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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Link to the Kickstarter

  • ClassifiedPancake
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    2 days ago

    My experience is that nobody cares about privacy, moral issues or anything that might be an issue in the future. They only care about convenience, distraction and whatever their peer group is doing. So the “attention” this is getting is never going to reach the spineless mass audience.

    • john89@lemmy.ca
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      20 hours ago

      Why does it have to be about privacy? Why can’t it be about not centralizing power into a handful of for-profit entities?

      • ClassifiedPancake
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        13 hours ago

        This is where „… or anything that might be an issue in the future“ comes in.