The uncomfortable question
Your organisation exists to do good. You've probably spent real time thinking about your supply chain, your funding sources, your governance. But the tech you use to manage your community is coming under increasing scrutiny for its values misalignment.
For most not-for-profits, Meta's Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger; X and Substack form the core of their social media marketing, promotion, community management and volunteer contact toolset.
And that's where we have a problem.
Ethical concerns with choosing Meta
Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp are, by far, the most common tools non-profits use to organise volunteers, communicate with members, and build community. They're free. Everyone's on them. They work.
But the cost is real — it's just paid by someone else.
Meta's business model profits from engagement and virality, and research has consistently found that extreme, incendiary content generates the most of both. The algorithm doesn't care about your values. It cares about keeping people scrolling, and it has learned that outrage, fear, and division are the most reliable fuels.
In early 2025, Meta ended its third-party fact-checking programme, moving towards a looser community notes system, while simultaneously relaxing content moderation policies. This makes targeted people less safe, and puts them in real danger.
Human rights experts have connected Meta's content practices to real-world violence, including Facebook's role in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. When Rohingya communities asked Meta to fund a $1 million education project in refugee camps — 0.0007% of Meta's 2023 profits — the company refused.
Meta's primary business is invasive advertising. It tracks users across millions of websites and apps without their permission, and monetises that data through targeted ads. Meta's AI is going one step further, reading your messages and group chats in order to exploit the information for advertising.
When you choose to contact your volunteers through a Facebook group, your Messenger thread, your WhatsApp channel — you're making them targets for invasive personalised advertising. Their attention, their data, and your community, is being harvested to sell things to them.
Meta makes more money from ad clicks and views, so it is in Meta's interests to keep people scrolling for longer. There's a current case in court in LA around whether Meta's apps are designed to be addictive, and therefore contribute to youth suicide.
Unmonitored cyberbullying, extreme and graphic content and personal image obsession cultivated by Meta apps have all been argued as contributing to suicide rates in youth.
What you're supporting when you use X
When X's owner Elon Musk took over he restored accounts of people who were banned for hate speech, harassment, and misinformation. He also dismantled trust and safety teams, and relaxed content moderation in ways that put real people in danger.
X's AI, Grok, has been touted as a free speech project, while generating fake images of real people being raped, including children.
It is hard to find a reason for any values-driven organisation to be on X. Choosing to use X not only lends your organisation's credibility to a platform with dubious ethics, it also makes a billionaire richer and funds their destabilising projects.
What you're supporting when you stay on Substack
Substack was built to be independent, writer-led, and principled.
But Substack is a private equity venture that directly profits from all its creators, and has consistently prioritised its bottom line over content moderation, allowing hateful and extremist content to remain and generate revenue for the platform.
Publishers and journalists have repeatedly called on Substack's founders to remove newsletters promoting Nazi ideology and genocidal white nationalism, with some of its most prominent voices leaving in protest.
Substack's response has been to "stay neutral" and make money while growing the audience for hate speech that puts real people in danger.
Using Substack for your newsletter means your subscription revenue and your audience data flow through a platform that has made a considered choice about whose voices it will protect.
Make the better choice
Gather was built in Aotearoa New Zealand specifically because these social media problems are structural, not accidental.
Gather was built as a community network instead. Read more about what makes Gather different.
Gather is a not-for-profit. No advertising. No surveillance. No algorithm designed to inflame. No billionaire whose politics you're funding with your community's attention. It's a genuine not-for-profit Meta alternative.
It's designed to bring people together, create local connections, and build action-oriented movements — whether that's a neighbourhood network, a climate club, or a political campaign — without the unethical traps that profit-driven social networks have fallen into.
Gather has everything a volunteer organisation needs — group messaging, task management, action assignment, events, shared resources, a recognition system that makes quiet contributions visible, and a social layer that makes all of it feel like belonging rather than admin.
Your mission deserves tools that share your values.
Move your community to Gather in 6 minutes. It's free, it's not-for-profit, and built for you.