FOSSDLE PieFedOpen source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp raise funds on Kickstarter | TechCrunch
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breakfastmtn
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techcrunch.com/2025/01/24/open-source-alternati…
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
If all my friends, family, and coworkers could get off WhatsApp, I would be so happy.
I'm trying to convince mine to get on Signal
I just did convince my family and all close friends to move to signal.
RCS could be also an option. Now mostly backed by google but it can be unplugged whenever we want
I'm not going to use a proprietary protocol to chat through Google's (Jibe) servers running proprietary software. Even if the messages are e2ee, Google can still collect metadata. Google never provides anything for free and collection of data is kinda their thing.
Also, Google will kill RCS sooner or later.
yeahhh nah
afaik not really, only cell phone companies can apply to join the rcs federation and all of them just outsourced it to google and apple so it under control of just 2 companies.
so no, rcs is not an open standard.
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.
still more work then just letting google handle it for them, so wont happen
Stuff like this is a major, major component of dealing with nazis.
And even after they're dealt with, it's a better way of doing things, anyway. If it's a company, you're not on their social media platform, as much as you can possibly manage.
Which is a lot.
I'm all for fediverse.
It would help with a lot, yah
This "newer" seems to be doing a lot of work.
Btw, you can also donate on Patreon, OpenCollective, and Liberapay.
I’m guessing using Kickstarter has the benefit of adding hype as a new thing. I’ve always been curious about Open Collective and Liberapay. Have you tried it? Was it a smooth process?
I donated with open collective before and it was a pretty smooth experience
I went with Patreon. The CEO seems like a cool guy that just wants to support other creatives. Hope he’s actually as cool as he comes across.
Heard they take a bigger cut tho, do you know how much was it when you donated?
No idea, but good to know. I’ll consider switching my next contribution to a different service. Thanks!
We use Open Collective to fund the instance and it has been pretty smooth sailing. Would definitely recommend to anyone running an instance.
Man, Dansup is tearing it up like an absolute beast. Donate to his fund.
Has anyone here tried Loops? Does it have an algorithm and if so what's it like? Any good?
It has a "For You" tab but it's not doing anything yet. Or... I don't know what it's doing, to be honest.
Dansup said that he's adding an algorithm soon.
https://mastodon.social/@dansup/113849380427277273
I got it on my android phone. Currently just a chronological stream off all posts. A lot is just resposts of tiktoks or other cribbed content. When it's not taken from tiktok, I feel like it's pretty mild random video of pets or landscapes.
Folks if you still have legacy social, agitation over there is doing rounds right now. Unfortunately, there's significantly fewer of us working to get people onboarded than thee last migration. If you still have those accounts, please consider plugging fedi.
Yeah, I haven't logged into my fb account for a couple of years but this might be a good reason to go in and leave something in my 'bio' or whatever monstrosity it is these days, I can't even remember.
Let's hope this helps dansup get past the recent unpleasantness and he can delegate more. His output is amazing but burnout is a concern.
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
Signal is just like WhatsApp. Same features. So yeah, that’s incorrect.
no
ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ Allllrighty then
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.
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
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.
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?
Simplex is more like Briar or Cwtch
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.
Signal? Just use matrix already!
Banned
They said matrix, not element.
Matrix? Just use telepathy already! /s
I prefer Matrix over Signal because it required personal numbers.
Deleted by author
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.
Or XMPP for those who doesn't like matrix
you go on matrix and some of the communities are like no matrex bad goto simplex we're there now
Banned
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.
Banned
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.
But it is open source. And there's a fork of Signal available on F-Droid called Molly.
Banned
The only part that isn't open source is their spam filter.
Banned
Never heard of Sup for some reason, gotta check it out.
Sup hasn't been released yet, so that's probably why you haven't heard of it. Dan says beta testing launches early 2025.
Is it really just one guy writing three different platforms?
There's hundreds of other contributers, but he started them all and did the bulk of the work. The plan is to have more regular developers if they get enough donations.
Ah ok that makes sense. In my head this guy was maintaining four codebases which did seem impossible
It's not impossible if you are a good developer
Five.
Loops and sup started as upgrades to pixelfed and then got spun off.
I'm really excited for it. I might actually be able to get my family off Whatsapp because of fuckerberg, but I can't get them to move twice. I'm debating pushing signal now, or waiting it out for sup
The challenge with messengers like Matrix and WhatsApp (and I assume sup, correct me if I'm wrong) is that they don't encrypt the metadata like Signal's sealed sender. Knowing exactly who you talk to and how frequently is a very juicy target for the government ... And the government right now is orange Hitler and his ragtag team of muppets, so I trust that they'll abuse whatever power and knowledge they have to the utmost.
I don't know how sup will be, but signal is a mature product, run by a nonprofit, with functional apps etc. I moved my group of friends and my family years ago and it has all the essential features. People want stuff that just works, especially for talking and communicating daily. I doubt sup will be the same level of maturity while also offering the same security and privacy features as signal does, at least for years to come.
Lol fuckerberg, its too funny
(Sorry I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion)
It started out as a major upgrade to Pixelfed's dm system and got spun off into it's own thing, same as Loops.
Basically a tool to add encrypted messaging to the fediverse, using the Signal protocol.
Okay so
BlueSky = Twitter
Loops = TikTok
PixelFed = Instagram
Sup = What's App
Lemmy = Reddit
Mastodon = Twitter
Loops = TikTok
PixelFed = Instagram
Sup = What's App
Lemmy = Reddit
What can replace Facebook?
And how can anyone convince all their friends, family, and random people the follow, to jump platform?
Friendica.
As for convincing people to join, I'm not sure if we can. Lead a horse to water and all that.
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.
100% disagree. Facebook, at one point, had a close to ideal interface, in my opinion.
Mastodon adopted the very annoying features of automatically tagging users, and character limits which inherently create conflict, and make reading statements confusing as fuck. Then refuses to offer an option for admins to adjust it. And I need a fuckin decoder ring to decipher the replies.
PixelFed adopted the very annoying features of Instagram that require photos, but no one cares and they just post photos of text, and with the federation of other platforms like Mastodon, that's just going to happen. It also lacks the ability to follow hashtags, so it's actually worse than IG in some ways.
Facebook supports all types of media and the groups feature actually works pretty well. I probably don't need to explain what makes it shitty now.
Don't get me wrong, I hope people join any of these, as they're inherently superior to their more popular alternatives, but I wish the devs would actually consider how the platform should work rather than just copying and pasting their mistakes.
The purpose of Pixelfed is photo-sharing. When I'm using Pixelfed I don't want to see everything, I just want photos. It is insanely rare for people on Pixelfed to post images of text. In fact, the global feed is mostly useless on Pixelfed because you're inundated with Mastodon users "quoting" by posting images of text. But they just announced that they're soon including a setting to allow text posts, allowing the Pixelfed app to be used as a Mastodon client.
You can follow hash tags on Pixelfed.
I don't see why everything has to be everything. Mastodon is for micro-blogging. If you're posting 20,000 word essays, you're not really micro-blogging. These all seem like reasonable choices for their intended purposes, not like mistakes at all. It might just be a mistake for you to choose those when what you want is Friendica.
Wonderful. You can just make a different frontend for any of these platforms.
Thats the beauty of open source. The protocol is open, the backend is open, the frontend is open.
Example: you go and find 10 friends and decide you want this to happen. Everyone takes 100 coins (whatever your currency is) and you post on the fedi for a dev that can make you a frontend similar to facebook for 1000 bucks initially. While developing, you see if more people want to use it and maybe get more cash so your app looks better in the end.
Done. You made your own. The end.
Facebook's entire point at it's inception was to be Horny On Main. Creepy on purpose and straight up dangerous to use for about half of the user base. All posts public. Location sharing enabled by default. No scrubbing of EXIF data. It was a stalker's paradise.
Banned
But what can replace Facebook that doesn't look like it was made in 1996? ;)
Isn't Hubzilla the next one they made?
Was started by the Friendica developer but it is more of a federated CMS where Friendica is more of a social network, although they share similar DNA and can do some similar things. They are now being developed by different teams so will tend to diverge more over time.
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 :(
There's Frendica
https://pleroma.social/
Sup is more like Messenger I guess? Signal will fit more.
Signal = WhatsApp
@Andromxda why?? :blobBone_bounce: @fediverse @shnizmuffin
There's nothing inherently wrong with Sup, but it's very new and hasn't had the chance to stand the test of time yet. It also has very few users and isn't as intuitive as straightforward as Signal, which is basically just a carbon copy of WhatsApp (UI/UX-wise). Network effect is a very important aspect.
Federated networks aren't easy to explain to users, this is already a huge issue for Mastodon, and it's probably why it hasn't taken over social media.
As other comments here have pointed out, Sup would be a closer alternative to stuff like Facebook Messenger than to WhatsApp. I'd say Signal is still the best option for private and secure instant messaging.
BlueSky is another corporate microblog platform, which could end up going the way of Twitter. I'm not saying it will be bought by a fascist billionaire, but they will be beholden to advertisers at some point in the near future.
I would highly recommend finding a Mastodon, Akkoma, or GoToSocial instance that aligns with your values and use that instead. If you are concerned about the network effects of not being on the 'biggest' platform where all the celebs are, there is a Bluesky->Mastodon bridge available.
Bluesky is just Twitter before being bought by Elon Musk. The real alternative is Mastodon. Bluesky can go fuck itself.
You forgot someone..
No we didn't
Bluesky can fuck right off.
What is Sup ?
Not too much. Sup with you?
😂😂 Nice one Anyways, what is this "Sup" that people keep talking about ? Is it another federated platform ?
Thanks for being a good sport. In these trying times we have to cherish every genuine updog moment we find ourselves in.
It's federated encrypted messaging :)