A new social media app is looking to take on Facebook and is doing so quite aggressively. Its creator says that the app is for people fed up with Facebook's censorship guidelines and privacy violations.
It's called MeWe, and its founder and CEO Mark Weinstein says it is the "Anti-Facebook" and offers the industry's first Privacy Bill of Rights to protect its members' privacy and give them control of their data.
According to MeWe's Privacy Bill of Rights, users own their content and personal information, and that it is now owned by the platform. Users also get to control their newsfeed and the order of how posts appear. The company cannot change the order, filter, or manipulate it in any way.
There are no ads or third-party content on MeWe, unlike Facebook or Twitter. The social media network also gives its members rights to their privacy and permissions and give them control as to who can access their content.
Another thing that makes MeWe different from Facebook is that it doesn't use facial recognition technology. Its Bill of Rights also mentions that the company does not sell its members' personal information to third-party firms. And if a user wants to opt-out of MeWe's member directory for privacy purposes, they have the right to do so. Lastly, members are allowed to remove their accounts at any time and leave no trace of their content.
Earlier in 2020, Weinstein gave a TEDx Talk and discussed what he called the "surveillance capitalism" business model of mainstream social media networks. The CEO said that MeWe's goal is to stay clear off of it and abide by no political or commercial bias. At MeWe, user feeds are neither monitored nor manipulated; no ads, marketers, advertisers, and especially no politicians.
According to the platform's in-house analysis, MeWe has 8 million members now and looks to have 40 million by the end of 2020. Weinstein says that the platform's incredible growth is all due to people migrating from Facebook, which he says are all over the political spectrum.
"MeWe's meteoric growth is due to backlash against Facebook and the other current mainstream social giants for their countless privacy violations, their selling [and] sharing of user data, and their biased and bizarre censorship of all kinds of groups including progressives, conservatives, LGBTQ users, African Americans, vegans and countless others," Weinstein said.
The fact that MeWe does not censor its users makes Weinstein proud. Should members find posts deemed objectionable, they are advised to report and flag the content for it to be reviewed by the company's moderation team.
