New Facebook Competitor Wants to Be 'Morally Better'

There are no bikini beach photos or swear words on Brazil's new social network—and no "likes," either, but rather "amens"—and that's apparently how Facegloria's roughly 100,000 users want it. While Facebook bans nudity, hate speech, graphic violence, and other questionable content, Facegloria's no-no list is a lot longer: It restricts images of homosexuality, all violent content, eroticism, and about 600 "forbidden words." "We want to be morally and technically better than Facebook," founder Atilla Barros explains of the month-old site. "We want all Brazilian Evangelicals to shift to Facegloria."

That would be a sizable user base: AFP reports about 20% of Brazilians, or 42 million people, are thought to be Evangelicals, and they're expected to overtake Catholics as the dominant religion in the country by 2040. The founders expect a mobile phone app will propel Facegloria's reach even further, and versions in English (under the name "Faceglory") and other languages are planned. For now, a team of 20 volunteers helps scrub the site of content that doesn't meet the Facegloria standards, though at CNET, Chris Matyszczyk writes that he was able to create an account and successfully post the line "Homosexuality is entirely normal, people." He writes, "Perhaps the site only bans 'bad' words in Portuguese." (More Facebook stories.)