Super shady.

The german public broadcaster gave them a 5 minute feature on yesterdays evening news, that felt more like a paid ad than journalism. The report made it sound like it is some kind of semi-official EU-endorsed project, but its just... a closed source, for-profit social network? I guess the folks behind it are just well connected in Brussels.

Thank you but no thank you.

The company is "W Social AB", meaning "aktiebolag" which in Swedish is what you in the USA would call an LLC or "joint stock company.

So they are 100% looking to monetize and turn a profit.

I wouldn't call it shady, but closed source, for-profit sounds accurate.

> what you in the USA would call an LLC

"Inc" is probably closer than "LLC". While an LLC is a type of joint stock company, it is a specific form with a pass-through tax structure and restrictions on foreign ownership. "Inc" signifies the more general form of corporation in the US.

Aktiebolag is the overwhelmingly most common company form in Sweden and similar to common corporation forms in many other countries. It's not the same thing as a US LLC, which is a strange entity that has pass-through taxation.

Which is to say, there's nothing particularly remarkable about it being an Aktiebolag. It would be more remarkable if it wasn't.

You can have an "open" non profit, that is actually closed and is working to turn into a for profit...

so those distinctions dont seem to count much nowadays

Where is this possible? In the US, it is impossible. Non-profit's do not have owners, so they cannot be sold or changed to for-profit ones, so there are only two ways for a non-profit to "turn into" a for-profit:

* sell non-profit's assets to a for-profit company (so it's not turning into a for-profit company, and ownership of the non-profit can never be sold since it's not owned by anyone that can approve the sale, there are no shares, etc.) This is only legal if sold at fair market value. So the for-profit can't just take the IP, equipment, land, etc. It has to buy it at what anyone else would buy it at. It also has to be approved of by the state's government. Then the proceeds of the sale have to be transferred to another non-profit.

* form a for-profit subsidiary, which is still controlled by the non-profit. And the for-profit is owned by the non-profit, so the profits flow upward to the non-profit to be used to support the non-profit's agenda.

Either way, the non-profit cannot become a for-profit, and it takes corporate governance shenanigans (like the bullshit happening with OpenAI) to even approximate this. Essentially, it requires corruption and a non-profit board that is unaccountable to its stakeholders.

Indeed a very odd sight between WC matches. I don't normally watch much TV, but I think this warrants further investigation and inquiry.

No mention of long-term stake of EU in ActivityPub platforms either, as if W would be our savior.

And probably stuffed with tax money. As usual.