Minds (social network)

Minds is an open-source and distributed social network. Users can earn cryptocurrency for using Minds, and tokens can be used to boost their posts or crowdfund other users. Minds has been described as more privacy-focused than mainstream social media networks.

Writers in The New York Times, Engadget, and Vice have noted the volume of far-right users and content on the platform, following a trend across social media. Minds describes itself as focused on free speech, and minimally moderates the content on its platform. Its founders have said that they do not remove extremist content from the site out of a desire to deradicalize those who post it through civil discourse.

Minds was co-founded in 2011 by Bill Ottman and John Ottman as an alternative to social networks such as Facebook, which the founders believed abused their users via "spying, data mining, algorithm manipulation, and no revenue sharing". Other cofounders were Mark Harding, Ian Crossland, and Jack Ottman. Minds launched to the public in June 2015.

A Facebook page affiliated with the hacktivist group Anonymous encouraged its followers to support Minds in 2015, and called for developers to contribute to the service's open source codebase.

In 2018, over 150,000 Vietnamese users joined Minds after fearing that Facebook would comply with a new law requiring them to remove political dissent and release user data to the Vietnamese government. Beginning in May 2020, over 250,000 Thai users joined Minds after growing concerns about privacy on Twitter, which had been widely used for political activism. This led Minds to add Thai language support to its mobile apps, and upgrade its servers to handle the influx of traffic.

In October 2019, United States President Donald Trump invited Minds to a social media summit hosted at the White House. In January 2021, after YouTube and Facebook removed tens of thousands of Trump supporters and alleged white supremacists from their platforms in the wake of the 2021 United States Capitol attack earlier that month, Minds was among the alternative apps those users adopted.

In June 2020, Minds hosted "MINDS: Festival of Ideas" at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Appearances included Tulsi Gabbard, Daryl Davis, Tim Pool, and Cornel West.

Minds is a website as well as a desktop and mobile app. The platform awards Ethereum ERC20 cryptocurrency tokens to its users based on their engagement with the site, and users spend tokens to promote their content or to crowdfund other users through monthly subscriptions. The tokens can also be bought and redeemed for standard currency. Minds offers a monthly premium subscription that gives users access to exclusive content, the ability to become verified, and the ability to remove boosted posts from their feed.