BoysDo vs MeWe: A Privacy Network That Tolerates Adult Content vs. One Built For It

When the Privacy App Inherited a Migration It Wasn't Designed For

MeWe was launched in 2016 as the privacy-conscious answer to Facebook — no behavioural ads, no third-party data sales, no algorithmic feed manipulation, the kind of pitch that landed in the years when Cambridge Analytica was a household name. The product is a competent social network in the Facebook mould: groups, pages, feeds, direct messages, the whole familiar grammar with the surveillance turned off.

It also became, after Tumblr's 2018 NSFW ban and various Facebook crackdowns on adult-adjacent content, one of the platforms that ended up hosting a significant amount of gay erotic content by default. Not because MeWe wanted that audience — its rules are stricter than Tumblr's were and adult content is restricted to opt-in adult groups — but because displaced communities pick whichever life raft is closest, and MeWe's group infrastructure was the closest available.

The result is a coexistence that has worked, more or less, for several years. It is also a coexistence the platform did not design itself for. And that shows.

What MeWe Is Actually Good At

The strongest case for MeWe is the privacy posture. It is one of the few social platforms at scale where the business model is a paid subscription rather than your data, and where the interface refuses to push algorithmic content at you. For users who left Facebook for principled reasons and didn't want to switch from one ad-funded platform to another, MeWe is a real alternative.

The group functionality is the second strength. MeWe groups can be private, public, large, small, and a thriving group with a moderator who knows what they're doing has the texture of a 2009 Facebook group at its best — the period before everything became a feed. A few of the gay erotic photography groups on MeWe operate with this kind of moderation and are pleasant places to spend time.

The Visual-Experience Problem

What MeWe was not built for is the visual feed. The platform is text-and-images-in-posts, in the Facebook tradition. Browsing a group's image archive means scrolling through the group's full activity — comments, conversations, pinned announcements, member joins — with the images embedded inside. There is no equivalent of an image-only grid, no swipe-through gallery view, no way to stop and look at a photograph without the social furniture of the group around it.

This works for groups that are primarily about discussion with images attached. It does not work for the experience of looking at gay erotic photography as a continuous visual flow, which is a different appetite that requires different infrastructure.

BoysDo is that different infrastructure. The interface is built around the photograph rather than around the conversation about the photograph. The feed is a feed in the photographic sense. The pace of browsing is set by the eye rather than by group notifications.

Where the Two Don't Conflict

Worth saying clearly: MeWe and BoysDo aren't fighting for the same minute of your day. MeWe is a social network with adult-content groups inside it. BoysDo is a publishing platform for art-erotic gay photography. A user who wants the social-group dynamic of MeWe and the curated-feed experience of BoysDo can have both, and the overlap of audience is real but partial.

The case for adding BoysDo to the rotation, if you're already on MeWe, is the case for using a tool built for the job rather than a tool retrofitted to it. The browsing experience that makes BoysDo specifically a platform for looking is the part that MeWe's general-purpose group infrastructure cannot replicate without ceasing to be MeWe.

The Verdict

MeWe is the right tool if your priority is privacy at the network layer and a Facebook-shaped community experience without surveillance. BoysDo is the right tool if your priority is the visual experience of gay erotic photography presented at the standard the work deserves. Both can sit on the same phone without contradiction.

[Browse what BoysDo was built for →](https://boysdo.com)

Read our full guide: [Where to Find Artistic Gay Erotic Content Online](/articles/guide-where-to-find-artistic-gay-erotic-content)