I had considered joining minds.com a while back as well. Though I am not necessarily a social media person (I am neither on f-book, Twitter nor youtube) I do follow James for quite a while basically through his website/podcasts.
My concern is simply that we cannot complain about the divide and conquer strategy of the powers that shouldn't be through their social media platforms and then hooray the alternatives that in the end follow the same narrative, namely keep the people in anonymity. We should get the people to go out and meet in person and talk to each other, interact with each other.
By saying all this and being an expat in China, I do understand the advantages of social media platforms. But I find it important to stress that, as always, a good balance between online and offline life is what everybody should strive for.