It’s no surprise that people are looking for alternatives to Facebook, Instagram, and other “freemium” social media tools to connect with family and friends, network with others, and build online communities. 

Distracting third-party ads, behavior tracking, and sharing personal data are all well-documented risks and drawbacks of these apps. Not to mention fake news and possible addiction issues, which you might have seen in The Social Dilemma documentary. 

Ad-Free Privacy

Kinscape takes a totally different approach to ensuring your privacy, with a secure, safe social networking space where you completely control your data, only connect with people you know and trust, and handpick who sees your content in your private online groups.

Our philosophy is based on a deep respect for your privacy and security. As social media users ourselves, we know how it feels to be stalked on the internet by targeted ads. The ad-tech industry is huge, raking in billions of dollars every year—all based on selling your data as often and to as many companies as possible. So, it’s small wonder that they’re trying to track your every move.

The rationale for freemium people-profiling is often something like, well you don’t get something for free. And they’re right. But Kinscape gives you a lot for a very little—and all without the intrusive ads, tracked data, and compromised privacy. 

Powerful Social Networking Features 

Kinscape gives you rich social networking features, 100% control of your content, and the reassurance that your content is always safe from prying eyes. Here are a few of the fun features that help you stay in touch with family and friends, share precious memories, and invite others to celebrate in your stories:

• Build Communities: In real life, most of us belong to several different communities where we interact every day—family, close friends, the book club, children’s schools, the soccer team, the list is endless. Kinscape lets you build private online groups, or communities, for each of these different aspects of your life, controlling who overlaps where (in case cousin Susan is also in your yoga group) and what they see. In Kinscape, building a community is simple, and once you’ve established your private online group, you can share photos, videos, recipes, ideas, documents, and much more. And as Community Admin, you stay in control of who can see the content, who can comment, and who can share.

• Create Stories: Unlike many other social networking platforms, Kinscape lets you create stories that are as long or as short as you like, add pictures, videos, or voice footage, share or keep private, and collaborate with others. Creating a Story in Kinscape is easy and like Communities, you can create as many as you want. The beauty of Kinscape is that you can share each Story with anyone from your contact list, so you may choose to invite cousin Sam to collaborate on your genealogy Story before publishing to your entire family, or start your memoir and keep it under wraps until you’re ready. Again, you own and control every aspect of your content.

• Private Message: Our messenger feature lets you stay in touch, ask a quick question, or reach out to your contacts any time, making it easy to contact your communities and connections in a totally private and secure setting.

• Private Vault: One of Kinscape’s unique features is its private Vault where you can safely store your online content, whether you post it on the platform or not. Kinscape will automatically store content from your communities here, but you also have the option to upload other precious moments, documents, videos, voice files, and more. Content in your vault is yours to keep safe and private, but readily accessible at all times.

Again, these are just some of the major features Kinscape offers to help you connect, stay connected, and celebrate your precious moments safely, in private, and without the distraction of multiple ads eerily targeting you for something you already bought last week, or something the algorithm decided you should be buying. 

Getting Started is Free

Our tiered subscription service means you can choose the plan that’s right for you straightaway, starting with a basic free sign up. As you discover the many advantages of Kinscape communities, upgrading is quick and easy. 

Be sure to watch our short videos as a quick introduction to Kinscape and some of its features, and to help you get started. We’re excited about the future of private online networks and thrilled to have built a strong platform that people can trust to respect them as people—not potential ad revenue. 

Additional Tips 

As social media afficionados ourselves, we also understand that many of you will probably want to continue to use the traditional platforms while you build out your communities and connections in Kinscape. Here are a few safety and privacy tips to consider while networking and interacting on platforms that are open to targeted ads, behavior tracking, and other kinds of lurking:

• Understand all the site features, including any privacy settings that are available. In many cases, these may be able to help you control who will see your posts and messages, or at least identify any privacy weaknesses. Kinscape has privacy built into every feature and gives you full control of your privacy every step of the way.

• Adjust your privacy settings to avoid using default settings that might be designed to permit sharing your information. Default settings are those that were originally there when you first created the account. In Kinscape, all settings are defaulted to maximize privacy, so you get to choose when and who you share your information with every step.

• Minimize the personal information you use to create the account and never provide sensitive information such as social security number, bank account, workplace, or schools as that information could be used to serve ads or scam you. The basic information that you need to create a Kinscape account is always kept strictly confidential and secure.

• If you don’t want all your friends to see when you’re online, offline, or the last time you were online, hide your status. Note that in some cases, this may prevent you from seeing your friends’ online activity, too.  Only you let your friends, family, and other connections know when you’re available on Kinscape.

• Verify your friend requests before you accept. Be sure you really know them and understand why they want to connect. If you think you’re already friends, send them a quick note outside the platform to check in case their account has been hacked. Kinscape uses email verification to confirm friendship requests and only shows members who have consented.

• Do not share your location. Many social media apps use this function to serve you ads and let you know about nearby people and events. Turning off this feature in the app keeps your location private. In Kinscape, only you let your friends, family, and other connections know your location.

• Carefully consider what photos you post. Photos can reveal a lot of information about you, including places you like to frequent, family members, your home, and your hobbies. All this makes you a strong target for cybercriminals and might even put your loved ones at risk. When you post photos in Kinscape, you choose who sees them.

• Avoid clicking on clickbait, such as surveys and celebrity gossip, as these are often third-party apps trying to capture your private information for nefarious purposes. Kinscape does not allow these kinds of clickbait and ads on its platform. Period.

• Read the terms and conditions before blindly accepting them. In particular, note what kind of information you are agreeing to share when you sign up as this information can be valuable, and check if your content is completely deleted from the company’s servers without having to delete your entire account. While reading the legal print can be tedious, some of the terms and conditions may exceed your comfort level, so be sure your permission choices are right for you. We believe in being completely transparent and respecting your privacy in everything we do. Our simple terms and policies are clear and especially crafted with your privacy and security top of mind.

Social media has become a daily routine for many people, and can be an enriching, fun, and entertaining pleasure. Many people love sharing their daily lives and keeping up to date with friends and loved ones. At Kinscape, we believe that protecting your privacy leads to a more rewarding and richer experience. We’re confident you will too.

Create an account with Kinscape now see for yourself.