When Mark Zuckerberg launched Threads as a competitor to Twitter, it broke ChatGPT's record to become the fastest-growing social network in history, gaining 100 million users in just a few days. But in the weeks since its launch, Threads' daily active user count has fallen by significant margins, dropping 82% as of July 31.
Vero, on the other hand, has been growing slowly and steadily for years, flying mostly under the radar as it seeks to build a strong base from which to change the social media landscape. The app, which now has a user base numbering about 6.5 million people, proposes a different, more real, version of social media, one that is importantly lacking the incentives for addiction and vitriol that are present on other platforms.
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"People are becoming more and more aware of the problem of platforms mining their data, and then using that data, selling it to advertisers," Ayman Hariri, the co-founder and CEO of Vero said in an interview with The Street. "We're definitely seeing people that do come onto the platform organically come because of those concerns."
Vero is ad-free, subscription-based
Vero was designed to be a completely ad-free, subscription-based social network. Though the company has yet to activate the subscription model – and hasn't said when it will do so – the result of this ad-free network is a platform without incentives, and therefore, without an algorithm.
"When people talk about data and data mining, it's really about having enough information on somebody to know what their habits are, and whether or not there's a way to design things to fit within those habits," Hariri said. "It's a negative thing in that you can make the product more addictive. You can potentially manipulate people's behavior. And that's a red line we don't want to cross."
These problems of algorithms and misaligned incentives were at the center of Meta Platforms' (META) -) Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's complaint against the company in 2021. The computer scientist said at the time that "Facebook makes more money when you consume more content," adding that the platform designed its algorithms to prioritize profits in a way that incentivizes hate speech.
Vero has no such incentives.
"There's no advertising. Therefore, it isn't an algorithmic feed," Hariri said. "Therefore, we're not looking for content that gets any reaction. We're not in that world at all. I don't believe in it."
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It provides users with a chronological feed that, according to Hariri, gives people complete access to their entire following, something advertisement-based platforms have not been able to promise.
"There's no place for hate speech on our platform," Hariri said. "We're not looking for people to be okay with that nor to train people that that's okay."
Vero currently employs a human content moderation team, but is looking into tools to bring that effort up to scale.
"I think that free speech and what X is particularly going after is a noble cause, but just the practicality of daily life makes it difficult to achieve something that will work for everybody," he said. "We're doing things in different ways."
And where other platforms, such as YouTube and now X (formerly Twitter) incentivize their creators to make content by sharing percentages of ad revenue, Vero's approach is necessarily different. There's no ad revenue to share; the app, instead, will grant creators equity ownership in the platform itself.
Vero users own shares of the company
"If you choose to come to Vero and bring your following, you own shares in the company. It's got nothing to do with discussions with me or anybody else," Hariri said. "We're looking very intently at the regulatory aspects and we're making bold moves that nobody else has done because we truly mean what it is that we're saying. We want to be different. And we want to have a different impact on people that join us."
To that end, Vero acquired Tokenise Stock Exchange International in June, a regulated stock exchange for tokenised securities that was founded in 2018.
"It's a challenge to go down the path of educating a market and selling to them," Hariri said. "That's why our product has to stand on its own two feet as a product that delivers you value. That's what we're focused on. That's why it takes us so long."
"Our growth is all ahead of us."
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