the failed Facebook model: centralized control, closed algorithms, platform lock-in. Except unlike Facebook, W doesn’t have two decades of network effects. It’s starting from zero with an inferior architectural model.
W isn’t even an independent venture but it’s a subsidiary of a climate activism media platform. This suggests ideological capture from day one. The platform’s governance will be influenced by climate activists and European political figures, not by users or market forces. What happens when climate skepticism becomes “disinformation”? What happens when questioning EU energy policy becomes “systemic disinformation eroding public trust”?
This top-down design prioritizes the state’s interests (identity verification, content control, regulatory compliance) over user interests (privacy, freedom, innovation). The offices in Berlin and Paris, the backing of Swedish former ministers, the advisory board of political and business figures; this is the establishment creating infrastructure to maintain control.
In competitive markets, centralized platforms lose to decentralized ones over time because they can’t innovate as fast and they impose higher costs on users. When your platform is a subsidiary of an activist organization, overseen by former ministers, and designed to appease EU regulators, innovation dies. You’re optimizing for political acceptability, not user value.
Ironically the EU positions itself as a defender of digital rights with GDPR, yet W would create a massive database linking real identities and photos to online speech, a privacy nightmare. GDPR compliance is meaningless when the fundamental architecture requires comprehensive identity surveillance. Privacy means the ability to speak without being identified. W’s entire premise eliminates privacy by design. European hosting doesn’t fix this, it just means European governments have easier access to the surveillance data.
The Path Forward That Won’t Be Taken
If the EU actually wanted a successful alternative to X, they would:
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Build on open protocols (like Nostr) rather than centralized platforms controlled by climate activists and former ministers
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Prioritize user privacy through encryption and pseudonymity, not government surveillance and photo verification
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Enable interoperability so users can take their networks with them
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Let markets decide rather than trying to decree a winner from Davos
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Focus on innovation in features, UX, and performance rather than regulatory compliance and political correctness
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Embrace genuine decentralization where no single entity controls the platform
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Start from user problems rather than elite grievances
But W represents none of this. It’s a government-adjacent platform that requires ID and photo verification, promises aggressive content moderation, is backed by political figures and climate activists, and hopes regulatory support can substitute for product-market fit.
The Conclusion Of The Matter
W is dead on arrival and will launch to fanfare from Brussels bureaucrats, minimal user adoption, and quiet abandonment in two years tops. The 10,000 users on Monnet will look like success by comparison. W will be a case study in how NOT to launch a platform: start with political backing rather than user need, prioritize regulatory compliance over innovation, require surveillance over privacy, optimize for Brussels over users, announce at Davos.
The fundamental error is philosophical, which is believing that the proper response to Elon Musk’s X is a government-blessed alternative that trades user freedom for regulatory approval. This is the wrong problem to solve, the wrong solution to implement, and the wrong way to build technology. The MEPs can write all the open letters they want. Former ministers can fill advisory boards. Climate activists can provide organizational structure. None of it matters if users don’t show up, and they won’t.
At the end of the day, users don’t want to be managed by European political elites. They don’t want to upload government IDs and photos to post their thoughts. They don’t want platforms that define “Values” for them. They don’t want social networks announced at the World Economic Forum.
They want tools that empower them and W is a tool to control them.