FOSSDLE PieFedOpen letter to Zuckerberg from Pixelfed creator Supernault
lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b296a60f-f8e0-4853-801…
submitted by
gi1242
edited
his post on mastodon is here:
https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/113849098386232034
Dear Mark, I hope this finds you well. I noticed something interesting today - it seems Instagram is blocking links to my little open-source project. You know, the one that lets people share photos without harvesting their personal data or forcing algorithmic feeds on them. I have to admit, I'm flattered. Who would've thought a small team of volunteers could build something that would catch your attention? We're just trying to give people a choice in how they share their memories online. No VCs, no surveillance capitalism, just code and community. Remember when Facebook started? It was about connecting people, not maximizing engagement metrics. Our project might be tiny compared to Instagram, but we're staying true to that original spirit of social media - giving people control over their online presence without turning them into products. You could've ignored us. Instead, by blocking our links, you've given us the best endorsement we could ask for. You've confirmed what we've been saying all along - that big tech is more interested in protecting their walled gardens than fostering genuine innovation. Every time you block a link to our platform, you remind people why we built it in the first place. Your action tells them there are alternatives worth exploring, ones that respect their privacy and agency. So thank you, Mark. You've turned our little project into a symbol of resistance against digital monopolies.
I remember that it was about abusing the private information of all the "dumb fucks" who created an account.
The letter is good though, but zucky will still be a billionaire whether he will read it or not.
Wasn't it about ranking female students by attractiveness or something?
Apparently, that was some other Zuckerberg project: https://www.metro.us/everything-to-know-about-facemash-the-site-zuckerberg-created-in-college-to-rank-hot-women/
Is hotornot.com still live?
I dont think it was ranking, no.
But it was for getting their PII. Like photos, location, relationship status, and phone number. Helped a lot of college kids get laid, myself included.
Does pixelfed work for this too?
That’s just it. Zuck could sell off and close shop and live large for the rest of his life. And yet he chooses to fuck around with people instead.
It’s weird.
There’s creating. And then there’s harvesting content and creations of others. The former is the only one that makes you interesting.
When you think about it, too, you realize these people have nothing good inside them. They seek power because externally people covet power. Normal people covet power because they want control of their own lives but mark has control and doesn't fucking get it. He thinks power is inherently good so he steals it all away for himself but no matter how hard he trys he can't look inward and find anything that means something more than that. It's truly sad and grotesque. My mind could be set on 100 different paths that would fill me with so much satisfaction that nothing else would matter and mark can't find one for himself.
Yeah also facebook started as an evolution of men rating women on his campus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Facemash It should be no surprise that zuck has recently started proclaiming that he wants a more masculine corporate identity, it's been that way from the beginning
It was first provided to college/edu addresses. It wasn't what it is today at all.
As evil as it's sounds, he's not wrong.
I deleted my account when that came out, so I've been Facebook free since something like 2006.
I didn't even join until then. I thought that info came out way later?
Maybe it was 2008 instead of 06? Seemed like it came out very early, I'd only had an account for a year or so I think, shortly after it was opened up outside EDU domains.
Facebook was about, "connecting people" though. It was the first stage in its growth. It was also before monetization and was actively losing money.
It was about growing the user base so more data could be harvested, not about the connections being made.
it was always all about the data, even back in the hot-or-not clone days.
The dream: releasing a scathingly cordial open letter to an oligarch that has a real chance of ruining their day.
It would probably work on Musk. I'll bet you his ego is that fragile.
Nah, musks to much of a manly man to be bothered by it.
Adrian Dittman might lose his goddamn mind, however.
You should look up a picture of that dweeb sometime, or listen to any of the bitchly things he says. It'll cure you of that notion in about a third of a second.
Adrian Dittman is Musk’s alt account on Twitter.
Reread his comment. It was pretty clever.
The same richest man in the world that cosplays as an elite gamer but outs himself on stream all for the approval of the gaming community?
Doubt. He took away a basement dwellers check mark because the basement dweller said he’s bad at video games
Reread that comment. It went straight over your head.
You aren’t even wrong. I stopped reading when I read Elon musk is a manly man completely ignoring the Adrian line
Cut the explanation back out, let the idiots seethe.
you right. done.
You might want to do a bit more research, as it seems settled that Adrian Dittman is an actual real person and *not* Muskrat's sockpuppet. Maybe be less of a dick about it too.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/05/bad-news-for-adrian-dittman-elon-musk-truthers/
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/adrian-dittmann-elon-musk-1235224131/
Connecting Threads in a stupid way to the fediverse but blocking a fediverse website at the same time. I don't need to understand that right?
But guise we should let them federate!
Yeah, I argued against that at the beginning and I got downvoted into the dirt. Curious.
the overwhelming bulk of the internet is made up of idiots, who seethe and hiss at anyone that has two functional neurons to produce a spark of intelligent thought with.
Which makes sense because they are just regular people who are, unsurprisingly, mostly idiots.
Half of them are dumber than average...
Does threads finally support reading responses from the fediverse? Or seeing posts from the fediverse? Because if it does, trying to get pixelfed and other alternatives trending might be a way to get some attention.
Anti Commercial-AI license
Never heard of them until this Streisand created issue.
for clarity he built Facebook to rate how hot women at his college were...
This letter reads like if Zuck was an ideologically driven tech-anarchist that wanted to connect people that became old and fell for the money but that's not really true lol
To be clearer he stole the whole thing because he was always an entitled sack of poo. He never created a thing, just like Elon.
"Oh hi Mark..."
Honestly, though, Zuck doesn't care. He won't even read this. Billionaires live in an entirely different universe from the rest of us.
This letter isn’t actually directed to Mark, it’s an ad.
Except he didn't mention the product name anywhere in the letter. Looks like he purposefully avoided it being interpreted as an ad.
Given his target audience, that is the best type of ad.
Also means people can safely quote from it on those platforms.
Further, Daniel needs to read up on Zuck's history. He's been a motherfucker since he was a kid.
Oh no.
Please, for the love of god, think more tactically. This is a brilliant move on Daniel's part, and a fantastic example for the fediverse more broadly to follow.
He thinking about why he isn't king just like the rest of them. Increasingly we are wondering the same thing. Why is he not like almost almost all past kings. In the past.
@moineau @gi1242 Until it's over and their costly empires collapse, would not be the first who ends up broke. Fortune is not like rock, although they try to make it like that, they try to cement their throne ... whel empires rise and kings fall. The fall usually starts with decadence and arrogance. He already bought his watch...and for the paradise pd fans "higher hair" 🤭
Having just joined pixelfed, struggling a bit to discover it, I find this letter greatly motivating 😎
Any project with a countdown timer, "days till Zuckerberg blocks us" is one I can get behind.
The only Meta product I'm kinda forced to have is Whatsapp, as my work and my family use that to communicate, and I have tried to explain Signal to my mom, but to no avail.
I just got set up on Simple X Chat. From my cursory research it seems to have the best security going in a chat app right now. I find the UI really slick too. It has all the features I use in a chat app anyway. The only thing to be aware of is that all the messages are saved locally, so backup/recovery needs to be handled by you. There's a couple videos an YouTube that go over the app.
All that being said, I still have WhatsApp on my phone. There's still the same problem of getting everyone in your life to download another app.
lol. so I told my mom im deleting Whatsapp. if she wants to keep in touch with me she can install signal, or pay for international texts and calls.
she installed signal 😃
Seriously. There is no need to be patient with moms or anyone not „understanding“ Signal. It’s the same thing as WhatsApp just with a different coat of paint when it comes to using it.
I did exactly what you did. And lo and behold my mom is now using Signal to message me.
@madjo @gi1242 text them ?
Texting costs extra, specially internationally? Also it has a limited feature set and poor intercompatibility.
I send a lot of pics, especially with work, texting a pic costs money.
Sure, I'll be out of the loop regarding work related news and I'll just text all my coworkers individually. That's just not feasible!
I've tried several times over the course of a few years (every time Meta or Facebook or Whatsapp was negatively in the news) to move people away from that platform.
I've resigned to the fact that people are stubborn and don't want to move. I have a Signal account in case someone does move.
The only benefit of living in America is I can just use iMessage most of the time.
how is that a benefit
Why would you
All my family use it like OP
Switching masters isn’t freedom. I say this but I am forced to use both.
Multiprotocol apps helped keeping a variety of apps to communicate wherever we were.
Now it's WhatsApp in Europe and usa, telegram in Russian countries, Viber in Greece, wechat in China, line in Japan (?)
But what about the blue ticks?
They wrote *that* to the guy with *People just submitted it. I don't know why. They "trust me". Dumb fucks.*?
Where do i download it?
Android app on google play store
iPhone app on apple app store
Pixelfed page about apps including 3rd party ones available
Pixelfed page on how to join
That's not how FaceBook started, if it were then Mark Zuckerberg would have been using it.
It started so he could creep on girls on their campus. Nerds had hard time to socialize, so they made a digital social network to help them with the cause. Dunno if it did. But his early interviews are creepy af, lol
Why are you trying to appeal to the better nature of a bad faith actor....
Because this is free advertising as well
While I really wish for PixelFed to take off, like Mastodon and Lenmy did, the current situation, IMHO, is just *confusing* to say the least.
So, here are two pixelfed mobile apps, an older one which is just a wrapper of the web version, and a newer polished one.
I've the new "polished" one installed for a few months now, and it seemes as if it's development has stalled. The app just feels unfinished at this point.
Now, I get it, it's a volunteer project, and there are probably just a handful of people working on it. And this is totally fine, I'm not expecting them to deliver an Instagram clone anytime soon.
However, a few months ago, they announced "Loops", with pre-signups and some marketing yada yada... All this, while there's still an unfinished app for their core product. But, I went ahead and signed up, just to find out, it was just crickets for a few months.
Then, recently I logged in again (on the web), and saw an they have an App for Loops which seems to be in the works, and upon testing it, I came to the same conclusion, it's just an unfinished barebones TikTok.
Again, I'm not ranting about PixelFed, but IMHO, if they want to get serious, they should focus on one thing, until time and resources allow them to explore other things.
I would love to see it succeed as an alternative.
Everyone with their own domain should set up a
307 Temporary Redirectwith some short URI and start publishing it for people to use instead.What url should the 307 redirect to?
https://pixelfed.org/
Maybe main pixelfed instance?
Good-ol Streisand affect
Is this actually getting traction outside of the fediverse? If not, I don’t think it achieved Streisand effect.
Will @zuck@threads.net ever read this though? Does he even use that account?
Anti Commercial-AI license
I'm all for pixelfed. I have a pixelfed account. This is a fun way to talk about the project.
I was pretty surprised at how the app is essentially a complete clone of IG. like the styling and layout of every button is pixel for pixel the exact same as IG. Innovation is one thing but copying everything about a program and calling it your own I'm not so sure about.
I mean zuckerberg stole the whole idea of Facebook from the winkleboss twins in the first place. Bought Instagram because he doesn’t gave the ability to create new good products. Then he copied Snapchat’s short form video into Instagram. So I’ve zero sympathy for him or Meta as they just copy shit and all their own ideas are shit (ex. now introducing legs). But if it were my project I’d make sure its different enough so won’t lose it if it’s sued for that
yeah that all makes sense.
i guess i just raised an eyebrow as the author of the letter was like "its just code and community" whilst absolutely copying their design down to the order of the items on the popup menu for posts
There's a theory that copyright can help artists make a living.
But copying a design from a corpo after they've already made oodles of money is more like liberating the design for use of everyone.
well the the learning curve for new users is flat and adoption of the app will be more acceptable to more people.
I think it's a smart idea - they can always make changes to the UI in time as the platform gets more people.
You believe that making the learning curve "flat" means that you have to copy the exact shape, size and style of the icons?
Yes I do.
If app A has an icon that when touched does a specific thing, and app B has the exact same icon that does the exact same thing there is nothing new to learn. The learning curve is flat.
If you are arguing about the ethical and legal aspect of one app using the exact same UI as another that is a different conversation and a good one to have.
I guess I am talking ethics. I guess I have a vague sense of hypocrisy with the 'open letter' taking a vague moral/ethical high ground while it's author has ripped off the design of a different piece of software (at least the UI) pixel for pixel
I'm sure he'll read it.
Your underestimate the fragility of a lonely billionaires ego.
Now I understand why I didn't care closing my Facebook account years ago: it was for cross posting this sort of information.
Even if my Facebook feed is a sad desert, I hope I can be censored by the guy who rejects fact checkers
Why did the pixelfed creator have to fuck this up and treat his own community horribly? And such timing too. ( the pixelfed creator was acting horribly to the mastodon and other fediverse programmers and they came out and made a statement about how they don’t like being treated that way )
FYI, put two spaces and two newlines after the end of a paragraph to put whitespace between (and any platform that uses markdown).
Please edit the post
This is what we call a home run.
Smart enough to realize it, but not smart enough to not say it.
Rather than write a public letter pointing it out, he could have just let it happen.
When your enemy is helping you, don't tell them.
It might encourage them to stop.
And here we are talking about the letter. In this instance, no news is bad news.
After the news reported on it (404 media and others) Facebook already reversed their decision and unblocked it, I thought
The letter will get published by the media. This was a good idea.
Will it? I doubt CNN, Faux News, WaPo, or any big news org will even know Pixelfed exists, much less that the creator wrote a snarky message to Zucc.
Anti Commercial-AI license
I said media, not corporations
What's "media" to you?
Anti Commercial-AI license
Orgs who employ journalists who do journalistic work
That is one kick ass last name!
We got
Ault
Nault
Renault
And Supernault!
Cringy, inaccurate, and reeks of arrogance. 200k users. I bet it got blocked because some bot started spamming the platform.
At the end of the day, the critical mass of users will be based on 2 things. Ease of use or engagement and content. Content creators won't go to platforms that don't bring in money or get yelled at for trying to make money.
Zuck sucks but this open letter is embarrassing. Dial back the smarm and self-righteousness a couple notches. I get it's marketing and not really an open letter but still, cringe
Yeah. Remeber Twitter blocking Mastodon links? Nobody wrote ANY letter. Cringe
Arse Suckaturd founder of aidscock.