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.
I wish I could get everyone to use it but many of my friends are having trouble with notifications not working reliably for Signal. Or sometimes messages are simply not sent immediately, even if both sides are online. This is not helping to get people over. Also no one but me really cares about all the reasons why I would like to get rid of Whatsapp, especially if they would have a lesser experience.