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135 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
135 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 2920
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Title: HPR2920: Better Social Media 03 - MeWe
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2920/hpr2920.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-24 13:16:30
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---
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This in HPR episode 2,920 entitled Better Social Media Nero Free, MeWee, it is hosted by AYUKA
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and in about 12 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
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The summary is, MeWee one advertised another popular alternative to Google Plus.
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This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
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Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org
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forward slash donate.
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www.meWeeWee.com
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Hello, this is AYUKA, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio
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and another exciting episode in my new series on Better Social Media.
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And today I want to look at an application called MeWee, MeWee.
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MeWee is the other platform that ended up posting a large number of Google Plus refugees.
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It has some very good features and also some differences with alternatives like diaspora.
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MeWee is not open source or distributed but does have a strong privacy focus.
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It's privacy bill of rights states.
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You own your personal information and content, it is explicitly not ours.
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You will never receive a targeted advertisement or third party content based on what you do or say online.
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We think that's creepy.
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You see every post in timeline order from your friends, family, and groups.
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We do not manipulate, filter, or change the order of your content or what you see.
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I particularly like that one, I hate what Facebook does.
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Permissions and privacy are your rights, you control them.
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You control who can access your content.
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You control what, if anything, others can see in member searches.
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Your privacy means we do not share your personal information with anyone.
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Your emojis are for you and your friends.
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We do not monitor or mine your data.
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Your face is your business, we do not use facial recognition technology.
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And finally you have the right to delete your account and take your content with you at any time.
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Well, I think this is good enough to at least make it worth a look.
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So I was happy to give this a try.
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They also prominently display the claim on their homepage that says they have no ads,
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no spyware, and no BS.
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Now, on the other hand, they do not hide that this is a company doing this rather than a community
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project like diaspora. So how do they make money?
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Well, they say they do it by offering extras you pay for,
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and by offering a pro version for businesses that is not free of charge.
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It costs $75 per month per employee, but is free for nonprofits and educational institutions.
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The MeWe Pro application offers additional collaboration tools and might be worth a look for some companies.
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As for individuals, you get 8 gigabytes of storage free with your account.
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But to get 50 gigabytes, you have to pay $4.99 per month.
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If you're using MeWe to share photos, now that'll eat up 8 gigabytes at some point,
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depending on how many photos you want to upload and share.
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They also offer secret chat, which they describe as something like WhatsApp without the tracking.
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And that costs $0.99 per month.
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And they also offer unlimited voice and video calling for $1.99 per month.
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Then there are custom emojis at $0.99 a packet,
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and they offer pages for $2.99 per month, which would probably appeal mostly to organizations
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or more prominent or famous people. At least that is what I've found so far.
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You can find many of these at the MeWe store, and that link will be in the show notes along with
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the link to MeWe in general. You may not be thrilled at the way they sell you this stuff,
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but there's only so many ways to support a social media service.
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If a company is going to provide such a service, they have to get a revenue stream.
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Facebook does it by selling your data. MeWe does it by selling extras.
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Personally, I'm okay with that. I don't object to a company making money.
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So what is the MeWe experience like? Well, MeWe resembles Facebook in a lot of ways.
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It is a slicker interface than diaspora, but for a profit-making company that should not be a surprise.
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On the left is a column where you can browse groups to join, and under that is a list of your friends
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called MyContacts, and you can start a chat with any of them just like you do on Facebook.
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The chat window then pops open and the lower right just as it does on Facebook.
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Then in the central column, again, just like Facebook, that's your stream.
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Everything you post and anything that has been shared with you appears here in the central column.
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And MeWe promises it will show you everything in strict chronological order, which is a big
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difference from Facebook, as is the fact that no ads or promoted posts appear.
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And there is no boosting. If you have been as annoyed as I have been with what Facebook does,
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you will like this way of handling your stream.
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Now, I would advise using hashtags on your posts to make them easier to manage,
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and to attract the audience that is interested in that particular topic.
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When you make a new post, the default is to make it visible to your contacts,
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but there is a drop down to change that to public.
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Since the way I use social media is to make most things public, I kept looking for a setting
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somewhere to make public the default, but never found it. So I would manually change each
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poll post, which was annoying, until one day I was doing this and got a pop-up message asking
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if I wanted to make public the default. I said yes, and it's worked fine ever since.
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I would have thought there might be something in the settings menu for this, but if there is, I missed it.
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Now, photo sharing is not too difficult. You start by making a post and click the photo button to
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add a photo from your hard drive. When you do this, it will give you an opportunity to add this photo
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to an album, which you name, and then add more photos to the post and to the album. This all works
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pretty well, but as I said before, you only get 8GB of storage in a free account.
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So I would say this is good for sharing photos, but not for mass storage.
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Remember that an extra 50GB is $4.99 per month, which may not be huge, but ends up being more
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than many of the alternatives. You can also access your photos or work with them by going to the
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upper right where your picture will show up if you use the picture on your profile. Click on that
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and select my cloud. You can also use this for file storage, but again, watch your storage use.
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Fortunately, on the left of this screen, you can easily see how much storage you have used
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and how much you have in total. On the right is the window where you can post what you're
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listening to, eating, watching, etc. Under that is a window where you'll be notified if there are
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unread posts from a group you have joined, and under that is the photo stream, which will show
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your photos and also photos that have been shared with you. Now settings, right under the
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my cloud in that dropdown is settings, and here is where you can go to make your privacy settings,
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such as whether others can download the photos you're post. I set mine to not allow this.
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There are settings you can make for notifications for how your feed is presented.
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I always go for the newest on top and for group preferences.
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Now, many people came to me because Google Plus was shutting down, and me we responded to this
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by making it easy to upload your Google Plus content to me. The last option in the settings
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menu would let you upload your Google Plus data if you had the foresight to download it all before
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Google Plus shut down. Personally, I regard most social media posts as ephemera and did not do
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this, but I appreciate that me we made this easy for those who value this. My point of view has always
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been if it's something that you want to refer to again and you want to make permanent,
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that's what a website is for, and so that's what I do. Now, the me we community is based on something
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called my contacts, and I have not yet seen any posts from anyone who is not already one of my
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contacts. Now, this is very good for some purposes. For instance, if you wanted to set up a family
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group or affinity group where only members would ever see the posts, this would be excellent.
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If you want to see more posts from people you might share an interest with, you need to join a group.
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There are groups for things like music, travel, foodies, and so on. Go to the top menu bar,
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click on groups, and then browse the open groups. Now, an open group is defined as group,
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which is open to anyone to join. Adult content is a different matter.
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And add one that appeals to you. Some groups you can just join with a click,
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others ask you to apply. My entirely unscientific survey of the politics activism groups showed a
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lean to the right, but there were also things like green party. For organizations you might want to
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follow, or some of the more prominent people, try pages. Now, to get started, just go to the me we
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homepage, link in the show notes, and enter the requested information to get your accounts started.
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I will note here that they ask for either an email address or a mobile telephone number,
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which may mean they are using this for two-factor authentication.
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I saw a tweet online that said they are working on this, but that it was not done as of that tweet,
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which was late in 2018. So, that's something to watch, I suppose. I hope this will help you decide
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if me we as for you. It has some attractive features, also some questionable ones, but it is an
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option out there if you're looking for alternative social media. And so, with that, this is Ahuka,
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for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always encouraging you to support FreeSoftware. Bye-bye.
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