MeWe is a social media platform most commonly compared to Facebook that is designed to allow users more freedom over their content and to provide more privacy protections than other platforms. It's grown in popularity of late in part among individuals who are unhappy with measures that the likes of Facebook and Twitter have taken to tackle misinformation. Like those platforms, it's available in the App Store, the Google Play Store, and online, with availability in 19 languages.
Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter allow companies to reach specific groups of people through targeted advertisements. Facebook also suffered from a scandal in which they sold users' data to Cambridge Analytica. Because of the personal data required to target advertisements and Facebook’s privacy scandal, many users are wary of social media applications’ loose privacy protections for its users.
MeWe, founded by Mark Weinstein, offers an alternative to these social media apps, with the aim of being more private and user friendly. It has no advertisements, targeted or otherwise, and it guarantees it won’t ever allow organizations to access user information. There is also no newsfeed manipulation, meaning that each post from those a user follows will appear in their timeline chronologically, unlike other social media applications. MeWe’s users legally own the content that they post and they can customize their privacy settings more than other social media apps.
MeWe's Features & Funding
In addition to privacy protections, MeWe also has many features unavailable on other social media platforms. Users can customize their profiles for any specific group they join or create, allowing more privacy. It also allows for voice integration in posts, comments, and messages. Dual camera videos (called MeWe’s) allow users to show their faces and what they’re viewing simultaneously. Users can also have themselves removed from the search directory. As MeWe is a free app without advertisements, it generates revenue using different options for additional purchases, such as custom emojis, live voice and video calling, dark mode and other overlays, more storage, and so on. Alternatively, a MeWe Premium subscription provides access to all of those features for a flat monthly rate.
MeWe offers an alternative to many other social media applications in how it is funded and its focus on privacy. For those who worry about Facebook and other company’s lack of privacy protections, this social media application is one of the most prominent other options. If it can be successfully run without advertisements, it may also pave a way for future social media applications to explore alternative funding methods.
Source: MeWe