MeWe – social networking without surveillance capitalism
I deleted my personal Facebook a few years back and stopped using Instagram, because those products exist to mine our personal information and sell it to their advertisers. It was also wasting too much of my time and having a negative effect on my mental health constantly seeing peoples’ highlight reels and petty arguments.
See some more reasons to ditch mainstream social media – the Social Dilemma documentary
I miss social networking with my actual friends however, especially over lockdown. Sometimes things happen that I want to show visually and to everyone at once, and I also miss catching up with people’s feeds to see what they’ve been up to.
Alternatives
There are various alternatives to Facebook – the two front runners for me are Minds and MeWe and I prefer MeWe as it seems to have more features. It’s more privacy oriented and has a business plan that don’t involve selling our data. MeWe has an easy to install app and many of the same features as FB like messaging, groups etc. There are the usual right wing fruitloops on there but they are easily avoided.
How We Can Switch
The only snag is, hardly anyone I know is on the alternatives. All we have to do to make a change is stop using FB products (or just use them less) and move to other options – but this needs a ‘critical mass’ of users in our circles to make it work.
If each of us sign up and invite three people, explaining why we want to move away from FB, then we can gradually build a new network on a more privacy respecting platform.