This undated photo provided by MeWe shows MeWe CEO Mark Weinstein. MeWe is a four-year, full-featured social media company, positioned as anti-Facebook. It says it does not collect data from its users and that it includes a Privacy Statement. Last year, MeWe doubled its membership to nearly $ 15 million. (MeWe via AP)
This undated photo provided by MeWe shows MeWe CEO Mark Weinstein. MeWe is a four-year, full-featured social media company, positioned as anti-Facebook. It says it does not collect data from its users and that it includes a Privacy Statement. Last year, MeWe doubled its membership to nearly $ 15 million. (MeWe via AP)
BOSTON (AP) – Some users have fled Facebook and Twitter after platforms ripped off President Donald Trump and some of his Confederates for inciting concern and spreading false claims about election fraud. Some migrated to far-right friendly places like Parler or Gab. Others joined a service that wants to stand out.
MeWe is a four-year, full-featured social media company, positioned as anti-Facebook. It says it does not collect data from its users and that it includes a Privacy Statement. Last year, MeWe doubled its membership to nearly $ 15 million. According to SensorTower, the week ending Jan. 12 was downloaded 787,000 times from Apple and Google smartphone app stores in the U.S.
While Trump’s disaffection with Facebook has certainly helped, CEO Mark Weinstein says MeWe owes his growth to “everyone who gets angry that their data is being sold down the river” by surveillance capitalists .
Weinstein spoke to The Associated Press from his Southern California home. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Where are your members? According to your “freemium” model, how many people pay for services such as additional data storage and video calling?
A: Members are 50% in North America, approximately 24% in Asia, 24% in Europe and 2% in Australia. Some are found 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 haven’t spent a penny on marketing. All our growth is organic.
Q: How is your income and capital investment? Who is behind the company?
A: We have about $ 22 million in 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 in humans. We have fewer than 100 employees and earned $ 1.2 million in revenue by 2020. Revenue grew 300 percent from November to December.
Q: Your terms of service are explicit about banning incited and hateful content and insist that it be removed immediately. But I’ve seen incendiary language in chats. The guard dog Alethea Group reported similarities and was apparently withdrawn. How can you make sure you moderate the site properly, especially in the midst of a growth momentum that you say has reached 20,000 new users per hour? How many moderators do you have?
A: Social media can be messy at times like these. And, like Facebook and Twitter, and other sites that also moderate, we do the best we can. We are expanding our moderation team as quickly as possible and are investigating our members ’reports, which help us. (Weinstein would not reveal the size of his moderation team.)
Q: You say that MeWe is not built, as are its big competitors, to serve politically charged material.
A: We are absolutely not an opinion chamber on one side or the other. We are fundamentally different by the design of Twitter or Parler or Gab. We are a social networking 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 channel by us or anyone on the platform. We have no trends. We have no enhanced content.
Q: What is your stance on potentially dangerous speech and misinformation of the kind that, for example, could negatively affect public health during a global pandemic?
A: We have absolutely no censorship for good people who follow our rules. We don’t care what you think, whether you’re on the right or the left. This is not our thing. In addition, MeWe’s structural design prohibits amplification (of misinformation). Members do moderation for us, but a very profound violation can result in immediate withdrawal and notification to external authorities. For others, a member may be placed “in prison” (temporarily suspended) and then a three-strike rule applies.
Q: You said that in a work published in 2019 that you don’t think breaking Facebook will solve the problem of competition on social media. Do you still think that?
A: Breaking Facebook would only create a lot of mini-Facebook. It does not solve the problem of surveillance capitalism.
Facebook has pressure groups around the world that 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 legitimize its business model, which is really an illegitimate form of capitalism.
Pure capitalism is, simple and straightforward, delighting your customer, building a relationship of love and trust. Respect them and they will be your customer for a lifetime. Facebook has completely broken 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 members.