Open Source Alternatives to Instagram, TikTok & WhatsApp - Kickstarter

Open Source Social Media Apps Seek Funding on Kickstarter

The creator of Pixelfed, Loops, and Sup – open-source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp – is currently conducting a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter. This initiative aims to support the continued development of these applications.

The Growing Fediverse

These three platforms are integral to the expanding open social web, often referred to as the fediverse. They operate using the ActivityPub protocol, the same foundation utilized by Mastodon, a prominent alternative to X (formerly Twitter).

Increased adoption of platforms like Mastodon occurred following changes at Twitter after its acquisition by Elon Musk in October 2022, and during subsequent departures from the platform related to the U.S. presidential election.

Decentralized Alternatives Gain Traction

In the wake of these events, decentralized and open-source applications, including Mastodon and Bluesky (which employs the AT Protocol), have experienced growth in their user bases.

This trend reflects a desire for alternatives to centralized social media platforms controlled by major corporations like Meta (Mark Zuckerberg) and X (Elon Musk).

Meta's Response and the Kickstarter Campaign

Recognizing this shift, Meta launched Instagram Threads in 2023 as a competitor to X, with plans for integration with ActivityPub.

Now, Daniel Supernault, the Canadian developer behind these federated apps, is seeking financial support for ongoing development and community support.

He stated, “Help us put control back into the hands of the people!” in a post announcing the Kickstarter launch on Mastodon.

Funding Progress and Goals

As of this writing, the campaign has secured $58,383 CAD. Although the initial funding goal has been met, Supernault aspires to raise $1 million or more to enable the hiring of a dedicated development team.

Vision for the Future

Supernault envisions his suite of apps becoming the first in the fediverse to reach a user base of one billion people.

While ambitious, this goal is being pursued with recent milestones like the 1.0 release of the Pixelfed mobile app and ongoing alpha testing of Loops on Apple’s TestFlight.

Sup is slated for release soon, according to its Instagram page, and will be available to Kickstarter backers.

Supporting the Fediverse Ecosystem

A fourth project, PubKit, is also part of this effort, providing a toolkit for developers building within the fediverse.

PubKit includes interactive tools and testing frameworks, enabling developers to simulate activities, debug real-time interactions, and verify HTTP Signature implementations.

Foundation and Long-Term Sustainability

This marks Supernault’s first Kickstarter campaign to support these projects, benefiting the Pixelfed Foundation as well.

A stretch goal involves establishing the Pixelfed Foundation as a non-profit organization and expanding the team beyond volunteer contributors.

This would mitigate the risk of Supernault being a single point of failure for the project, a concern recently raised.

Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko recently made a similar decision to transition to a nonprofit structure.

Future Development Plans

Successful funding would also support the development of a blogging application as an alternative to platforms like Tumblr or LiveJournal.

The funds will also address the infrastructure needs of a growing user base. Pixelfed.social, the primary Pixelfed instance, now boasts over 200,000 users, and is the second-largest server in the fediverse, according to FediDB statistics.

Increased funding will facilitate expansion of storage, CDNs, and compute power, as well as accelerate development and enhance moderation, security, privacy, and safety measures.

Supernault also intends to introduce end-to-end (E2E) encryption to the fediverse.