“Have you tried to moderate 15 million people?” MeWe is a social media network that has become popular with right-wing extremists as they outrun other deplatformings. Founded in 1998, before Facebook was even a glint in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye, MeWe described itself as “a private place for you and your friends to gather on the web.” It doesn’t share or sell user data.
Sarah Emerson writes that MeWe, unlike Facebook, isn’t transparent about it’s moderation efforts; far-right militia groups began gathering there in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
“With smaller platforms, content moderation is a big challenge,” J.M. Berger, a researcher and analyst who studies U.S. extremist movements, told OneZero, commenting on social media networks in general. “What should be clear at this stage is any effort to build a social media app or platform needs to budget and plan for content moderation as a big part of their business model.”
