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
WhatsApp? Just use signal already!
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.
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.
Not on FDroid. Not open source
But it is open source. And there’s a fork of Signal available on F-Droid called Molly.
It is not open source. That’s why its not allowed on fdroid. It has parts that are open source, like most apps. But the app itself is closed source and a risk
The only part that isn’t open source is their spam filter.
Nope. Google deps
Can you explain a little more what you mean?
The app requires code from Google that is not open source and has a history of being malware that invades your privacy and steals your data.
Not open source
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.
If your releases include closed source blobs, then your software is closed source.
Following that logic:
Many popular Linux distros contain closed source blobs. Ergo Linux is closed source.
Linux is an open source kernel. Many operating systems that use linux ars closed source, yes. This is the position of the FSF.
And its why most Linux distros have an option to include closed source or not.
Signal, however, has no option. Its just closed source software.
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
What is Sup ?
Not too much. Sup with you?
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
RCS could be also an option. Now mostly backed by google but it can be unplugged whenever we want
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
which uses the newer AT Protocol
This “newer” seems to be doing a lot of work.
