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Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter and made polarizing changes – including the site’s very name, which now goes by X – a vocal subset of users have looked for an alternative. First, there was Mastodon, then Bluesky, and Instagram Threads; all of which are active sites, but none have really made a meaningful dent in X’s user base or presented the same site functionality.

Enter WeAre8, a new social media site that doesn’t quite position itself as a Twitter alternative, but a new kind of platform altogether. Its early messaging has stressed efforts to be hate speech- and misinformation-free, sustainable, and forbids ads from tobacco, oil, and gambling firms. There are two major ambitions in its business model: the ability for users to opt in and get paid to watch ads, and the hope to draw not just 8, but 80 million users within two years.

CivicScience gauged how realistic that second goal seems with Americans, and it appears WeAre8 still has a fair amount of ground to cover. Over 8-in-10 U.S. adults have never heard of the app, which launched in the country last week. Three percent of adults have tried it in the last month, and 4% say they’re ‘extremely likely’ to use it in the next month.

Those strong intent numbers improve significantly with young users. Gen Z adults are four times as likely to say they’re ‘extremely likely’ to try it in the next month (16%), with young Millennial adults twice as likely to say the same (8%). Rural residents slightly outpace urban and suburban residents’ ‘extreme’ likelihood to use in the next month (5%).

Four more insights you need to know about WeAre8:

  • Despite the app’s emphasis on sustainability, adults ‘extremely likely’ to use it in the next month are half as likely to say they’re ‘very concerned’ about climate change and the environment right now (16%, compared to 34% for all other adults). That said, heavy WeAre8 intenders are much more likely to report any level of climate concern.
  • Those ‘extremely likely’ to use WeAre8 overwhelmingly say they pay the most attention to print ads and billboards (59%) of all types of advertising, compared to all other adults who are more attuned to TV/radio ads (37%).
  • Young Millennial adults are more likely to express high interest in using WeAre8 than to have tried it already (8% in this age bracket are ‘extremely likely’ to use it, compared to 4% who have).
  • Target customers are more than twice as likely as Macy’s customers to be ‘extremely likely’ to try WeAre8 in the next month – which might be a proxy for age, but speaks to how specialized the paid ad viewings will need to be.

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