Good morning Fedi friends!

I hope you're having a nice weekend.

I'd like to clear the air re: #WSocial and my opposition to it.

I got a lot of messages on my Mastodon account (several over private DM) trying to dissuade me from speaking up about it and urging me to work on improving the fediverse instead.

I hear you.

But I disagree.

I experienced the same thing last year, when I mentioned I had incendiary evidence about the lack of content moderation on Substack. I had many examples of posts and replies inciting racism, homophobia, fatphobia and xenophobia and spreading dangerous health misinformation. I had taken screenshots and reported them. When I checked back months later, none of my reports had been acted upon. I am talking about seriously heinous messages that are still on there. When I mentioned this on the fediverse, I got many responses urging me "not to waste my time" and "to stay positive" and to "focus instead on helping the fediverse." I did that. Meanwhile Substack is still incredibly popular and most people - even those using it - have no idea of the heinous speech that is allowed on it... and sometimes even monetized. I honestly regret not speaking up. It may not have made a difference, I know (I'm not a megalomaniac) but it makes my skin crawl to think some of the heinous comments are still on there and a young person could come across them and think they are ok. I should have spoken up.

Now, W Social where do I start? Sure, my criticism of it is from a completely different angle. All I want to do is write ONE blog post about its problematic aspects and then I will move on. What is so objectionable about it?

Years ago I wrote a blog post citing all the problems about Dove and its Real Beauty Campaign. It may not have been much, but it was over 10 years ago and the post is still getting hits today. You can see it for yourselves if you look up "The Problem with Dove" and "The Illusionists."

I'm very very lucky to have a little bit of influence on here - I'm immensely grateful for it - and even if I'm preaching to the choir as they say, maybe my advocacy can make a little bit of difference.

My hunch is: staying silent and wishing W Social away is not the way to go. They had a very rushed, botched announcement with no existing product or users. Major security flaws in their setup (I have plenty of evidence). I'd like to write something that you could reference and share... since so far no journalists did any research and simply rehashed the press release of W Social. That's irresponsible reporting – P.R. masked as journalism and it needs to be rectified. That's all I want to do: a blog post about "The Problems with W Social" that hopefully with a sprinkle of SEO magic people can easily find. What's so bad about it? 4 hours of my time and then I'll move on.

Your loyal fedi advocate,

Ele