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
BlueSkyMastodon = TwitterLoops = TikTok
PixelFed = Instagram
Sup = What’s App
Lemmy = Reddit
SupSignal = WhatsApp@Andromxda why?? :blobBone_bounce: @fediverse @shnizmuffin
There’s nothing inherently wrong with Sup, but it’s very new and hasn’t had the chance to stand the test of time yet. It also has very few users and isn’t as intuitive as straightforward as Signal, which is basically just a carbon copy of WhatsApp (UI/UX-wise). Network effect is a very important aspect.
Federated networks aren’t easy to explain to users, this is already a huge issue for Mastodon, and it’s probably why it hasn’t taken over social media.
As other comments here have pointed out, Sup would be a closer alternative to stuff like Facebook Messenger than to WhatsApp. I’d say Signal is still the best option for private and secure instant messaging.
Sup is more like Messenger I guess? Signal will fit more.
What can replace Facebook?
And how can anyone convince all their friends, family, and random people the follow, to jump platform?
There’s Frendica
Diaspora is the fediverse version of Facebook. It hasn’t taken off quite like lemmy or mastodon and it’s much older, but still seems to be in active development.
Convincing family is hard, I have a lot of them moved over to Linux already, but they don’t want to quit 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.
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.
Which is meaningless because:
My point, precisely. There is no Pixelfed-only feed.
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.
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.
I might think about if I could actually see absolutely anything without creating an account.
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.
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.
https://pleroma.social/
Friendica.
As for convincing people to join, I’m not sure if we can. Lead a horse to water and all that.
Friendica
But what can replace Facebook that doesn’t look like it was made in 1996? ;)
Isn’t Hubzilla the next one they made?
Was started by the Friendica developer but it is more of a federated CMS where Friendica is more of a social network, although they share similar DNA and can do some similar things. They are now being developed by different teams so will tend to diverge more over time.