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Open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp raise funds on Kickstarter | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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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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[-] oozy7@lemmy.world 64 points 2 years ago

WhatsApp? Just use signal already!

[-] warmaster@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago

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

[-] nonfuinoncuro@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago

what happened to pidgin

[-] Deway@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

Pidgin is a client, not a specific protocol.

[-] nonfuinoncuro@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

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

[-] Deway@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Fun fact, Google Talk and Facebook used to be compatible with XMPP.

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[-] astro_ray@piefed.social 6 points 2 years ago

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 2 points 2 years ago

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

[-] astro_ray@piefed.social 9 points 2 years 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.

[-] moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 years ago

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.

[-] astro_ray@piefed.social 1 points 2 years ago

I don't know if you know about it, but there's this new community !growthefediverse@slrpnk.net They got some nice discussion about how to on-board more people on here.

[-] littleomid@feddit.org 4 points 2 years ago

What about Simplex over Matrix?

[-] warmaster@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

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.