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
The number of cell phone companies is so high nowadays that it could be compared to the number of fediverse instances. They would just need a prepackaged docker to set it all up and they would just do it. No need for eternal history of messages and media, they could manage it a la WhatsApp.
I worked for years in one of the biggest in telecom companies in Europe. They supported RCS for about 2 years, before they stopped. I tried to restart the project, but there was no interest. It is viewed as a waste of money since customers already use Google Messages, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and WhatsApp.
So Snapchat is lossinh money with its service? I don’t think so
I think you may have misunderstood what I wrote.
Snapchat makes money through showing you ads. RCS is something very different. It is not social media. RCS has no ads in the same way that SMS has no ads.
Telecom providers have to spend money to support RCS. Telecom providers don’t want to spend money on RCS if it’s not going to earn them money. They believe RCS is not going to earn them money because the customers aren’t interested. The customers aren’t interested because they can already chat with each other through social media and chat apps.
So google is just loosing money with their Jibe servers? There is no ads there. I guess they can make money with RCS business accounts if they wanted.
But let’s get back to the fediverse question, google manages RCS by providing jibe servers for mobile operators right? Because they were lazy to .manage it (and they’re not that techy when it comes to servers probably, they’re good with antenna and similar mostly) Can’t anyone offer a jibe server for any mobile operator? Google is not a global mobile provider at all. What secret law is behind RCS?
Google is not making a profit from RCS, but they don’t have to be loosing money either. I don’t know the price Google is charging telecom providers. It’s either very cheap or for free. That’s why many telecom providers choose Google’s solution. I believe that Google is treating it as an investment. I assume that Google plan to charge more in the future or that they want data from the users. Maybe both.
Telecom providers know how to do all of this themselves, but it’s going to cost more money than using Google’s solution. Someone else can absolutely start providing RCS to telecom providers but they will have a hard time trying to sell it to telecom providers if they’re not cheaper than Google.
Is the RCS technology fully open source? If yes it could be nice to try to find a fediverse - friendly mobile operator willing to create a bridge…
It’s not open source
still more work then just letting google handle it for them, so wont happen