The post -pixelfed developer, loops and shoulder, namely open -sourced alternatives to Instagram, Tiktok and WhatsApp, is now collecting funds at Kickstarter to promote further development development.
The trio is part of the growing open social network, also known as a fediver, powered by the same Activity protocol used by the X alternative mastodon. The latter without increased recordings and use after the company previously known as Twitter sold to Elon Musk in October 2022 and during the X exodus that followed the US presidential election.
In the months and years after that sale, open -sourced and decentralized applications such as Mastodon and Bluesky (which uses the latest AT protocol), have continued to increase their user bases, as people demanded alternatives to centralized applications Social media controlled by billionaires such as Musk and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta.
Looking at the writing on the wall, Meta also realized that a flag had to be placed in the feuds. This led him to release his own Rival X in 2023 called Instagram Threads, which is in the process of integration with ActityPub.
Now, Daniel Supernault, Canada -based developer behind federated applications challenging Meta’s social media empire, is seeking funds for the continued development and support of his open social communities.
“Help us turn control into people’s hands!” He said in a post in Mastodo where he announced Kickstarter’s launch on Thursday.
By the time of writing, the campaign has raised $ 58,383 so far. While the goal on the Kickstarter’s site has been exceeded, Supernault said he hopes to raise $ 1 million or more in order to hire a small team.
Supernault wants his app set of app to become the first in fedivers to reach a network of one billion people, but of course, there is still a long way to make before they reach this high goal. Although Pixelfed has been existing for years, he just launched version 1.0 of his mobile application earlier this month, for example, and Loops is still in Alpha test in Apple testflight. The shoulder, meanwhile, has not yet been released, but is said to “come soon”, according to her Instagram page.
Both loops and shoulder will be released for kickstarter supports.
A fourth project, pubk, is also part of these efforts, offering a set of tools to support developers that build on feuds.
It includes interactive tools and test frames, allowing developers to mock the activities known in their service, create an input box for obtaining and correction of real -time activities and tools to inspect, correct and verify HTTP signature implementations .
This is the first time the Supernault has addressed Kickstarter to help with these efforts, which are also aimed at benefiting from the Pixelfed Foundation.
The purpose of extending the Kickstarter campaign is to register the Pixelfed Foundation as a nonprofit and increase its team beyond volunteers. This can help address the issue with supernault which is a single point of failure for the project, which has raised concerns in the light of recent behavior.
Mastodon’s CEO, Eugen Rochko, made a similar decision earlier this month to switch to a non -profit structure.
If it is successful, the campaign will also fund a blogging app as an alternative to Tumblr or Livejournal at some point in the future.
Funds will also help applications manage the influx of new users. In pixelfed.social, the main example of pixelfed, (like mastodon, anyone can execute a pixelfed server), now has more than 200,000 users, partly thanks to the launch of the mobile app, according to the campaign details separated by Techcrunch. The server is also the second largest in fedivers, after only mastodon.social, according to network statistics from Fedidb.
New funds will help expand storage, CDNs and calculation power needed for the growing base of users and accelerating development. In addition, they will help the Supernault dedicate more to its time and feuds, also expanding moderation, security, privacy and security programs that social applications need.
As part of her efforts, Supernault also wants to present E2E encryption to Fediversity.
