At a time when established social media platforms are facing criticism and turbulence — from TikTok’s temporary shutdown to Meta’s withdrawal from fact-checking and growing criticism over political content moderation — a new approach to social media is gaining some attention.
“Help us put control back into the hands of the people!” declares Canadian developer Daniel Supernault, whose open-source platforms aim to provide privacy-focused alternatives to mainstream social media.
Supernault’s Kickstarter campaign, launched on Jan. 24, has already exceeded its initial CA$50,000 goal, TechCrunch reports, raising CA$93,022 (approximately US$64,839) as of 11:02 a.m. PT today. The funding will support the development of three platforms within the Fediverse — a decentralized network of interconnected social media services. These platforms include Pixelfed, Loops and Sup, designed as privacy-focused alternatives to Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp, respectively. Each platform rejects traditional venture capital funding and ad-based revenue models in favor of community-driven development.
I’ve been on ethical alternatives for social media for a while and the one thing missing is just everyone I know
Takes time. Spread the message. I joined Instagram in 2017 by pure FOMO. Let’s create FOMO for the Fediverse by speaking about it over and over.
Heads up @dansup@lemmy.world the creator of these apps refuses to open source the projects stating (Loops):
Not until it’s stable
Anyone who’s followed any project of any kind knows that this is just a formal way of saying they just won’t do it.
Not only is it not truly OSS, but he’s a bit of dick. Like weirdly so. Banning people for reverse engineering the API, creating a poll on whether or not ads should be introduced (only to 180 on the matter claiming the poll was a joke but also emphasizing that the poll was in favor of ads)
On the plus side he dislikes Trump, so there’s that I guess.
In any case I highly recommend people read this comment and the sources linked:
I think the weirdest thing I ever saw him do was discuss meeting with Meta when they were working on Threads, get called out for it so he made a post somehow distancing himself from it and saying something along the lines of, “C’mon, guys; I’d never cozy up to Meta,” and then, when Threads started federating, posted a screenshot of being able to see a post from a Threads account from PixelFed and gushing about how incredible this was.
Dude is suspect, for real; glad to see I’m not the only one getting that.
EDIT: just read through what you linked to and wow; that’s so much worse than I originally thought. That’s an inane degree of unprofessionalism.
So get them on there.
“Hey dummies, this here is the place that isn’t trying to fuck us, let’s move it over.”
For me the way bigger issue is clunkiness. The fediverse needs a massive push for UI, usability, intuitiveness. Not having that will turn people away, but part of what will get it to happen is more people showing up and saying “stop making this otherwise objective improvement so janky that I second guess coming here in the first place.” Maybe a few will be inspired to help, if they have the skills.
To everybody working on the fediverse in any capacity: thank you. You are building a digital Noah’s Ark for the future.
I’ve been getting into the fediverse for less than a month, and it seems the biggest barrier for a newcomer like me is settling on a select few out of many clients/apps. One question I think a lot of people migrating want to know is (and I open this up to anyone):
What’s the fewest signups needed if we want to enjoy all of the federated replacements to corporate social media? It sounds like each client demands its own account but I’m wondering where/if there’s overlap, because…
My Lemmy account already worked on movim before i discovered movim. That’s really cool but I don’t know 100% how that worked (same community server, I think), and how many other apps/clients offer that.
Movim is XMPP and I don’t know how that overlaps with ActivityPub, but I want to better understand so that I know how few accounts are necessary so I can micro and macro blog, share original/repost images videos and music, have group communities, and have a personal page to post things on as opposed to thread/conversations/forum posts and not have to manage ten separate accounts if I can help it
And the ads… There is a correlation there I’m sure.
Yvan eht noij!
My experience is that nobody cares about privacy, moral issues or anything that might be an issue in the future. They only care about convenience, distraction and whatever their peer group is doing. So the “attention” this is getting is never going to reach the spineless mass audience.
“Mastadon”
The normies are trying :)
While Masturdon was ripe for the picking
Not too be confused with the Masturbatron.
Someone should create a mastodon instance called “Masta Dom”
Something something about race play domination kink
MastaDon is the new TruthSocial app.
Yes masta
No mention of Lemmy. Hardly a mention of Mastodon. The leading image is all the oligarch apps. I’m not impressed.
Hitching on the wagon that Pixelfed is leading is good. There’s a lot of talk even from those who don’t care about FOSS, or Fediverse projects. Let’s give some credit and let things slide so the whole can succeed.
This right here.
Look at the objective. The objective is to kill corporate sponsered social media. Well what better way to do that then by normalizing non corporate social media in the minds of the masses?
Yeah, I don’t mind Pixelfed getting attention at all. It’s just that I don’t trust Forbes, and this article seems to want to muddy the waters.
It’s Forbes - if they don’t use an image in the thumbnail of a thing people know, they might as well not use anything. It’s normie-facing.
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Impressive that a site like Forbes is writing about the Fediverse. A small step to helping it into the mainstream.
I hope that’s going to succeed. And those are the platforms in demand. While Mastodon is losing users, and we’ve been stagnating for quite some time already… Pixelfed is currently going off the charts. We’ll have to see where this leads to and if it’s going to last.
My only issue is having WhatsApp in my circle is a must.
Friends and families are more than happy to text or call. But the numerous contractors and engineers I work with and request their service, to them WhatsApp is a must to send photos of issues or videos of faults.
“Sorry, I don’t have WhatsApp but you can send me those photos or videos on Signal, Matrix, SimpleX, Briar, Wire, Session, Jabber, Threema, or Line.”
e…e-mail?
I would never tell anyone to email me…
Email alias?
That’s a last resort for me, personally.
Signal? Isn’t that the app for drugs? /s
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lol wut
Sorry, did you have a question?
Nope
They don’t have email? It’s like the 1980s when only nerds had email.
I know. But most of these engineers are on the job and on the road 99 percent of the time. And a quick WhatsApp message is all they want.
MMS?
MMS are sent by mail protocol between operators 🤭
I don’t understand how it’s worse for the guy in the truck though. I’ve never used Snapchat so I’m likely missing something.
I don’t know, but for the context let’s say that MMS are as safe as a mail could be: « not so much or not at all » depending on one privacy needs
Crypto chat! Crypto pics! Crypto vids! Nostr! Crypto!
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Can you guys help me: I have Facebook and instagram which isn’t great. Never got twitter or tiktok and I’m very glad about that. If I get bluesky will I end up using instagram and Facebook less or just get addicted to another regretful thing? What’s it actually like?
I joined Pixelfed yesterday, the Instagram alternative. I wasn’t really active on IG and haven’t logged in in years, but Pixelfed seems solid. The glaring issue though is that none of my friends use it, so it’s just a personal photo for now, but hopefully that will change.
I tried to create an account days ago and never got a confirmation email, which server did you make your account?
Metapixl and signup was instant for me.
Metapixl gang, unite!
