Moving to MeWe?


Several philosophers over the past week have announced intentions to migrate some of their social media activity from Facebook to MeWe, owing to dissatisfaction with aspects of Facebook, such as privacy and advertising.

In terms of format and functionality, MeWe is fairly similar to Facebook, but it is ad-free and “keeps your information free from tracking, spying, and scraping.”

I’m not sure whether enough people, for enough time, will give MeWe a go, but if you are interested in trying it you can now follow Daily Nous on it.

I just set up the page—check it out—and at this very moment it has three followers.

Oh wait—now there are four. Just around 17,000 more to go until DN’s MeWe page catches up with its Facebook page. See you there!

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

16 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Amelie
Amelie
4 years ago

Yes, please keep me on the Daily Nous/Me/WE site. But can you make the post-image smaller? At present it bursts the frame of my computer…

Ed
Ed
4 years ago

Start using PhilPeople with the rest of us.

Justin
Justin
4 years ago

I don’t know anything about MeWe beyond what is written above and a quick look at their website, but I’m curious as to how this is viable: the website says “get started — free forever,” and as is noted above they say it is ad-free and “keeps your information free from tracking, spying, and scraping.” I suppose that might allow that might allow they are still selling your data in some form, but they highlight #Not4Sale and say “MeWe has an honorable business model where members are customers to serve and respect, not data to be shared or sold.”

So, then, how do they make money? Looks like this is an entrepreneurial company, so what is the business model (besides being honorable)? Seems like either the users need to pay, that advertisers need to pay, or companies need to pay for the data if it is to be a business rather than a charity. Am I missing something? Or are they being misleading about something? Maybe it is like a free to play game with microtransactions or where once you get started you’ll want to pay for a membership upgrade for additional features? Anybody know?

GradStudent
GradStudent
Reply to  Justin
4 years ago

https://mewe.com/faq

Looks like you’ve got the idea – a lot of upgrades and premium features. They are also rolling out a version specifically designed for businesses which will cost a fee. I suppose if MeWe becomes ubiquitous, and businesses see the convenience in having a service everyone is using already to organize their activities, they’ll be more OK with paying however much for it (which would support the platform as a whole.)

Bob Kirkman
Bob Kirkman
4 years ago

I moved from Facebook to “none of the above” about five years ago, abandoning social media altogether. Many of the reasons I did so are not tied to the specifics of Facebook or any other particular corporate actor. It’s only a matter of time before any given new platform becomes as distracting, alienating, polarizing and generally enervating as Facebook and Twitter and the rest have been. A slight reduction in creepiness would do nothing to alleviate that.

David Christensen
David Christensen
4 years ago

Hmm. I’m a bit hesitant. Aside from their “#Not4Sale” video (which I found about as off-putting as anything I’ve seen in quite a while), there’s this article, the gist of which seems to be that MeWe is serving in part as a libertarian-run sanctuary for stuff too rancid to be allowed on Facebook: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/mewe-anti-vaxxers-conspiracy-theorists-822746/. There’s undoubtedly more to be said about this, so I’m interested in what others think.

Sophie Horowitz
Sophie Horowitz
Reply to  David Christensen
4 years ago

Hi Dad! I didn’t watch the video, but I did read the creepy article. I am not sure (genuine “not sure” — not counterargument-flagging “not sure”) how to translate the point the article makes into an argument not to join. I get the idea that certain very bad people are attracted by the lack of speech restriction, but it doesn’t seem to me that creating an account is supporting those bad people in any particularly direct way. Also, my impression (someone can correct me) is that these people are not going to interact with me on MeWe unless I seek them out, so it’s not as if joining is like going to some physical space where all the Holocaust deniers are hanging out and recruiting.

My reasons for joining were mostly that I think internet privacy should become more of a thing than it is, and that maybe a network like this gaining some momentum would contribute to that.

Maybe the best argument to *not* join, which maybe is what that article is hinting at, is a parallel argument about permissive speech policies: joining will contribute to the erosion of speech limitations, which are a good thing. I’m not really sure about that. If it’s just a bunch of individuals talking about stuff, and some of them are saying bad things, I don’t find it particularly obvious that speech should be censored in any particular way in any particular forum. That seems like a very complicated issue. And it’s not as if FB has really figured out how to do speech restrictions well, anyway, as evidenced by all of the publicity about “fake news” not only being allowed, but being amplified and targeted towards particular groups. So this argument seems kind of murky to me.

David Christensen
David Christensen
Reply to  Sophie Horowitz
4 years ago

Yeah, I agree that it’s not clear. The worry I had was about indirect support: supporting a platform which white supremacists, holocaust-deniers, etc., were finding so useful. Facebook’s content-restrictions aren’t great, but the fact that these creeps find WeMe so much more hospitable seems like evidence that the FB restrictions are doing some good.

Chris Menzel
Chris Menzel
4 years ago

MeWe-curious philosophers might consider joining The Philosophy Forum. Over 100 have joined in the last few days, including many who’ve been active on Facebook..

joel
joel
Reply to  Chris Menzel
4 years ago

How does one join that Forum on MeWe?

L. A. Paul
4 years ago

Don’t care about Facebook and MeWe. But I really love the dad-daughter exchange on this post.

Sophie Horowitz
Sophie Horowitz
Reply to  L. A. Paul
4 years ago

I hesitated to say “hi Dad” because I thought maybe people wouldn’t know he was actually my dad, and would interpret it as a new version of “Ok Boomer”. But I decided the benefits outweighed the costs. hahah

Lrieppel
Lrieppel
Reply to  Sophie Horowitz
4 years ago

I totally assumed it read a joke about Okay Boomer

Odin Kroeger
Odin Kroeger
4 years ago

What about https://philpeople.org? I’ve been using it for a while and it works really well.

John McNamara
John McNamara
4 years ago

I have been using mewe for 12 months. It is so much better than FB. MeWe has a “sister” site (MeWePro) that is specifically for businesses and organizations, and that site requires a membership fee for the organizations to use it, although nonprofit and educational institutes can use it for free. Charging organizations and businesses to use this Pro version of MeWe is the primary way in which MeWe is able to fund the platform they provide free for individuals.

MeWe also provides additional features and services for a small monthly fee to those who are interested in paying for them. These additional features are completely optional and include things like additional storage space, extra emojis, encrypted (extra private) chats, etc.

John McNamara
John McNamara
4 years ago

Btw. I just followed your mewe page. 176 members now.