Brussels trades open-protocol independence for W Social

The migration involves moving the Commission’s Personal Data Server (PDS) from the Bluesky infrastructure directly onto W’s servers. Under the AT Protocol, a PDS acts as the digital foundation for an account, housing all posts, followers, and cryptographic identity keys. By shifting this data to a for-profit firm, Brussels has abandoned the decentralized potential of the protocol—which allows for self-hosting—in favor of a model that mirrors the very platform dependency it claims to oppose.

This move stands in stark contrast to the Commission’s existing Mastodon presence, which it successfully self-hosts. Given that the technical barrier to hosting one's own PDS is minimal, the choice to rely on Swedish entrepreneurs at W Social appears less like a strategic shift toward sovereignty and more like a return to the traditional 'walled garden' approach. By outsourcing the management of its institutional voice, the European Union has undermined the fundamental principle of open protocols: that users and organizations should retain control over their own digital infrastructure.