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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[–] warmaster 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (16 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.

[–] Deway 11 points 5 days ago (6 children)

People act like we need an alternative to Whatsapp but XMPP/Jabber exists and is much older.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Deway 4 points 4 days ago

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.

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