Ditching Meta? Open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp fundraise on Kickstarter | TechCrunch
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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

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

    • suoko@feddit.itEnglish
      511·
      7 days ago

      RCS could be also an option. Now mostly backed by google but it can be unplugged whenever we want

      • Matombo@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        7 days ago

        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.

        • suoko@feddit.itEnglish
          1·
          7 days ago

          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.

          • perfectly_boiled_pizza@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            7 days ago

            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.

      • perfectly_boiled_pizza@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        7 days ago

        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.