Amid the growing importance of social media platforms, two former employees of Facebook-owned WhatsApp, Neeraj Arora, and Michael Donohue, have come up with an alternative – HalloApp. The founders claim that the app works as an ad-free, private social network.
The founders of HalloApp stated that they conceived the idea to make it the first global app for the real-relationship network.
In a Twitter statement, Neeraj Arora shared about how social media, which was a place to bring people together, has become a place where people rarely post about who they really are, and how the posts that people see are not from the people they know. He also spoke about how there is no privacy because “someone is always listening”.
According to Neeraj Arora, the app tackles all these problems, where there are no bots, no ads, no likes or followers etc. He also mentioned that the platform has end-to-end encrypted chats so that no one, not even the developers, can have access to the conversations between users.
In a blog post, HalloApp said that social media has become digital malls. The blogpost also stated
whenever anybody hoped to find their friends, instead they found ads, bots, likes, filters, influencers, followers, misinformation, and more.
“Where you hoped to have meaningful conversations, instead you found yourself falling down the rabbit hole of blinking red notifications and an algorithmic feed of meaningless content. Where you hoped for a safe space to keep in touch with your siblings, family members, neighbors, and friends from college, you found content from people you’ve never met before-the whole thing feeling invasive, even creepy,” it said, in what seems to be a veiled dig at Facebook.
The initial pitch of HalloApp can be summarised in this statement on its blog – “No ads. No bots. No likes. No trolls. No followers. No algorithms. No influencers. No photo filters. No “feed fatigue.” No misinformation spreading like wildfire.”
