This undated photo provided by MeWe shows MeWe CEO Mark Weinstein. MeWe is a full-featured, 4-year-old social media company positioned as an anti-Facebook. He claims that he does not collect data about his users and submits a Privacy Rights Statement. Last year, MeWe more than doubled its membership to almost 15 million. (MeWe via AP)
This undated photo provided by MeWe shows MeWe CEO Mark Weinstein. MeWe is a full-featured, 4-year-old social media company positioned as an anti-Facebook. He claims that he does not collect data about his users and submits a Privacy Rights Statement. Last year, MeWe more than doubled its membership to almost 15 million. (MeWe via AP)
BOSTON (AP) – Some users fled Facebook and Twitter after the platforms expelled President Donald Trump and some of his Confederates for inciting unrest and spreading false allegations about electoral fraud. Some have migrated to friendly far-right sites, such as Parler or Gab. Others have joined a service that aims to stand out.
MeWe is a 4-year-old social media company positioned as anti-Facebook. He claims that he does not collect data about his users and submits a Privacy Rights Statement. Last year, MeWe more than doubled its membership to almost 15 million. In the week ending January 12, it was downloaded 787,000 times from Apple and Google’s smartphone app stores in the United States, according to SensorTower.
While the dissatisfaction of Trump supporters with Facebook has certainly helped, CEO Mark Weinstein says MeWe owes its growth to “everyone who is enraged by their data being sold downstream” by surveillance capitalists.
Weinstein spoke to the Associated Press from his home in Southern California. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Where are your members? In your “freemium” model, how many people pay for services like additional data storage and video calling?
A: Members are 50% in North America, about 24% in Asia, 24% in Europe and 2% in Australia. Some are in South America, Brazil and Argentina. We are translated into 20 languages. Currently, 3% to 4% of our members sign up for the premium. We don’t spend a dime on marketing. All of our growth is organic.
Q: How are your capital and revenue investments? Who is behind the company?
A: We have approximately $ 22 million of high net worth investors and our advisory board includes Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, and Sherry Turkle, perhaps the most esteemed academic expert on the impact of technology on humans. We have less than 100 employees and earned US $ 1.2 million in 2020. Revenue grew 300% from November to December.
Q: Your terms of service are explicit about banning hate speech content and insist that it will be removed immediately. But I saw some incendiary language in chats. The surveillance group Alethea reported something similar, and was apparently taken down. Since you can be sure that you are moderating the site properly, especially in the midst of a growth spurt that you say reached 20,000 new users per hour? How many moderators do you have?
A: Social media can get complicated at times like this. And, like Facebook, Twitter and other sites that moderate, we are doing the best we can. We are expanding our moderation team as soon as possible and investigating reports from our members, who are helping. (Weinstein did not reveal the size of his moderation team.)
Q: You say that MeWe was not built, like its big competitors, to supply politically charged material.
A: We are not an opinion chamber at all on one side or the other. We are fundamentally different by design from Twitter, Parler or Gab. We are a social media platform like Facebook, where family and friends connect. Your news feed is purely and exclusively everything you choose to connect to. There is nothing injected into your news feed by us or anyone else on the platform. We have no trending topics. We don’t have optimized content.
Q: What is your position on potentially dangerous speech and disinformation of the kind that could, say, have an adverse impact on public health during a global pandemic?
A: We have absolutely no censorship for good people who follow our rules. It doesn’t matter what you think, whether you’re on the right or the left. This is none of our business. In addition, the structural design of MeWe prohibits amplification (disinformation). Members are moderating for us, but a very deep breach can lead to immediate removal and be reported to outside authorities. For others, a member can be placed “in prison” – temporarily suspended – and then a three-stroke rule applies.
Q: You said in a 2019 opinion piece that you don’t believe that separating Facebook will solve the problem of competition on social media. Is that still your thought?
A: Breaking Facebook would only create many mini-Facebooks. It does not solve the problem of surveillance capitalism.
Facebook has lobbyists around the world who influence legislation and government officials. And it doesn’t comply with the regulations, anyway. Regulating Facebook more carefully will only serve to institutionalize surveillance capitalism, hinder competition and kind of legitimize its business model, which is actually an illegitimate form of capitalism.
Pure capitalism is, quite simply, to delight your client, to build a relationship of love and trust. Respect them and they will be your customers for life. Facebook completely broke that link. Facebook is a marketing company. Facebook is a data company. They are not a real social network. Its customers are advertisers, marketers and political agents. MeWe customers are its members.