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October 26th, 2024

The Fediverse is getting its own TikTok competitor called Loops

Loops is a new app competing with TikTok in the fediverse, focusing on user data privacy, content ownership, and funded by donations. It allows interaction with other ActivityPub platforms.

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The Fediverse is getting its own TikTok competitor called Loops

A new app called Loops is emerging as a competitor to TikTok within the fediverse, a decentralized social media ecosystem. Developed by Daniel Supernault, who also created Pixelfed, Loops allows users to share short, looping videos. Currently, the app is in its early stages and is not yet open source or fully integrated with ActivityPub, the protocol that supports other federated platforms. Loops aims to provide a user-friendly experience while ensuring user data privacy, stating it will not sell user data or use content for AI training. Instead, users will retain ownership of their content. The app will be funded through user donations and a grant, rather than traditional investor backing. Loops will enable users aged 13 and up to follow, like, comment on, and share videos, with the added feature of allowing users from other ActivityPub platforms to interact with Loops content. Moderation will be in place based on user trust scores, affecting content publication and comment visibility. While signups are currently open, users will be notified when they can start using the app. Future features, including profile sharing and cross-platform following, are still to be announced. An Android APK and an iOS app via TestFlight are planned, with a web interface to follow later.

- Loops is a new TikTok competitor in the fediverse, focusing on short, looping videos.

- The app prioritizes user data privacy and content ownership.

- Funding will come from user donations and a grant, not investors.

- Users can interact with Loops content from other ActivityPub platforms.

- Moderation will be based on user trust scores to manage content visibility.

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Link Icon 21 comments
By @dogtimeimmortal - 6 months
"...Still in the early stages, Loops is not yet open sourced, nor has it completed its integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and other federated apps..."

Hey, PeerTube is already open source, and works on ActivityPub:

https://joinpeertube.org/

this article is sort of clickbaity

Note, https://loops.video/ splash page doesn't even have any content, just a sign up.

"...interested testers will be emailed when it’s possible to actually start using the new app..."

kinda seems fishy.

Note, PeerTube is functional - you can watch and download videos on it today!

By @openrisk - 6 months
The fediverse strategy of offering copycats of centralized adtech social media - but without the surveillance and ads - has not worked in the past.

Who knows, the launch of Loops might break that pattern, but it would be a more enduring victory to build attractive products that are 1) new and 2) not replicable in centralized form.

By @jmclnx - 6 months
I can never get into these techcrunch articles, all I get is a page with the word "OK". Oh well, not my loss :)
By @rambambram - 6 months
So... partaking in the 'fediverse' - whatever that stands for - requires signing up. Now I'm wondering two things: 1) How is that different than FB or Twixxer? And 2) Why not use RSS, OPML and the open web that's already like... open?
By @yellow_lead - 6 months
I think the kind of people on the Fediverse are much more likely to recognize that this kind of short form content is bad for you, so I'm not sure this will be too popular.
By @whateveracct - 6 months
tiktok doesn't work without the bad parts
By @ang_cire - 6 months
I'm excited to try this, whenever it's ready. Fediverse services like peertube are great for building small communities around specific subjects/ themes. Sometimes it even feels like the old days of subject-specific forums and IRC channels that became social groups unto themselves.
By @knallfrosch - 6 months
TikTok isn't about the videos, it's about the recommendations.

That won't be possible without centralization, monetization and data mining. Loops will fail — if you judge by usage, that is.

The goal posts will move to whatever was achieved, I guess.

From "competition" to "for Fediverse users" to "offering an alternative" to "showing it's technically feasible" to "it's good people don't use it, because it wasn't meant to be addictive anyway."

By @metalman - 6 months
by the standard of calling anything on the fediverse "competitive" with tiktok ,Et al makes all of us comenting here, challengers to the heavy weight boxing title of the world and to further unpackage the title, the idea of "hype it till you make it" as applied to the unarticulated premise of the fediverse,ie: that fairness is somehow self evident and therefor somehow the inevitable choise and outcome for social media is doubly absurd facsism always starts with the basic notion that if people wont recognise and accept "fairness" then for there own good, it must be imposed
By @euniceee3 - 6 months
All the comments here are so short sighted about how the fediverse functions. Instead of one big app doing all the aggregatation by interests the fediverse is naturally divided by what makes that group cohesive.

You do not need the algorithm when each users feed is being pumped by what has been siloed within that fediverse.

By @INTPenis - 6 months
I'm highly skeptical simply because such video apps requires very low latency video streaming, only available with accompanying cloud infrastructure.

And like others have pointed out, I don't think it's productive for the fediverse to go after this market.

By @Log_out_ - 6 months
Wait.. the virtual crack only works due to massive server farms.Opwn source doesn't have these. So they need to acquire these. They need money for that, which means adds, which means closed source in the long run.
By @DeathArrow - 6 months
It will have the same huge success Mastodon has.
By @kmfrk - 6 months
Isn't hosting a Fediverse instance already cripplingly expensive?

Even YouTube was bleeding money when it was acquired.

By @pluto_modadic - 6 months
Dan makes software so fast <3
By @erichocean - 6 months
Maybe they can call it "Wirehead" instead.
By @brian-armstrong - 6 months
Cool! Another federated doohickey nobody asked for and will never use
By @Sparkyte - 6 months
Or maybe we can get regulate short-form media. I've never been a fan of such a wasteful format with so little accountability. You drastically shorten attention spans with such media that it doesn't benefit anyone. Although I've seen a few short-form media used to to explain small scientific phenomenons.
By @hulitu - 6 months
> The Fediverse is getting its own TikTok competitor called Loops

It is funny how SV is copying TikTok, while, at the same time, pushing hard to ban it.

Youtube already has TikTok copy (scroll to next video) from some time.

By @cykros - 6 months
There's still life on the Fediverse? I figured everyone had migrated to Nostr by now. Except perhaps the people running their little fiefdoms getting their dopamine hits every time they de-federate another server.

The whole ecosystem makes Meta and Twitter look like bastions of free speech by comparison.

It was a worthwhile experiment, but one whose outcome was "we have to do this at the protocol level if we actually want it to work."