'Sin-free' Facebook alternative gains 100,000 followers in Brazil
A 'sin-free' alternative to Facebook, set up by a group of Brazilian evangelical Christians, has gained 100,000 users in its first month.
Facegloria is aiming to convince Brazil's 42 million evangelicals to switch to the Christian social network from Facebook, which the site's founders claim purveys sinful content such as violence and pornography.
The new site is monitored by more than 20 volunteers, who vet sexually explicit content and remove swearwords and other offensive phrases which fall under a list of approximately 600 prohibited words.
Co-founder Atilla Barros told news agency AFP that the team hoped to have 10 million users within two years and that they were expecting a rush of users in the coming months when they launch their mobile app.
"We want to be morally and technically better than Facebook. We want all Brazilian evangelicals to shift to Facegloria," said Barros.
The idea for the site was born three years ago and the four-person founding team received financial support from the mayor of Ferraz de Vasconcelos, a municipality in the state of São Paulo, as they raised $16,000 (€14,500) to set up the project, Europe.newsweek.com reported.