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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[–] perfectly_boiled_pizza 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Google is not making a profit from RCS, but they don't have to be loosing money either. I don't know the price Google is charging telecom providers. It's either very cheap or for free. That's why many telecom providers choose Google's solution. I believe that Google is treating it as an investment. I assume that Google plan to charge more in the future or that they want data from the users. Maybe both.

Telecom providers know how to do all of this themselves, but it's going to cost more money than using Google's solution. Someone else can absolutely start providing RCS to telecom providers but they will have a hard time trying to sell it to telecom providers if they're not cheaper than Google.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Is the RCS technology fully open source? If yes it could be nice to try to find a fediverse - friendly mobile operator willing to create a bridge...

[–] perfectly_boiled_pizza 1 points 19 hours ago

It's not open source