The end of American social media? How the new European platform "W" plans to take down X with mandatory identity verification

Source: Yellow Original Title: The End of U.S. Social Media? How the New European Platform “W” Plans to End X with Mandatory Identity Verification

Original Link: European sponsors are preparing to launch a new social media platform called W, presenting it as a Europe-built alternative to X amid rising political, regulatory, and technological tensions between the European Union and the United States.

The platform was introduced this week on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos and is designed around mandatory identity verification, requiring users to validate both their identity and human status through official documentation and photographic checks.

Its creators claim that this approach aims to reduce bots, coordinated manipulation, and anonymous abuse, which they say now dominate major social networks.

A Europe-hosted network with verified identity

W will be hosted entirely in Europe by European companies and will be governed by EU data protection and platform responsibility standards.

According to its leadership, the platform is built from the ground up to comply with the strict European privacy framework, rather than adapting compliance after launch.

The platform’s CEO, Anna Zeiter, has described W as an acronym for “We” (“Us”), with an internal structure emphasizing “Values” and “Verified” participation.

Zeiter has said that success will be measured not by the raw number of users, but by whether European institutions, policymakers, and public figures start using W instead of U.S.-based platforms.

Reaction against X and platform centralization

The launch of W coincides with increasing criticism of X across Europe.

The platform has been fined 120 million euros under the EU Digital Services Act for transparency violations and has faced renewed scrutiny after the dissemination of explicit AI-generated images produced via its chatbot Grok.

A group of European lawmakers has publicly argued that X no longer functions as a neutral public square, instead calling for European alternatives to dominant U.S. platforms.

These concerns have increasingly intertwined regulatory debates with broader political issues about platform power and democratic discourse.

Political context and adoption risks

The launch of W also occurs in a tense transatlantic context, with tensions adding pressure to the already fragile EU-U.S. relations.

Still, W faces clear challenges.

Previous attempts to shift users from X to platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky encountered difficulties, as users were reluctant to abandon established networks.

Supporters of W argue that identity verification, institutional adoption, and European hosting could give it a more solid and lasting foundation.