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It’s the day and age of social media, and somebody always has to post about something. However, when you’re on a social media site that blatantly sells your information to advertising companies and who knows what else, what do you do?

A new social media site has been making rounds recently with its attention-catching slogan simply being: “No ads. No spyware. No BS.” It may sound too good to be true, and maybe it is.

The last thing we want is to be interrupted by an ad when we’re in the middle of watching a funny video, or to see a random ad for milk tea when we literally just posted about a milk tea craving.

MeWe.com is offering us exactly that and more: a public space where you can share your thoughts, but still keep your information safe and yours for the using.

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Signing up is the same as with any other social media site, except at WeMe, they don’t ask you for phone verification unless you sign up with your phone number.

It doesn’t even ask you for your birthday upon signup, and is completely voluntary to disclose in the Settings under My Account.

My first impressions of MeWe.com were that it’s a mix of both Facebook and Friendster. For the new kids who don’t know what Friendster is, it was basically Asia’s version of MySpace.

The profile layout is incredibly simple and easy to navigate. If you want to add basic details about yourself, like where you work or went to high school, you just need to type it in. Again: MeWe makes these bits of information completely optional, though, and doesn’t prompt you to share it.

Understandably, though, running a completely ad-free social media site is going to have some drawbacks. For one, there are certain features that you’ll need to pay for if you want them.

One of these in-site purchases includes a Verified Badge, letting people know that it is in fact you and not some fake profile. This is a drawback because of the recent cyber attacks on Facebook and naturally, some people will be looking for alternatives, but not if they have to literally pay for it.

There’s also the fact that users will only have up to 8GB storage available for photos and videos. If you want any more, you’ll have to pay for that, too. Again, it’s a disadvantage of running a social media site that’s completely ad-free.

Another downside to MeWe is that they’re much more lax in filtering posts compared to Facebook, thus there are bound to be more anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, and overall just fake news from propagators.

Unless you’re not prone to believing satire or you actually believe in science, it might turn out that Facebook isn’t that bad, after all. But then, it’s really up to you to decide.

If you’re curious about it, go ahead and sign up on MeWe.com.

MeWe’s Bill of Rights

• You own your personal information & content. It is explicitly not ours.
• You never receive targeted third-party advertisements or targeted third-party content. We think that’s creepy.
• You have full control over your newsfeed and the order of how posts appear.
• We do not manipulate, filter, or change the order of your newsfeeds. Only you can do that.
• Permissions & privacy are your rights. You control them.
• You control who can access your content.
• You can opt out of our member directory to protect your privacy.
• We do not sell your personal information to anyone.
• Your face is your business. We do not use facial recognition technology.
• You have the right to delete your account and take your content with you at any time.

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