The developer behind Pixelfed, Loops, and Sup, open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, respectively, is now raising funds on Kickstarter to fuel the apps’ further development.
The trio is part of the growing open social web, also known as the fediverse, powered by the same ActivityPub protocol used by X alternative Mastodon. The latter saw increased signups and use after the company formerly known as Twitter sold to Elon Musk in October 2022 and during the X exodus that followed the U.S. presidential election.
In the months and years following that sale, open source and decentralized apps like Mastodon and Bluesky (which uses the newer AT Protocol), have continued to grow their user bases, as people sought alternatives to centralized social media apps controlled by billionaires like Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Edit: Link to the kickstarter
I’m all for fediverse.
WhatsApp? Just use signal already!
Not on FDroid. Not open source
But it is open source. And there’s a fork of Signal available on F-Droid called Molly.
It is not open source. That’s why its not allowed on fdroid. It has parts that are open source, like most apps. But the app itself is closed source and a risk
Signal? Just use matrix already!
Unable to decrypt message
They said matrix, not element.
This happend to me on other clients too
If all my friends, family, and coworkers could get off WhatsApp, I would be so happy.
I’m trying to convince mine to get on Signal
RCS could be also an option. Now mostly backed by google but it can be unplugged whenever we want
afaik not really, only cell phone companies can apply to join the rcs federation and all of them just outsourced it to google and apple so it under control of just 2 companies.
so no, rcs is not an open standard.
I’m not going to use a proprietary protocol to chat through Google’s (Jibe) servers running proprietary software. Even if the messages are e2ee, Google can still collect metadata. Google never provides anything for free and collection of data is kinda their thing.
yeahhh nah
Okay so
BlueSky = Twitter
Loops = TikTok
PixelFed = Instagram
Sup = What’s App
Lemmy = RedditBlueSkyMastodon = Twitter
Loops = TikTok
PixelFed = Instagram
Sup = What’s App
Lemmy = RedditWhat can replace Facebook?
And how can anyone convince all their friends, family, and random people the follow, to jump platform?
What can replace Facebook?
Facebook was a mistake that doesn’t need to be repeated, but both Friendica and GoToSocial have facebookish UI, if that’s what you mean.
100% disagree. Facebook, at one point, had a close to ideal interface, in my opinion.
Mastodon adopted the very annoying features of automatically tagging users, and character limits which inherently create conflict, and make reading statements confusing as fuck. Then refuses to offer an option for admins to adjust it. And I need a fuckin decoder ring to decipher the replies.
PixelFed adopted the very annoying features of Instagram that require photos, but no one cares and they just post photos of text, and with the federation of other platforms like Mastodon, that’s just going to happen. It also lacks the ability to follow hashtags, so it’s actually worse than IG in some ways.
Facebook supports all types of media and the groups feature actually works pretty well. I probably don’t need to explain what makes it shitty now.
Don’t get me wrong, I hope people join any of these, as they’re inherently superior to their more popular alternatives, but I wish the devs would actually consider how the platform should work rather than just copying and pasting their mistakes.
Wonderful. You can just make a different frontend for any of these platforms.
Thats the beauty of open source. The protocol is open, the backend is open, the frontend is open.
Example: you go and find 10 friends and decide you want this to happen. Everyone takes 100 coins (whatever your currency is) and you post on the fedi for a dev that can make you a frontend similar to facebook for 1000 bucks initially. While developing, you see if more people want to use it and maybe get more cash so your app looks better in the end.
Done. You made your own. The end.
PixelFed adopted the very annoying features of Instagram that require photos, but no one cares and they just post photos of text, and with the federation of other platforms like Mastodon, that’s just going to happen. It also lacks the ability to follow hashtags, so it’s actually worse than IG in some ways.
The purpose of Pixelfed is photo-sharing. When I’m using Pixelfed I don’t want to see everything, I just want photos. It is insanely rare for people on Pixelfed to post images of text. In fact, the global feed is mostly useless on Pixelfed because you’re inundated with Mastodon users “quoting” by posting images of text. But they just announced that they’re soon including a setting to allow text posts, allowing the Pixelfed app to be used as a Mastodon client.
You can follow hash tags on Pixelfed.
I don’t see why everything has to be everything. Mastodon is for micro-blogging. If you’re posting 20,000 word essays, you’re not really micro-blogging. These all seem like reasonable choices for their intended purposes, not like mistakes at all. It might just be a mistake for you to choose those when what you want is Friendica.
It is insanely rare for people on Pixelfed to post images of text.
Which is meaningless because:
- PF is federated
- Not yet
the global feed is mostly useless on Pixelfed because you’re inundated with Mastodon users “quoting” by posting images of text
My point, precisely. There is no Pixelfed-only feed.
I don’t see why everything has to be everything
Because there’s no value in limiting what the users can do on it. Because it’s very easy to bypass, but in a very shitty way, which people are already doing all the time.
Yes, there needs to be a Pixelfed-global feed. It was planned at one point. Right now, the Pixelfed servers are islands separated by an ocean of Mastodon posts. It’s a problem.
Because there’s no value in limiting what the users can do on it. Because it’s very easy to bypass, but in a very shitty way, which people are already doing all the time.
I already told you the value. When I’m on Pixelfed, I only want to see photos. If it was like you’re proposing, I’d stop using it and encourage someone to make the thing that currently exists. If I’m on loops, I don’t want a bunch of long- or short-form text. At all. Including other things is removing value.
You should use Friendica! It’s exactly what you want. We can all have what we want.
Facebook’s entire point at it’s inception was to be Horny On Main. Creepy on purpose and straight up dangerous to use for about half of the user base. All posts public. Location sharing enabled by default. No scrubbing of EXIF data. It was a stalker’s paradise.
Friendica
But what can replace Facebook that doesn’t look like it was made in 1996? ;)
As for convincing people to join, I’m not sure if we can. Lead a horse to water and all that.
BlueSky is another corporate microblog platform, which could end up going the way of Twitter. I’m not saying it will be bought by a fascist billionaire, but they will be beholden to advertisers at some point in the near future.
I would highly recommend finding a Mastodon, Akkoma, or GoToSocial instance that aligns with your values and use that instead. If you are concerned about the network effects of not being on the ‘biggest’ platform where all the celebs are, there is a Bluesky->Mastodon bridge available.
You forgot someone…
No we didn’t
Bluesky can fuck right off.
Btw, you can also donate on Patreon, OpenCollective, and Liberapay.
I’m guessing using Kickstarter has the benefit of adding hype as a new thing. I’ve always been curious about Open Collective and Liberapay. Have you tried it? Was it a smooth process?
I donated with open collective before and it was a pretty smooth experience
I went with Patreon. The CEO seems like a cool guy that just wants to support other creatives. Hope he’s actually as cool as he comes across.
Heard they take a bigger cut tho, do you know how much was it when you donated?
No idea, but good to know. I’ll consider switching my next contribution to a different service. Thanks!
which uses the newer AT Protocol
This “newer” seems to be doing a lot of work.
Never heard of Sup for some reason, gotta check it out.
Sup hasn’t been released yet, so that’s probably why you haven’t heard of it. Dan says beta testing launches early 2025.
Is it really just one guy writing three different platforms?
- PixelFed
- SUP
- Loops
- fedidb
- pubkit
Five.
There’s hundreds of other contributers, but he started them all and did the bulk of the work. The plan is to have more regular developers if they get enough donations.
Ah ok that makes sense. In my head this guy was maintaining four codebases which did seem impossible
I’m really excited for it. I might actually be able to get my family off Whatsapp because of fuckerberg, but I can’t get them to move twice. I’m debating pushing signal now, or waiting it out for sup
The challenge with messengers like Matrix and WhatsApp (and I assume sup, correct me if I’m wrong) is that they don’t encrypt the metadata like Signal’s sealed sender. Knowing exactly who you talk to and how frequently is a very juicy target for the government … And the government right now is orange Hitler and his ragtag team of muppets, so I trust that they’ll abuse whatever power and knowledge they have to the utmost.
Basically a tool to add encrypted messaging to the fediverse, using the Signal protocol.
It started out as a major upgrade to Pixelfed’s dm system and got spun off into it’s own thing, same as Loops.
Has anyone here tried Loops? Does it have an algorithm and if so what’s it like? Any good?
I got it on my android phone. Currently just a chronological stream off all posts. A lot is just resposts of tiktoks or other cribbed content. When it’s not taken from tiktok, I feel like it’s pretty mild random video of pets or landscapes.
It is has a “For You” tab but it’s not doing anything yet. Or… I don’t know what it’s doing, to be honest.
Dansup said that he’s adding an algorithm soon.
Man, Dansup is tearing it up like an absolute beast. Donate to his fund.
Folks if you still have legacy social, agitation over there is doing rounds right now. Unfortunately, there’s significantly fewer of us working to get people onboarded than thee last migration. If you still have those accounts, please consider plugging fedi.
Yeah, I haven’t logged into my fb account for a couple of years but this might be a good reason to go in and leave something in my ‘bio’ or whatever monstrosity it is these days, I can’t even remember.
