theLove vs Facebook: what's actually different
By Cajetan
Facebook has 3.6 billion daily active users. theLove launched on February 14, 2026, and we're just getting started.
This isn't a David vs. Goliath story. It's a comparison of two fundamentally different products. One built around advertising. One built around you.
Here's what's actually different.
Who can see what you post
On Facebook, your posts go to friends and followers, subject to the settings you choose. You can make posts public, friends-only, or custom. Those settings give you some control.
What you can't control is what Facebook itself sees and does with your content behind the scenes. Every post, photo, and interaction is processed by Meta's systems regardless of your privacy settings.
On theLove, the people you chose to have in your world can see what you post. That's it. We don't see it in any meaningful way. We're not analyzing it. We're not building a profile from it. We're not training AI on it.
Your posts are for your people.
What's in your feed
On Facebook, roughly 30% of what you see in your feed is content recommended by AI from accounts you don't follow. The algorithm is designed to surface content that drives engagement. That means your feed is a mix of posts from people you know and content from strangers, brands, and publishers that Facebook's systems have decided you're likely to react to.
Organic reach for any given post averages about 1.65%. Meaning: even when you post something, most of your friends probably won't see it.
On theLove, your feed is chronological. You see posts from the people you've connected with, in the order they posted them. No recommendations from strangers. No content from brands you've never heard of. No AI deciding what's worth showing you.
What your people post is what you see.
Advertising
On Facebook, ads are the product. Meta made $201 billion in 2025. Almost all of it came from advertising revenue. Ads appear in the feed, in stories, in Reels, in Messenger, and across Meta's network of partner sites and apps.
The ads are targeted using data collected from your behavior on and off the platform. What you search for, what you click on, what you buy, and what you post all inform which ads you see.
On theLove, there are no ads. Not now. Not ever. We don't have advertisers. We don't have a data business. We charge $5 a month or $50 a year, and that's our revenue model.
Your feed is not a product we're selling.
What happens to your data
On Facebook, your data powers the advertising business. Posts, photos, reactions, location data, device information, and browsing behavior across the web all feed into Meta's profile of you. That profile is what advertisers pay to reach.
In 2025, Meta also began using public posts and photos to train its AI models. US users have no opt-out for this.
On theLove, we collect what we need to run the service. That's it. We don't sell data. We don't share it with advertisers. We don't use it to train AI. We don't build advertising profiles.
You're a customer, not an inventory item.
Scale and features
This is where honesty matters most.
Facebook has features theLove doesn't have. Marketplace. Live streaming. Two decades of development. A billion-dollar infrastructure.
theLove has posts, photos, a chronological feed, reactions, groups, and events. It's intentionally focused on the people you've chosen to let in. We're not trying to be everything. We're trying to be the place for the people you actually want to stay close to.
Groups on theLove work the way you'd expect. Private, public, invite only, or application required. You control who gets in.
Events on theLove are for the people in your world. A way to gather the people who matter, without ads and without noise.
If you need to sell something locally, Facebook Marketplace is still the tool for that. theLove is for the other thing. The closer thing. The birthdays and the dinners and the ordinary Tuesday that you want the right people to see.
Cost
Facebook is free to use.
The business model is advertising. Your attention and data are what make it free.
theLove costs $5 a month or $50 a year.
The business model is subscriptions. Your payment is what makes it work.
Neither model is inherently wrong. They're just different trade-offs. Free means ads and data collection. Paid means neither.
Who theLove is for
theLove isn't for everyone. Facebook is.
theLove is for people who want a smaller circle. People who've grown tired of the noise. People who want to share something and know that the right people will see it, without an algorithm in the way.
It's for people who've thought about what "free" actually costs and decided the trade-off isn't worth it anymore.
If that's you, we'd love to have you.