14 ms·

Mewe.com

36 points by dgs_sgd 5y ago

Tepix 5y ago
So there's a US company behind it? That's not very appealing for EU citizens who care about their data. It's not a non-profit either.
- draygonia 5y ago
  They have to be a non-profit too? Isn't that an unreasonably high bar?
  - Tepix 5y ago
    As long as want to make more and more money they have a strong incentive to work against their users eventually.
rgbrgb 5y ago
This looks like it was made by nsa/fsb. The stock-photo, hashtag heavy design really smells like a honeypot.
- literallyaduck 5y ago
  It has happened before: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/fbi-s-encrypted-phone-platform-infiltrated-hundreds-criminal-syndicates-result-massive https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/fbi-s-encrypted-phone-p...
  - rgbrgb 5y ago
    I've heard that some of the "free speech" "social networks" are similar ops.
    - rnd0 5y ago
      In a cointelpro op the aim is to dissolve and break up movements. Parler etc seem to have had the aim of amplifying and providing cover (a way to coordinate in secret) to the violent jan 6th extremists. I think that's a difference worth considering.
- jszymborski 5y ago
  Not much reason for the NSA or FSB to create new social networks, I'm sure FB and vkontakte suite their needs just fine.
  - rgbrgb 5y ago
    True and fb will have a wider social graph context. Though it seems useful (for threat monitoring) to also have trimmed self-selections with only people who want to communicate privately and "speak freely".
  - riffic 5y ago
    On the other hand, did you know the CIA has a venture capital arm? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
    - rnd0 5y ago
      TIL
smitty1e 5y ago
I like MeWe. Not as chummy as Twitter, yet the interface is far more coherent than that of Facebook.
NationalPark 5y ago
Pros: Not facebook Cons: No users, dark mode costs $2 a month
- warent 5y ago
  Cons: its name is "MeWe"
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Me Wii on MeWe? We See.
    - dmje 5y ago
      If not Me Wii on MeWe, we see SheWee, maybe
dvh 5y ago
Why no website? I'm not gonna install app just to use social network.
- bovermyer 5y ago
  I've never used MeWe's mobile apps, I've always used the desktop site.
- rnd0 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean. I read mewe from my browser on the desktop all the time.
  - dvh 5y ago
    When I visit the page there are only 2 buttons. Install Apple app or install Android app. No login, no register, nothing.
jdorfman 5y ago
Free Forever, No Ads. Not sure how this will work but I'm curious to see if they can pull it off.
- dgs_sgd 5y ago
  Their business plan is to fund the free tier with optional premium features like extra storage, live voice and video calling, etc.
bovermyer 5y ago
Anecdote - when Google Plus imploded, a lot of communities in the tabletop gaming sphere moved from G+ to MeWe.
- Pamar 5y ago
  Absolutely correct, and I am one of them. AMA. A couple things I can tell you in case you wanted to ask: - How different is from FB? I have no idea, because I never had a FB account. But see below. - I heard that Mewe is/was a place "dominated" by Alt-Right or Right-wingers. Not in my experience: I stick to groups that cater for my hobbies (calligraphy, drawing, Martial Arts, tabletop gaming) and the political debate is basically zero. Maybe there are specific groups for that. - Spammers/Scammers? Each group with more than a couple hundred members tends to collect some bots. They are easy to deal with and not a big nuisance. - I miss Google+, is this good replacement? Yes and no. The #1 feature I miss (and I suggested this as paid extra, to no avail) is that even if you mark one of your posts as "Public" it just means that it will be visible by any other MeWe member that might happen to do a search or just visit your profile. But you cannot share the link to the post outside of MeWe. (For me this is a big problem, because I often bookmarked my own posts on Google+ to refer back to them when I wanted to show something to other people). Of course my success in convincing friends and contacts to follow me on MeWe is measured in Imaginary Numbers. FB still dominates, and even if I had managed to convince lots of people to follow me on Google+, it never really become a hit for them. - What about Censorship (NSFW, at least)? This is something I never really investigated in detail. I suppose you will not have too many problems as long as you mark your posts (or groups) as "adult only". I did not notice a lot of Adult activity around (but then again, I tend to stick to a dozen groups, and never really explore the rest of MeWe). Anything else you want to ask, just write here.
dreyfan 5y ago
They literally tried this [1] in 2013 after the Snowden revelations. Now they apparently bought a four-letter domain and are trying again? [1] https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/07/11/sgrouples-offers-social-network.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/07/11/sgrouple...
- dhimes 5y ago
  mewe has been around for a while.
matmann2001 5y ago
Well, this seems to be just about everything most people wanted Facebook to be. Yet all I see here is (mostly-warranted) doubt and criticism. Makes me wonder if an ideal service ever does come along, would we even be able to give it enough of a chance for it to stick? Or have we just been burned so badly, we'll never trust again?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
olah_1 5y ago
You attract more flies with honey. I don’t see a positive message anywhere. I see that they’re against certain things, but what do they positively offer? Is the experience truly better or is it just “not THAT”.
- rnd0 5y ago
  In my experience there's two reasons to use mewe: 1)You're part of a community that imploded when G+ closed which has moved to Mewe 2)You're obsessively anti-FB and dont' care that you're posting to an empty room. I've been on it since 2018 (reason #1) and don't really see any other positives.
  - olah_1 5y ago
    I support alternatives, but I would not recommend something to my friends that I know for a fact is a subpar experience. For that reason, I dont really recommend any alternatives right now, sadly.
    - rnd0 5y ago
      My friends and I are beginning to view social media in general as something that's cancerous (in the slang sense, and in terms of its' social impact) and we try to limit ourselves on it as much as possible. We struggle with getting off reddit (since it deprives smaller forums of oxygen and there are less viable alternatives than there were 10 years ago) but mostly have walked away from it. In short -I don't recommend any either.
      - olah_1 5y ago
        Moxie from Signal was completely correct that your contact list is your social network. Building off of sms numbers was smart. Apple Messages might be the best social media for me at the moment.
        germinalphrase 5y ago
orthecreedence 5y ago
Is it...at least decentralized? Doesn't seem to be. The main issues here are not whether some centralized entity does good things or whether some centralized entity does bad things but rather that there is a centralized entity. This entity could shift from doing good things to doing bad things whenever they feel like it, and are free to take the entire network with them. I'm not going to join some new service on the basis of "trust us, we swear lol." Show me a protocol, not a service. Maybe non-predatory social media and profit-driven production just aren't compatible.
- morganvachon 5y ago
  Sounds like Mastodon is for you. https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/
  - riffic 5y ago
    > Show me a protocol Based on the W3C recommendation, ActivityPub. https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ There are other interoperable implementations noted here: https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-activitypub-apps https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-fo...
- kemiller 5y ago
  There was a point in the development of the internet when we switched, without a lot of discussion at the time or since, from a world of collaboratively-developed, open and decentralized protocols, to a world of private silos. It's like the internet developed to the point of creating HTTP and then that one broke things from there on out — can you think of a single major communications protocol that was created after HTTP and is still in use? Seems like it's pretty hard for open distributed protocols to compete with the convenience of vertical, for-profit sites. If we can ever sort out the problems with cryptocurrencies+smart contracts, one of them might someday provide a path to creating the right set of incentives allow splitting protocol creation, hosting, and maintenance once again. No idea if that will come to pass though.
  - 5y ago
eigengrau5150 5y ago
I haven't been on a social network since Google- jumped the shark in 2015, and I don't miss it. I'm certainly not going to be associated with a platform whose name rhymes with a childhood euphemism for piss (weewee).
alcover 5y ago
I have JS disabled by default. The page appears blank, I bounce off. Please have at least some text on your site, an about link or whatever. Something.
Qi_ 5y ago
It seems like all new social networks have a vicious fact to overcome: nobody's on it, so nobody uses it, so nobody's on it. How do social networks reach that "critical mass" of users?
- riffic 5y ago
  one way would be to be interoperable with an existing ecosystem from the start. Michelle Lim makes a great case for this here: https://www.michellelim.org/writing/into-the-fediverse/ https://www.michellelim.org/writing/into-the-fediverse/
  - Qi_ 5y ago
    Thank you for sharing the link. I like the idea of standardization among smaller social media platforms. Basically, the success of a platform built on ActivityPub becomes more tied to the success of ALL platforms built on ActivityPub.
- sm4rk0 5y ago
  Here's the TikTok story: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2020/01/31/tiktok-why-the-enormous-success/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2020/01/31/tiktok-why...
- disambiguation 5y ago
  reddit founders in the early days would use fake accounts to make it seem more active
sm4rk0 5y ago
"The best texting and chat app with privacy you trust." But why would anyone trust a closed source platform running on someone else's infra?
slackstation 5y ago
The site looks like it was based off a template and a cheap one at that. It doesn't strike me as trust-worthy nor are the people deeply invested in making something that will last and be worth investing my time and social network into.
- disambiguation 5y ago
  facebook or mewe?

36 points by dgs_sgd 5y ago

So there's a US company behind it? That's not very appealing for EU citizens who care about their data. It's not a non-profit either.

draygonia 5y ago
They have to be a non-profit too? Isn't that an unreasonably high bar?
- Tepix 5y ago
  As long as want to make more and more money they have a strong incentive to work against their users eventually.

rgbrgb 5y ago

This looks like it was made by nsa/fsb. The stock-photo, hashtag heavy design really smells like a honeypot.

literallyaduck 5y ago
It has happened before: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/fbi-s-encrypted-phone-platform-infiltrated-hundreds-criminal-syndicates-result-massive https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/fbi-s-encrypted-phone-p...
- rgbrgb 5y ago
  I've heard that some of the "free speech" "social networks" are similar ops.
  - rnd0 5y ago
    In a cointelpro op the aim is to dissolve and break up movements. Parler etc seem to have had the aim of amplifying and providing cover (a way to coordinate in secret) to the violent jan 6th extremists. I think that's a difference worth considering.
jszymborski 5y ago
Not much reason for the NSA or FSB to create new social networks, I'm sure FB and vkontakte suite their needs just fine.
- rgbrgb 5y ago
  True and fb will have a wider social graph context. Though it seems useful (for threat monitoring) to also have trimmed self-selections with only people who want to communicate privately and "speak freely".
- riffic 5y ago
  On the other hand, did you know the CIA has a venture capital arm? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
  - rnd0 5y ago
    TIL

smitty1e 5y ago

I like MeWe. Not as chummy as Twitter, yet the interface is far more coherent than that of Facebook.

NationalPark 5y ago

Pros: Not facebook Cons: No users, dark mode costs $2 a month

warent 5y ago
Cons: its name is "MeWe"
- bombcar 5y ago
  Me Wii on MeWe? We See.
  - dmje 5y ago
    If not Me Wii on MeWe, we see SheWee, maybe

dvh 5y ago

Why no website? I'm not gonna install app just to use social network.

bovermyer 5y ago
I've never used MeWe's mobile apps, I've always used the desktop site.
rnd0 5y ago
I'm not sure what you mean. I read mewe from my browser on the desktop all the time.
- dvh 5y ago
  When I visit the page there are only 2 buttons. Install Apple app or install Android app. No login, no register, nothing.

jdorfman 5y ago

Free Forever, No Ads. Not sure how this will work but I'm curious to see if they can pull it off.

dgs_sgd 5y ago
Their business plan is to fund the free tier with optional premium features like extra storage, live voice and video calling, etc.

bovermyer 5y ago

Anecdote - when Google Plus imploded, a lot of communities in the tabletop gaming sphere moved from G+ to MeWe.

Pamar 5y ago
Absolutely correct, and I am one of them. AMA. A couple things I can tell you in case you wanted to ask: - How different is from FB? I have no idea, because I never had a FB account. But see below. - I heard that Mewe is/was a place "dominated" by Alt-Right or Right-wingers. Not in my experience: I stick to groups that cater for my hobbies (calligraphy, drawing, Martial Arts, tabletop gaming) and the political debate is basically zero. Maybe there are specific groups for that. - Spammers/Scammers? Each group with more than a couple hundred members tends to collect some bots. They are easy to deal with and not a big nuisance. - I miss Google+, is this good replacement? Yes and no. The #1 feature I miss (and I suggested this as paid extra, to no avail) is that even if you mark one of your posts as "Public" it just means that it will be visible by any other MeWe member that might happen to do a search or just visit your profile. But you cannot share the link to the post outside of MeWe. (For me this is a big problem, because I often bookmarked my own posts on Google+ to refer back to them when I wanted to show something to other people). Of course my success in convincing friends and contacts to follow me on MeWe is measured in Imaginary Numbers. FB still dominates, and even if I had managed to convince lots of people to follow me on Google+, it never really become a hit for them. - What about Censorship (NSFW, at least)? This is something I never really investigated in detail. I suppose you will not have too many problems as long as you mark your posts (or groups) as "adult only". I did not notice a lot of Adult activity around (but then again, I tend to stick to a dozen groups, and never really explore the rest of MeWe). Anything else you want to ask, just write here.

dreyfan 5y ago

They literally tried this [1] in 2013 after the Snowden revelations. Now they apparently bought a four-letter domain and are trying again? [1] https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/07/11/sgrouples-offers-social-network.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/07/11/sgrouple...

dhimes 5y ago
mewe has been around for a while.

matmann2001 5y ago

Well, this seems to be just about everything most people wanted Facebook to be. Yet all I see here is (mostly-warranted) doubt and criticism. Makes me wonder if an ideal service ever does come along, would we even be able to give it enough of a chance for it to stick? Or have we just been burned so badly, we'll never trust again?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

olah_1 5y ago

You attract more flies with honey. I don’t see a positive message anywhere. I see that they’re against certain things, but what do they positively offer? Is the experience truly better or is it just “not THAT”.

rnd0 5y ago
In my experience there's two reasons to use mewe: 1)You're part of a community that imploded when G+ closed which has moved to Mewe 2)You're obsessively anti-FB and dont' care that you're posting to an empty room. I've been on it since 2018 (reason #1) and don't really see any other positives.
- olah_1 5y ago
  I support alternatives, but I would not recommend something to my friends that I know for a fact is a subpar experience. For that reason, I dont really recommend any alternatives right now, sadly.
  - rnd0 5y ago
    My friends and I are beginning to view social media in general as something that's cancerous (in the slang sense, and in terms of its' social impact) and we try to limit ourselves on it as much as possible. We struggle with getting off reddit (since it deprives smaller forums of oxygen and there are less viable alternatives than there were 10 years ago) but mostly have walked away from it. In short -I don't recommend any either.
    - olah_1 5y ago
      Moxie from Signal was completely correct that your contact list is your social network. Building off of sms numbers was smart. Apple Messages might be the best social media for me at the moment.
      - germinalphrase 5y ago

orthecreedence 5y ago

Is it...at least decentralized? Doesn't seem to be. The main issues here are not whether some centralized entity does good things or whether some centralized entity does bad things but rather that there is a centralized entity. This entity could shift from doing good things to doing bad things whenever they feel like it, and are free to take the entire network with them. I'm not going to join some new service on the basis of "trust us, we swear lol." Show me a protocol, not a service. Maybe non-predatory social media and profit-driven production just aren't compatible.

morganvachon 5y ago
Sounds like Mastodon is for you. https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/
- riffic 5y ago
  > Show me a protocol Based on the W3C recommendation, ActivityPub. https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ There are other interoperable implementations noted here: https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-activitypub-apps https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-fo...
kemiller 5y ago
There was a point in the development of the internet when we switched, without a lot of discussion at the time or since, from a world of collaboratively-developed, open and decentralized protocols, to a world of private silos. It's like the internet developed to the point of creating HTTP and then that one broke things from there on out — can you think of a single major communications protocol that was created after HTTP and is still in use? Seems like it's pretty hard for open distributed protocols to compete with the convenience of vertical, for-profit sites. If we can ever sort out the problems with cryptocurrencies+smart contracts, one of them might someday provide a path to creating the right set of incentives allow splitting protocol creation, hosting, and maintenance once again. No idea if that will come to pass though.
- 5y ago

eigengrau5150 5y ago

I haven't been on a social network since Google- jumped the shark in 2015, and I don't miss it. I'm certainly not going to be associated with a platform whose name rhymes with a childhood euphemism for piss (weewee).

alcover 5y ago

I have JS disabled by default. The page appears blank, I bounce off. Please have at least some text on your site, an about link or whatever. Something.

Qi_ 5y ago

It seems like all new social networks have a vicious fact to overcome: nobody's on it, so nobody uses it, so nobody's on it. How do social networks reach that "critical mass" of users?

riffic 5y ago
one way would be to be interoperable with an existing ecosystem from the start. Michelle Lim makes a great case for this here: https://www.michellelim.org/writing/into-the-fediverse/ https://www.michellelim.org/writing/into-the-fediverse/
- Qi_ 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing the link. I like the idea of standardization among smaller social media platforms. Basically, the success of a platform built on ActivityPub becomes more tied to the success of ALL platforms built on ActivityPub.
sm4rk0 5y ago
Here's the TikTok story: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2020/01/31/tiktok-why-the-enormous-success/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2020/01/31/tiktok-why...
disambiguation 5y ago
reddit founders in the early days would use fake accounts to make it seem more active

sm4rk0 5y ago

"The best texting and chat app with privacy you trust." But why would anyone trust a closed source platform running on someone else's infra?

slackstation 5y ago

The site looks like it was based off a template and a cheap one at that. It doesn't strike me as trust-worthy nor are the people deeply invested in making something that will last and be worth investing my time and social network into.

disambiguation 5y ago
facebook or mewe?