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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[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 73 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

One thing we need to mention is funding.

While BlueSky may benefit from venture capital, free (as in beer) open source projects where user data is not commercially exploited for revenue do not have the same benefit. They rely a LOT on donations for running the infrastructure and for the hours and hard work that people are putting in.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 35 points 2 days ago

Good point. Theoretically surmountable because Wikipedia.

But donors are going to have to be convinced that social media is a social good.

[–] Sl00k@programming.dev 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I know ads are very hated here, but I wouldn't be against an ad at a reasonable cadence to increase sustainability. Then create a pro version that gets rid of ads that's like $2-5 a month or $30 a year. The real problem is the exploitation of this system like Reddit/Insta feeding an ad every other post. Or Twitter charging nearly $13 a month for a check mark.

The sync app got so much hate for having ads during the original migration, but a lot of us here are devs and we should definitely get paid for our effort and be able to maintain our infrastructure without our of pocket money.

[–] AVengefulAxolotl@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Agreed.

However these ads need to be curated as well. This is the other thing that makes ads unbearable, is that a lot of them are just blatant scams.

I have learnt about proton and tuxedo from ads as well, which i use both.

[–] Sl00k@programming.dev 2 points 21 hours ago

I agree to an extent, I'm tired of reddit spamming me with ads for Database management systems while I'm on vacation 🤣

[–] NoEsReal@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Yeah, ads also wouldn’t be an issue if the user was given control about how their data is used to decide on what ads to show them. Users could have an option to opt in to more targeted ads but be able to choose what aspects of their data are taken into account, if at all. Maybe all data sharing is turned off by default, but a user could opt in to ads that interest them like interior decoration, or furniture, or workout equipment, etc… while still being able to ban ads they don’t want to see, like political ads.

[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 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.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Venture capital doesn't benefit you any more than a leach benefits you

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well it sure benefited a lot of new tech projects and companies.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl -1 points 2 days ago

Harmed*