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Exploring Open Source Alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp: A Kickstarter Fundraising Opportunity

The creator of Pixelfed, Loops, and Sup — open-source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, respectively — is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter to advance the development of these applications.

These three apps are integral to the expanding open social web, often referred to as the fediverse, and they utilize the ActivityPub protocol, which is also employed by the X alternative, Mastodon. Following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk in October 2022, there was a surge in signups and engagement on Mastodon amidst a significant shift in users leaving X after the U.S. presidential election.

In the months following this acquisition, decentralized and open-source applications like Mastodon and Bluesky (which operates on the newer AT Protocol) have continued to expand their user bases as people seek alternatives to social media platforms dominated by billionaires such as Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Recognizing the trend, Meta also decided to enter the fediverse, launching its own competitor to X in 2023 called Instagram Threads, which is currently in the process of integrating with ActivityPub.

Daniel Supernault, a Canadian developer behind these federated applications that aim to rival Meta’s social media empire, is now seeking support for the ongoing development and enhancement of his open social communities.

“Help us return control to the people!” he expressed in a post on Mastodon announcing the kickoff of the Kickstarter campaign on Thursday.

At the time of writing, the campaign has raised $58,383 to date. While the Kickstarter goal has been surpassed, Supernault aims to secure over $1 million to bring in a small team.

Image Credits:Loops/Daniel Supernault

Supernault aspires for his suite of applications to be the first in the fediverse to connect with a billion users; however, achieving this ambitious target is still a considerable challenge. For instance, despite Pixelfed having been in existence for several years, it just released the 1.0 version of its mobile app earlier this month, and Loops is still undergoing alpha testing on Apple’s TestFlight. Meanwhile, Sup has not yet launched but is indicated to be “coming soon” on its Instagram page.

Both Loops and Sup will be made available to Kickstarter backers.

Image Credits:Sup/Daniel Supernault

Additionally, a fourth initiative named PubKit is included in this effort, providing a toolkit for developers working within the fediverse.

PubKit offers a range of interactive tools and testing frameworks, allowing developers to simulate popular activities within their services, establish an inbox for real-time activity ingestion and debugging, and includes tools for inspecting, debugging, and verifying HTTP Signature implementations.

Image Credits:PubKit/Daniel Supernault

This marks the first occasion on which Supernault has turned to Kickstarter to assist with these initiatives, which are also intended to support the Pixelfed Foundation.

The Kickstarter campaign includes a stretch goal to officially register the Pixelfed Foundation as a nonprofit and expand its team beyond volunteers. This move aims to mitigate concerns regarding Supernault being the sole point of failure for the project, especially in light of recent issues.

Earlier this month, Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko made a comparable decision to transition to a nonprofit framework.

If the campaign succeeds, it is anticipated to fund a blogging application as an alternative to platforms like Tumblr or LiveJournal in the future.

The contributions will also aid the applications in accommodating a growing user base. Currently, the main Pixelfed instance, Pixelfed.social (which operates similarly to Mastodon, allowing anyone to run a Pixelfed server), has surpassed 200,000 users, partly due to the recent mobile app launch, as per the campaign details shared with TechCrunch. This server has now become the second-largest in the fediverse, trailing only Mastodon.social, according to network statistics from FediDB.

Additional funds will support the expansion of storage, content delivery networks, and computational resources needed for this rising user base, and will accelerate further development. Furthermore, it will enable Supernault to allocate more time to the apps and the broader fediverse while enhancing moderation, security, privacy, and safety programs that social applications necessitate.

As part of this initiative, Supernault is also aiming to implement end-to-end encryption across the fediverse.

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