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.

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Edit: Link to the kickstarter

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[–] paequ2@lemmy.today 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If all my friends, family, and coworkers could get off WhatsApp, I would be so happy.

[–] Banana@sh.itjust.works 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm trying to convince mine to get on Signal

[–] Suoko@feddit.it 1 points 9 months ago

RCS could be also an option. Now mostly backed by google but it can be unplugged whenever we want

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 1 points 9 months ago

Has anyone here tried Loops? Does it have an algorithm and if so what's it like? Any good?

[–] oozy7@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

WhatsApp? Just use signal already!

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not on FDroid. Not open source

[–] ExFed@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If your releases include closed source blobs, then your software is closed source.

[–] ExFed@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Following that logic:

Many popular Linux distros contain closed source blobs. Ergo Linux is closed source.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] littleomid@feddit.org 1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

What about Simplex over Matrix?

[–] redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

Too much latency and the clients are too heavy for most of the people who use whatsapp. Super secure though, great potential.

[–] penguin202124@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

The founder is a bit sketchy

[–] astro_ray@piefed.social 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

We are on Lemmy and some are against everything who is centralized.

[–] astro_ray@piefed.social 1 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 month ago

You might as well push IRC, normal people will not use jabber. Matrix is closer and somewhat related to the fediverse.

[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Okay so

BlueSky = Twitter
Loops = TikTok
PixelFed = Instagram
Sup = What's App
Lemmy = Reddit

[–] shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

~~BlueSky~~ Mastodon = Twitter
Loops = TikTok
PixelFed = Instagram
Sup = What's App
Lemmy = Reddit

[–] FuryMaker@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

What can replace Facebook?

And how can anyone convince all their friends, family, and random people the follow, to jump platform?

[–] rocket_dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 months ago

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 :(

[–] shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol 1 points 9 months ago

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.