LBRY, Minds and Mewe: Social Media Without Censorship

Let’s Talk About Sex

As you know, today’s society is unfriendly towards anything sex-positive. Everyone is fighting really hard to lose the freedoms we had attained over the years. Large online companies such as Facebook, and with it Instagram, Tumblr, Patreon and Paypal do everything in their power to cleanse the world of those filthy sexually conscious people. It doesn’t matter if you write educational content or stories with one sex scene in them: all sex is evil.

For me, as a sex-positive blogger, this makes the internet a dangerous place to navigate, especially now that I’ve decided to earn some additional income through my blog. Luckily more and more sites pop up that are welcoming to people of my kind, and are, most importantly, without censorship.

Mewe.com

One of the earliest sites I encountered is Mewe.com. This site was developed in response to Mark Zuckerberg’s statement “privacy is a social norm of the past.”
Mewe.com is geared towards the privacy of its users. Their business model does not use any user data, nor do they spy on their users with cookies.
According to Wikipedia, their Terms of Serice are:

‘MeWe’s terms of service agreement contains a “Privacy Bill of Rights” in which the company pledges never to engage in data mining of user information or content, or to filter the Home Feed in any way except that chosen by the user.[4] The MeWe pledges in its user agreement to never use cookies[6] or spyware[7] to generate content about users, and that it will not track user activity in any way or sell user data to a third party.[6] Users have the right to completely download and delete all their data when closing their account.’

It sounds like a cleaner and fairer social media network than Facebook. It’s similar in layout and in possibilities.
I’ve been a member since June 2018. I’ve joined many writer groups since, as well as a BDSM group. I find the group chat quite annoying, but it may be helpful if that’s something you enjoy.
Regarding sexual content, they’re not entirely happy with it, but as far as I can see, they don’t act against it. I’ve seen many, and I mean many, profile pictures with dick pics. The content I see posted in the BDSM group is similar to what I used to find at Tumblr, so I guess Mewe is cool with that too.
I’m not a real user of this platform at the moment, but I do post links to my blogs and books there for more exposure. And to peek at the sexy BDSM photos.

Minds.com

Minds.com is also a social network, similar in style to Facebook. This is what Wikipedia says about this network:

‘Minds has become popular for its commitment to privacy, decentralization, optional anonymity, radical transparency, free speech, and user rewards in contrast to the surveillance, secrecy, censorship, and algorithm manipulation occurring on many proprietary social networks.

Minds describes itself as a “Crypto Social Network” that upholds internet freedom.’

I’ve made a profile, and I’ve been browsing this site for the past couple of months. In the Discovery Feed, which is a feed everyone can read, I see a broad range of topics. It’s where I find alternative news regarding Covid19, which is often more honest than what I hear in the mainstream media. There are many posts from pro-weapon activists, mainly from the United States. Yes, there are plenty of conspiracy theories here, but I just ignore those. And there’s also the occasional sexy picture.

Through the use of blockchain, it is possible to make money on this platform, but I’ve not been able to find out how. All I can find is a pretty expensive monthly subscription to unlock other features.
Instead of making money, I use this site to post links to my work, all hidden with an NSFW tag, and to find alternative news sources. So far, I’ve not connected with anyone there yet.

LBRY

The platform in this genre that I like best is LBRY.com. This is their statement:

‘First and foremost, LBRY is a new protocol which allows anyone to build apps that interact with digital content on the LBRY network. Apps built using the protocol allow creators to upload their work to the LBRY network of hosts (like BitTorrent), to set a price per stream or download (like iTunes) or give it away for free (like YouTube without ads). The work you publish could be videos, audio files, documents, or any other type of file.
Traditional video (or other content) sites such as YouTube, Instagram, and Spotify store your uploads on their servers and allow viewers to download them. They also allow creators to make some money through advertising or other mechanisms. However, there are some well-known drawbacks, especially for people whose material is perceived as not being advertiser-friendly.
LBRY aims to be an alternative to these sites, allowing publishers and their fans to interact directly without the risk of demonetization or other meddling.’

LBRY doesn’t censor, and it doesn’t demonetise, because they can’t. Files uploaded to their platform are distributed in a peer to peer – fashion, so it’s not stored in one central location like with Amazon or YouTube.

I love this platform, and I use it where I can. Many YouTubers also choose to upload their content to LBRY, so I try to find and support them there. There are no advertisements, and I can choose to tip if I enjoy their content. LBRY gives you free blockchain currency LBC for just visiting their website and watching videos.

True Freedom

As a content-creator, without video content, I use it to distribute my books. Do you have any idea how freeing it is to be able to just publish my book without having to worry whether the picture is too nude or the blurb is too racy? On LBRY, you can share any kind of digital file. I’ve chosen to use it to sell my latest books in PDF and ePub format. The price is quite low, you can gather this many LBC by just watching videos for a couple of days in a row. I hope more people find out about this platform and will make it big.

There’s More

Apart from these three websites, there are many other sites I’ve explored. There’s gab.com, flote.app, subscribestar.com, steemit.com, bitchute.com and many, many others. I was relieved to find another part of the internet not controlled by big names such as Facebook and Twitter. What all of these alternative sites have in common, is the need to do it without a credit card, so they often turn to the blockchain. Now I don’t understand the world of alternative currencies enough to write about it yet, but I do see it having a place in the future. We need to get away from the grasp of conservative stakeholders within banks who try to dictate our way of living.
I, for my part, will continue to keep posting to these alternative sites as a back-up and, who knows, maybe as a life-saver.

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Update September 2020

When I wrote this post in April, it was during, what is now apparent, the early days of the Covid19 lockdown. Since then, I’ve frequently visited Minds.com, especially to find alternative news. Yes, there are conspiracy theories out there, but amidst that, there are also news stories which show the different side of events. A side the media in my country refuse to offer with their biased, leftist view.
So yes, I still stand by all that is written above. I’m on Twitter now and then, toxic as that may be, mainly for reasons of exposure. I read Reddit to keep up to date with what’s happening on the Internet. And I visit the sites named above. In my view, it’s an unfortunate necessity as a blogger in 2020.

I also wrote a separate post about how Mewe.com handles sex: Mewe.com and NSFW Content

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Alt-tech Update April 2021

Funny, precisely a year after I first published this post, and it’s time for yet another update.
The situation is much as I suspected it to be: sex is still evil. Almost randomly, Twitter will ban sex workers or shadowban them. It has led me to censor all my tweets, even though I only promote my blog posts.

Twitter Still

I browse Twitter for about an hour a day. Yes, that much, and yes, that’s bad. Seeing the angry and sad stories from other people are still upsetting to me. Unfortunately, I do need it to get something of non-filtered news about my country. The Dutch news is heavily influenced by the left politics, as is the case in Britain. To know what’s going on, also with the Covid-protests in my country, I have to turn to Twitter. I know that’s just as heavily biased, but I like getting multiple views to form my own opinion.

Retalk.com

The good news is, I don’t read Reddit anymore. I only visit the site sporadically when I’m searching for specific information. Instead, I go to retalk.com. It’s not as large as Reddit, but the people seem more honest, and they’re not all as woke like on other sites. Hosts of some of my favourite YouTube channels are also on the site, like Triggernomotry, Gad Saad and Jordan Peterson.

Parler.com

Lastly, I want to give a heads-up to parler.com. Big tech tried to crush and cancel this site since they were afraid it would provide a platform to Trump supporters. Despite this effort, they have resurfaced and are even back in the app stores of Apple and Android. I’m not a big fan of the site myself. I could never get verified since I need to upload a copy of my ID. The content on the site is too political and too conservative, yes, even for me. But I’m still happy they fought and won a battle against Twitter, Facebook and the other big companies.

Necessary Alt-Tech

In a balanced and thriving society, we need information from all sides, not echo chambers where we only hear what we most like to hear. Only through open discourse and deep thinking and research can we grow to more significant ideas and improve our well-being. We need alt-tech platforms. A society with only Twitter, Facebook and Instagram is not healthy, not with their current censorship rules. Thankfully there are people out there building these new platforms which attract their own audience.

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My Profiles

Here are links to my profiles on these websites:

https://mewe.com/i/lizblack

https://www.minds.com/lizblackx/

https://lbry.tv/@LizBlackX:3

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