It’s probably futile to resist the evil juggernaut that is Facebook, but I figured it can’t hurt to leap to this alternative, MeWe. It’s just like Facebook! Without the ads and the intrusive anti-privacy crap! Without that guy with the punchable face, Zuckerberg! Also without the teeming millions of users. It’s kind of lonely and quiet there.
But now all my friends will join! Right?
paulhutch says
MeWe is walled garden even more tightly sealed than Facebook. On MeWe absolutely no posts can be seen by non-members (on Facebook non-members can see a tiny amount). I don’t participate in walled gardens on the Internet.
drivenb4u says
Why not? It makes sense that if you want in you’ll need to sign up. Otherwise you’ll have all manner of issues stemming from bots and scammers. Walls keep pests out of the garden.
joel says
Walls also make the garden invisible to those outside.
Jazzlet says
MeWe allows pseudonomous membership. Personally I like having places where I can be private with a few friends. One of my brothers was well pissed off with Fb when it opened up the previously private group he was in for people with ulcerative colitis, as he said “It’s all very well family and friends knowing I have ulcerative colitis, they don’t need to know I shat my pants on the way home from the pub tonight, but the UC group understand”
Jazzlet says
Not having to post as yourself is really important for all sorts of people.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain says
Article: Rolling Stone – Inside MeWe (2019-05-23)
Friendly says
To add my two cents to the Sky Captain’s comment, cutting and pasting from a Facebook comment that I made last week: “MeWe was founded by free-speech absolutist Mark Weinstein as a platform on which no speech, however hateful, would ever be restricted or banned. As such, it doesn’t constitute a safe space for any member of a vulnerable or marginalized community (or anyone else, for that matter) and is not a social medium in which I will participate.”
PZ Myers says
That’s troubling. I’m going to give it a shot anyway…if Nazis show up, I’ll shut it down.
drksky says
Got beat to the punch by others above, but yeah, their philosophy is troubling. I’ll pass for now.
wzrd1 says
It’s for good reason that I refer to all such platforms for what they actually are at the end of the day.
Antisocial media.
The only reason I maintain a FB account is so that we can see our grandchildren.
brain says
From site’s FAQ seems that it’s a freemium business. I still have to see one that can actually sustain itself without the huge money income from personal data handling.
F.O. says
@paulhutch that’s not what walled gardens are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_platform
It is a matter of centralized control, not external access.
This centralized control /can/ be good for users but it is really good for the owner.
Preventing non-members from access can be good for the users, in that it protects the member’s privacy.
Akira MacKenzie says
When Google+ went down in flames, more than a few of the gaming discussion groups I was a part of migrated to MeWe. It’s a nice little community and I’d make to switch from FB if their weren’t a few groups I like to follow there.