Fediverse

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‘Open Source And Ethical’ TikTok, WhatsApp And Instagram Alternatives Could Transform Social Media (www.forbes.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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At a time when established social media platforms are facing criticism and turbulence — from TikTok's temporary shutdown to Meta's withdrawal from fact-checking and growing criticism over political content moderation — a new approach to social media is gaining some attention.

"Help us put control back into the hands of the people!" declares Canadian developer Daniel Supernault, whose open-source platforms aim to provide privacy-focused alternatives to mainstream social media.

Supernault's Kickstarter campaign, launched on Jan. 24, has already exceeded its initial CA$50,000 goal, TechCrunch reports, raising CA$93,022 (approximately US$64,839) as of 11:02 a.m. PT today. The funding will support the development of three platforms within the Fediverse — a decentralized network of interconnected social media services. These platforms include Pixelfed, Loops and Sup, designed as privacy-focused alternatives to Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp, respectively. Each platform rejects traditional venture capital funding and ad-based revenue models in favor of community-driven development.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yeah I think this is a very important point.

I think people will need to learn to accept that there is no such thing as "free". The current social media sells you to advertisers, taking every bit of data they can get.

So for independent and privacy focused social media, we're going to have to accept we have to pay for it.

I've moved to paying for my email, my file storage, my VPN and my password manager - all for privacy and security. I pay for subscriptions for streaming to avoid advertising. So I would pay for social media.

In the early days of the internet, people accepted paying for things but then the "free" model came along. The fediverse will need to persuade people to pay for it. That may limit it from being the big everyone social medial, but it could be able to become the high quality version of social media that people pay for.