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
WhatsApp? Just use signal already!
It’s not really a whatsapp alternative. More like a facebook messenger alternative. It replaces and encrypts dms from mastodon, pixelfed, lemmy, etc
incorrect
Care to elaborate? Genuinely i interested as to why that is
Centralized. Not good. Conversations is on fdroid and is decentralized, federated, open source and uses a mature and battle tested protocol (XMPP). If I wanted something new, I would prefer Matrix over Signal.
What about Simplex over Matrix?
Sure, it looks great. But it doesn’t have the popularity of Matrix, which is already less popular than XMPP which has enjoyed decent adoption since it’s inception.
What are some good examples of apks to use in regards to this use-case?
Why are there so many downvotes? Dude said the truth. Signal, like whatsapp, is a single point of failure. It can be enshittified just like whatsapp.
We are on Lemmy and some are against everything who is centralized.
With so many examples like twitter, reddit, Factbook, whatsapp, instagram etc. can you really blame us for not liking centralized services? Also, I don’t hate all centralized services. I love Wikipedia, Openstreetmap.org etc. Also, the outage of OSM earlier proves that single point of failure is a reason for concern.
I don’t like centralized services. I also never pretended the opposite.
This is for me and my usage. The caveat is that not everyone is in the tech. We can look at the disastrous communication of Mastodon. They focussed and lots of people promoting it focussed too on the “decentralized argument”. This backfired. It was not clear for the public. A good strategy would have been to market Mastodon as an alternative with an easy process to create an account on the general website. Tech people would have chosen another server and do their stuffs. People would learn progressively the decentralization part and move from server to server. This takes time. We have to put great strategies in places and be patient to bring the public to the fedi.
I don’t know if you know about it, but there’s this new community !growthefediverse@slrpnk.net They got some nice discussion about how to on-board more people on here.
People act like we need an alternative to Whatsapp but XMPP/Jabber exists and is much older.
what happened to pidgin
Pidgin is a client, not a specific protocol.
I know, I just remember I used to use it with jabber xmpp but I think after everyone got gtalk and then everyone got cellphones everyone moved away from those types of clients
Fun fact, Google Talk and Facebook used to be compatible with XMPP.
Nobody but a handful of nerds uses it though. You won’t get your grandparents and less tech literate friends to leave whatsapp in droves, simple as that.
And they’re not going to leave WhatsApp for Sup? either. All I’m saying is we’ve had an alternative for decades, even before WA was created, we don’t need another one, we need the one we already have to have more success.
Signal? Just use matrix already!
Unable to decrypt message
They said matrix, not element.
This happend to me on other clients too
deleted by creator
Matrix? Just use telepathy already! /s
I prefer Matrix over Signal because it required personal numbers.
Simplex is a much closer alternative
I tried using it with a friend, and it completely nuked my phone’s battery, while my friend’s phone silently killed it (likely for using too much battery). I understand that truly privacy-respecting messengers will always use slightly more power than apps that use the google notification thing, but simplex is just a complete power hog beyond any reasonable limit. Hopefully they fix it at some point, it seems like a pretty solid messenger otherwise, and their approach to privacy and anonymity is unparalleled, at least in theory.
you go on matrix and some of the communities are like no matrex bad goto simplex we’re there now
Or XMPP for those who doesn’t like matrix
Not on FDroid. Not open source
There are lots of good reasons to be upset with how Signal produces builds. And maybe Signal has no good reason why they keep opaque dependencies. But by every common definition of the term, Signal is open source. Being on FDroid is not the definition of open source.
Please don’t gatekeep. There are better ways to criticize Signal. This is not one of them.
If your releases include closed source blobs, then your software is closed source.
Following that logic:
Many popular Linux distros contain closed source blobs. Ergo Linux is closed source.
Then that particular build of the distro is closed source. The linux kernel is still open source.
Okay, so the Apache license is a “closed source” license?
Yes
Then nuance is dead and nothing is good enough.
Linux is an open source kernel. Many operating systems that use linux ars closed source, yes. This is the position of the FSF.
And its why most Linux distros have an option to include closed source or not.
Signal, however, has no option. Its just closed source software.
@ExFed @jagged_circle you mean drivers for external devices ?
Sure. That’s one possible vector. Is it “Open Source” software? Yes, they accept contributions for the community. It’s is “Libre” software? No, they depend on closed source software.
I’m trying to illustrate that the definition of “open source” can be weaponized for no good reason. Dismissing Signal because it doesn’t fit a narrow definition of “open source” makes everybody less secure. I have a hard enough time convincing my non-tech-savvy friends to switch to Signal. There’s a snowball’s chance in Hell I’ll convince them to use something even more obscure.
@ExFed Lol, I messaged 20+ connections to step over…nobody. We have a saying “what the farmer doesn’t know, the farmer doesn’t like” I fear signal has to be mentioned a thousand times from all directions before they “trust” it. The publics trust is based on repetition and the concept that a big firm has more to lose than an non profit.
Yes. A thousand times yes. The risk profiles humans naturally adapted to are not well aligned with the artificial risk profiles we see today. I can’t fault someone for not transcending their own natural instincts, because heaven knows I can’t.
You’re wasting your time. Have the move to a platform that is 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
The only part that isn’t open source is their spam filter.
Nope. Google deps