European X/Twitter Alternative W Announced at Davos

Europe is set to launch a new X alternative called "W."

Unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the CEO says that "W" stand for "We" and the two Vs combined represent "Values" and "Verified. In that vein, the platform promises to verify all user with photo ID to prevent bots and all data will be hosted in Europe in a decentralized way.

W will be a legal subsidiary of "We Don't Have Time," which Cybernews describes as "a media platform for climate action." They claim their focus will be on fighting disinformation.

The platform was announced on January 20th but is not yet publicly available.

Needless to say, Privacy Guides is not a fan of solutions that require identity verification. We're also confused why people keep refusing to use existing X alternatives such as Mastodon - which is already based in Europe and decentralized. W (or We Don't Have Time or whoever) could easily host their own instance require ID verification rather than reinventing the wheel from the ground up.

Cybernews also notes that W is likely to face a lot of uphill resistance, given that both Bluesky and Mastodon have failed to retain users long-term even after experiencing sudden booms (several times) after Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter.