Social Network MeWe Surges by 2.5 Million Members in One Week

Social media upstart MeWe has enjoyed explosive growth in the past week, adding 2.5 million members as more Americans become wary of Big Tech platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

ZDNet reports that as many users of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter become increasingly worried about privacy violations, political bias, newsfeed manipulation, and data collection, alternative social media networks are surging.

Los Angeles-based social media network MeWe claims to be the ad-free future of social networking and is currently the number one social app in the Google Play Store and ranked number three out of all apps in the store.

The “anti-Facebook” platform has added 2.5 million new members in the last week. Since launching in 2016, the site surged to nine million users in October 2020. MeWe currently boasts 15.5 million members, 50 percent of which are based outside of North America.

MeWe states that it’s going to be the new mainstream social network with no ads, no targeting, and no newsfeed manipulation.

Breitbart News recently reported that encrypted messaging services such as Telegram and Signal were seeing major boosts in user growth in recent months also.

The Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp has seen a major drop in new downloads following a change to the company’s terms of service with many users turning to privacy-focused alternatives like Signal and Telegram.

WhatsApp downloads fell by more than 2 million between January 5 and 12 compared to the previous week, falling to 10.6 million. In comparison, Signal saw 17.8 million downloads while Telegram saw 15.7 million during the same time period, according to data from the app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

COMMENTS