Every year or so, a new social media platform pops up in an effort to save the world from the likes of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

In 2014 we had Ello, and the following year it was Peach.

Now, not even two months into 2018 and we have Vero, a buggy Instagram clone that promises to bring back “meaningful” connections.

It’s three years old, and was first launched in 2015, but thanks to Instagram’s increasingly frustrating algorithm, Vero has been adopted by users looking for an alternative.

According to Mashable, the app didn’t even rate on the App Store’s top 1 500 listing. Today, however, it sits at number one – and is so popular that servers are overloaded:

The app’s pacing to add more than 500,000 users in 24 hours, and that’s just on iOS in the U.S., according to data from Sensor Tower, a company that specializes [sic] in app analytics.

While it’s not totally original per se, the app is the brainchild of controversial billionaire businessman Ayman Hariri [above], son of the assassinated former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Hariri started the app because he was “frustrated with the privacy policies of ad-based social networks”:

“When I did join existing social networks, I found the options for privacy were quite limited and difficult to understand, and also when I decided to get on and connect with a few of my friends, I noticed that their behavior online was very different than their behavior in the real world,” he told CNBC.

Isn’t that for all social, though?

To combat this, he hired a team of Russian developers to build the social app, and has since been on a media tour promoting it as “the next Facebook”.

In short, Vero offers users an ad-free, chronologically ordered media sharing platform, and despite glitches, many are calling it the “new Instagram”.

Facebook, Instagram, is there even a difference anymore?

It has gained so much popularity that if you pop over to Instagram and search “#Vero“, you will find over 500 000 posts, most of them looking something like this:

Yup, those are people’s Vero profiles, shared on Instagram.

But as more concious users sign up, they are noticing some suspicious aspects of the app.

Let’s start with the founder himself – details from The Daily Beast

Before beginning his social media escapades, Hariri served as deputy chief executive officer and vice chairman of his family’s now defunct construction company, Saudi Oger, a business that was the source of most of his family’s wealth.

Throughout his time there, the company was plagued with problems and allegations of abuse and under Hariri’s watch over 31,000 complaints of non payment for wages were filed against the Saudi Oger.

The company was so negligent that in some cases the Saudi Arabian government had to step in and provide food and basic living supplies to workers spurned by the company.

Unpaid workers were forced to live in crowded dorms in labor camps constructed by the company, Reuters reported in 2016. Throughout their time working for the company many workers were denied access to food, water, and medical care.

But who cares about that, right? Most successful businessmen have shady pasts. Just look at our president(s).

What is of concern is the information required on sign up.

You see, in order to sign up you are asked for the usual name, email address and phone number. Then, the app requests access to your contacts:

“Vero only collects the data we believe is necessary to provide users with a great experience and to ensure the security of their accounts,” the company explains, which doesn’t say much.

And, looking at the T’s & C’s, people weren’t too impressed with what they saw:

“Bye Vero, you shady bitches,” someone even tweeted.

However, you can’t just go and delete your account. You have to put in a request:

When Mashable asked Hariri about the criticism, including ownership rights, he noted that he had “the same concerns as someone not well-versed in content regulations prior to launching his own social app”.

That’s why he hired a legal team to help him write those terms of service:

“I had to get an education in this myself when we started putting this terms of use together,” Hariri said. “What’s asked of users is to provide a license to Vero to display your content without them going around saying, ‘All users that see my photos need to pay me because it’s my content.'”

Of course, this is pretty usual with most companies. Just look at the amount of random SMS’s you get from businesses you have never had any affiliation with.

At the end of the day, do what you want – but just remember: Vero is owned by a businessman who has close ties to Russia, and if we know anything about Russia, it’s that they are crazy power hungry.

[source: mashable]