Face Off: Should Facebook users migrate to MeWe?

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  • Each week, two of our readers debate a hot topic in a parliamentary-style debate that doesn’t necessarily reflect their personal viewpoint
  • This week, they discuss the recent social media platform which prides itself on protecting user privacy
Young Post Team |
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WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, recently announced changes to its privacy terms. Users have until May to decide whether they agree with the new arrangement, which could compromise their personal information.

The time has come to end your relationship with Facebook and move to other more secure, independent platforms such as MeWe.

WhatsApp’s new privacy policy will enable it to share users’ information with its parent company Facebook for advertising and other purposes. But in fact, even before this change, Facebook had been sharing your data with companies to provide personalised advertising. They use facial recognition and analyse our browsing history to do so.

These highly synchronised, less-than-transparent procedures may be invading your privacy, and is a little spooky as well.

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What’s more, you might find the highly commercialised nature of Facebook and its advertising annoying.

MeWe is a fast-growing, alternative social media platform that will solve your problems. Similar to Facebook, MeWe allows content sharing, texting, and video chatting, things that the loyal Facebook users love.

The new platform advertises itself as “privacy first”, stressing that users have total control over the content they publish, with all of it belonging to the user only.

Just as Facebook is free, you also don’t have to pay to use MeWe. But what’s even better is that there is no paid advertising and it doesn’t sell your information to others. So no more annoying ads when you scroll through your feed!

What is MeWe and why are people quitting Facebook to join it?

MeWe makes money from user purchases of additional features such as themes, stickers, storage, and video and voice calling. Basically, you control how much you want to give to them in exchange for assurances that your data is well protected.

The internet is a highly versatile yet dangerous tool, so your privacy should be your utmost concern. You should protect it by switching from platforms such as Facebook that compromise your data to more secure sites such as MeWe.

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I don’t think Facebook users should switch to MeWe. MeWe has often marketed itself as “anti-Facebook”, but there’s not enough behind the promotions to attract users.

The most glaring issue with MeWe is the lack of content. Apart from specific pages that have announced they’re moving to MeWe, there’s not much to do.

For example, there aren’t any official pages of global news sites, such as the BBC or The New York Times. There are only “unofficial” pages, which are slow to open and not updated frequently.

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Also, MeWe includes dubious features, including anti-vaccine personalities such as Dr Joseph Mercola and The Epoch Times, which promotes conspiracy theories.

MeWe’s lax approach to content is a double-edged sword: the free flow of information allows the free flow of misinformation.

The clunky user interface in the social media network’s mobile version only accentuates this lack of content. Without an algorithm, users must rely on the search function to manually discover pages.

However, there isn’t a way to search for specific pages in the mobile version.

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To join a specific community, you must find it in the right “topic” (which may take a few minutes of scrolling) or use the web version to search for the page – a last-gen solution for what is marketed as a next-gen social platform.

Over the years, Facebook has become a place to look for jobs and things to do, or to connect with people you hadn’t met for many years.

Even though MeWe claims that it will never attempt to collect data from users, its lack of meaningful content and frustrating interface means it’s a long way from being a useful replacement for Facebook’s vibrant pages and communities.

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