A brief history

For the younger generation: between 2004 and 2013, Hyves was the Dutch equivalent of Facebook (Wikipedia, n.d.). Facebook barely existed yet, and everyone and their mother had a Hyves account. The world's first political candidates' debate took place on Hyves, and the verb 'hyven' was even added to the authoritative Dutch dictionary, the Van Dale. In late 2010, De Telegraaf acquired the platform.

Meanwhile, Facebook had been launched in the United States, where it became just as wildly popular as Hyves had in the Netherlands. Thanks to venture capital, Facebook had virtually unlimited financial resources, as well as a CEO determined to conquer the world. Facebook became a competitor to Hyves, overtaking it in 2011. De Telegraaf’s attempts to turn the tide failed, and in December 2012, Hyves was shut down.

The situation today

Anyone who has been paying even a little attention over the past 15 years knows that Zuckerberg holds some deeply questionable moral views. In 2010, he said, “privacy is no longer a social norm”, a thinly veiled way of saying that he had little regard for his users' privacy. Making money was the goal: users were the means, advertising sales were the method and secretive algorithms were the tools used to make users addicted (The Guardian, 2010).

Facebook stopped at nothing to maximise its profits, lurching from one scandal to the next. Zuckerberg knew about the damage the platform was causing to users' mental health, particularly that of young people, yet chose to double down on the very practices causing that harm (Wikipedia, 2021). The sale of sensitive user data to influence US elections and the Brexit referendum (the Cambridge Analytica scandal) (Wikipedia, n.d.), only became a problem once it came to light.

Breaking away from Big Tech

In recent years, more and more people have begun to realise that not only is “Google is your friend” a lie, but the same applies to virtually all commercial online services. You may be called a 'user', but in reality, you're little more than a cash cow. But if you want out, where can you go?

De Telegraaf saw an opportunity. “We still have the Hyves brand name lying around, so let's try to bring it back to life”, Ullah explained. Hyves was supposed to free us from toxic algorithms and make social media fun and fair again.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire?

Shortly after the announcement, however, (Follow the Money, 2026) published its own investigation, titled “Hyves does run on American tech, contrary to what its owner De Telegraaf claims”, which revealed that the new, good old Hyves was far less clean than De Telegraaf would have us believe. Follow the Money concluded: “Even before you have actively become a member of Hyves, your personal data is already being processed by at least three American companies.”

Of course, De Telegraaf is simply a commercial company (unlike Mastodon, for example, which is a non-profit organisation) (JoinMastodon, 2025), so Hyves needs to generate revenue. Just like the commercial platforms it is supposed to offer an alternative to, it runs advertisements, collects vast amounts of data and sells that data as well.

The sensible choice?

The new Hyves is nowhere near as bad as Facebook, although De Telegraaf certainly hasn't set the bar very high. For now, however, Hyves doesn't seem to be much better either. So, is it a serious alternative to Facebook?

As long as a commercial company is behind a platform, making money will inevitably be its primary objective. That means users' interests will, at best, come second.

If you're looking for something fundamentally better, you should choose a provider driven not by economics, but by ideology: one that offers services built on open source software, rather than a 'black box' whose inner workings are known only to its owner.