12 ms·

Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok

575 points by Gooblebrai 8mo ago

deafpolygon 8mo ago
We do not need another tiktok.
- brody_hamer 8mo ago
  Censorship.
  - sheiyei 8mo ago
    No, health advocacy (societal and mental). Better formats exist
    - ftchd 8mo ago
      This format is present on all video platforms, an "open" version is definitely a step in the right direction
    - logicchains 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - Almondsetat 8mo ago
        Small minority? What about all the studies and statistics both from third parties and from the social networks themselves showing a direct effect on the _majority_ of users? Not that I expected a better argument from someone that crams in "leftists" as an unwarranted snide remark
      - poolnoodle 8mo ago
        The anxious generation is a best-selling book for no reason then.
      - 587687646343767 8mo ago
        [dead]
slipheen 8mo ago
I didn't deep dive into this, but just for context and comparison, here are some other tools which are building TikTok like tools on Bluesky- https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/01/here-are-the-apps-battling-to-be-become-the-tiktok-for-bluesky/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/01/here-are-the-apps-battling...
Almondsetat 8mo ago
"Open-source TikTok" is like reading "open source slot machine". Not something you should be proud of, no matter how much you sugarcoat it with "All the fun of short-form video, none of the corporate control"
- avidruntime 8mo ago
  Short form content is a medium that isn't going away. Short form content is not inherently harmful, although short form content replacing or displacing other important mediums arguably is. When I think about the issues stemming from short form content, I don't think about the inherent medium, I think about the providers and their capabilities to use the sum of all consumed content by a user in the name of a ulterior motive at scale. While I haven't investigated it too deeply, Loops seems to be an effort in patching that. Is your objection in the marketing language or in the inherent technology?
  - Almondsetat 8mo ago
    Short form user generated content being served in our faces in a constant and ever updating feed fucks up our brains. It does not matter if it's proprietary or FOSS or non profit. >Is your objection in the marketing language or in the inherent technology? I think saying it's like an open source slot machine is pretty much self-explanatory
HelloUsername 8mo ago
Recently released on the Appstore https://blog.joinloops.org/loops-is-now-on-the-app-store/ https://blog.joinloops.org/loops-is-now-on-the-app-store/
weezing 8mo ago
This form of content is bad regardless of platform.
- CharlesW 8mo ago
  The problem with TikTok isn't the form, which is effectively StumbleUpon for short-form video (or Dave Winer's "river of news" in video form, if you prefer). There's brainrot content on all platforms, but there's also ArtTok, BookTok, CraftTok, EduTok, FoodTok, GardenTok, HistoryTok, MathTok, MusicTok, PoliTok, ScienceTok, TechTok, and lots more.
  - Avicebron 8mo ago
    I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women who really like the plot of 50 shades of grey.. edit: which is to say I'm not positive the format isn't the problem.
    - amelius 8mo ago
      Is that also short form?
      - Avicebron 8mo ago
        How would I know? I don't use tiktok, this is second hand from an ex
    - CharlesW 8mo ago
      > I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women… Those aren't the kinds of book-related videos that I see, so at some point The Algorithm must've decided I wasn't interested in porn for women (not that there's anything wrong with that).
  - ajam1507 8mo ago
    Short form video is the brainrot.
  - wolvoleo 8mo ago
throwa356262 8mo ago
Congrats. All that remains now is spending $$$ on some D-level celebs to lure in the users...
umairnadeem123 8mo ago
[dead]
- nosrepa 8mo ago
  The less ai generated video I see the better.
- Pulcinella 8mo ago
  Counterpoint: The format is bad. The constant stream of videos, skipping between videos at (relatively) your own pace, the anticipation about the next video; it's similar to electronic gambling machines.
  - dangus 8mo ago
    To use the analogy of other vice industries like gambling or alcohol, would you rather buy those products from shady unregulated vendors or more transparent regulated entities? That’s the type of analogy we might make in this case. Obviously many people (literally billions) like this format and use it in relative moderation to unwind and kill time. Hell, I’ve even gotten productive helpful information out of the format on occasion. It’s also taken a critical role in journalism and current events. Unless you’re advocating prohibition, the cat is out of the bag. Being able to find a short form video alternative that isn’t owned by commercial/government interests is a positive thing.
    - OrangePilled 8mo ago
      [dead]
    - inigyou 8mo ago
      > would you rather buy those products from shady unregulated vendors or more transparent regulated entities? Some people are saying Las Vegas died when it became corporate pandering to rich people, and they preferred the good old days when the Mafia ran it, because they wanted you to come in and gamble.
  - logicchains 8mo ago
Aeroi 8mo ago
two hardest problems for a platform like this. 1. users and initial flywheel. 2. content moderation.
ftchd 8mo ago
I want this to be succesful so much, but almost nothing works in the mobile app Needed 2 tries to sign up, and uploading a video from the camera roll failed (5-7 tries)
- nagaiaida 8mo ago
  yeah, there's a consistent pattern of overpromising across this and other projects by the same person
throawayonthe 8mo ago
how good is the For You feed? the tiktok secret sauce is the creepy algorithm, who's clamoring for "crack but not addictive?"
- binary132 8mo ago
  It sounds like you’re suggesting federated crack…
  - throawayonthe 8mo ago
    is it really a tiktok alternative if there's no crack?
  - verdverm 8mo ago
    locally sourced, organic, ethical [south park clip] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyOzp9pR6iE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyOzp9pR6iE
SilverElfin 8mo ago
There have already been some TikTok alternatives that have become popular after it got bought by the Trump / Oracle / Silver Lake group of buyers. One alternative I’ve heard of that apparently became popular is Skylight: https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/tiktok-alternative-skylight-soars-to-380k-users-after-tiktok-u-s-deal-finalized/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/tiktok-alternative-skyligh...
gempir 8mo ago
Good that they have a web version. But the most basic functionality of going to the next video is only available via scroll (no keyboard arrow down?) and it has a really long animation and delay? Just feels awful to use. I feel if you wanna win in this space, especially with people who prefer more "free" platforms, then the non-app version should be a bigger priority IMO.
- pear01 8mo ago
  [flagged]
wolvoleo 8mo ago
I like the app but it really needs a mute function (ideally an option by default).
TensorToad 8mo ago
This is actually pretty exciting. Excited to see how this turns out. But I am wondering how to keep it financially possible to operate the platform. Also, 95+% of the users probably don't care that much about censorship and privacy enough to switch platform.
- zahlman 8mo ago
  I would have thought that the point of federation is not to require centralized servers that cost a lot to operate. But sure, something like this probably requires a fundamentally different revenue model. Maybe even the one where people donate to server operators.
  - Barrin92 8mo ago
    centralized servers cost less to operate, that why data intensive applications centralize over time. That's division of labor. The higher the complexity the the higher degree of specialization. And a video service is very demanding. And you need to solve the economics first because otherwise your decentralized service is simply going to centralize over time to deal with demands for a more reliable and higher quality service. (and how to compensate creators)
    - verdverm 8mo ago
      This so much, the Tiktok clones in ATProto face this same issue and several rely on Bluesky CDN & VC funding to have an acceptable UX (in terms of just delivering video content)
cogman10 8mo ago
It's interesting, I doubt it'll ever be successful. Look, the reason a lot of content makes it's way to Youtube, tiktok, and twitter, etc is because the creators can earn money from the platform. On youtube and tiktok, you can send gifts to your favorite creator. That incentivizes creators to create content. loops will never have that feature. It's really hard to legally distribute money like that. But further, the decentralized nature of it means that you'll never know if your funds ends up in your creator's account or the instant account. Without any sort of path to make money, the only content on the platform will be works of passion. Maybe that's a good thing, but it means these people will ultimately burn out. But on the plus side, it means you probably won't end up with an endless stream of AI slop.
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  Instagram pays hardly anything. I don't know anyone doing it for that reason. It's more advertising for their other services. Like onlyfans, selling physical stuff, lectures, events etc. And of course the people who do it for fun, usually the best content. It doesn't matter they'll eventually stop. There's always new ones. I'm not sure about tiktok, but I doubt they pay much more than insta.
aaurelions 8mo ago
[dead]
jmyeet 8mo ago
For 20+ years World of Warcraft has dominated the MMORPG genre. There have been a host of challengers and they've all miserably failed. In fact, there have only been a handful of successes (eg UO, EQ, FF14). And what do almost all of these challengers have in common? Some version of "the PvP is going to be amazing". Why do these companies like PVP? Because it's essentially user-generated content. It increases time spent in game without having to create content, which is expensive. Thing is, players of this genre don't want PVP. Even in WoW, I'd be surprised if 10% of the playerbase actively engages in PVP activity. So, by focusing on PVP, you're actually cut your potential market by 90%. Before you've written a single line of code or created any artwork. Put another way, you're spending valuable development effort on features only a tiny minority of players care about or even want. I'm reminded of this whenever somebody on HN talks about federation. The only people who care about federation are... other people on HN. It does literally nothing for users. It greatly complicates the implementation. The last successes of federation are POTS and Email. It's quite literally never succeeded since. And the problems with federation that POTS and Email continue to have to this day should be an object lesson in why it's a bad idea. Choosing federation from the start is choosing to lose. I'm sorry but it's true.
- rrr_oh_man 8mo ago
  This didn’t go where I thought it would. You made me chuckle. Thanks!
- fsflover 8mo ago
  > The only people who care about federation are... other people on HN. It does literally nothing for users. Until enshittification happens. Example: the fall of Freenode.
- wiredpancake 8mo ago
  [dead]
- eddythompson80 8mo ago
  completely agree. Every time I see a "fediverse" on a project, I know its not going anywhere.
dangoodmanUT 8mo ago
I can appreciate the effort, but the UI is indistinguishable from tiktok.
blueboo 8mo ago
Open source meth is still bad in absolute terms even if it’s better than the alternative meth
evolve2k 8mo ago
Great to see this progressing. Tried it out just now after last testing it over 6 months ago. I’d say the main “feature” id want to see added is a mandatory field on upload to tick if it’s AI content. Then a tag on videos that are Ai and at the account level to filter out AI content. Otherwise it’s going to be a slops fest.
- bigfishrunning 8mo ago
  What is the incentive for people producing AI slop to tick the "This is slop" box? Reminds me of the evil bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit
gnarlouse 8mo ago
"Everything you love about short-video" Ha haha
b00ty4breakfast 8mo ago
this is like using an "ethically produced" brick to smash your foot with; The method of manufacturing the brick isn't the problem. These formats are designed for a specific purpose; maximizing engagement to extract value. so we've remove the incentive to extract value but we leave the predatory design that maximize engagement? You working in a different milieu but you are bringing the worst parts of the previous milieu along for the ride. Please, anybody working on this kind of alternative social platform, we need to rethink how we interact online; decentralization leaves the worst parts of modern social media completely unaddressed.
- blackcatsec 8mo ago
  One of the unspoken parts of the open source social media movement is to put the 'social' back in the 'social media'. There has been a fine line between true user-driven content and centrally-controlled (and often authoritarian-lite) algorithms; with major players (advertisers, oligarchs, governments) putting their thumb on the latter half to ensure that everyone stays isolated, divided, and pacified. Everything you called out is a symptom of that control: engagement baiting, algorithmic manipulation, censorship and suppression. Absent these items, social media can be an incredible force for good and a hopeful longer term future of more peace.
- akdev1l 8mo ago
  The incentive is still there. If there is an algorithm putting stuff on people’s faces then there will always be an incentive imo.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- bee_rider 8mo ago
  On one hand, it seems impossible to supplant with Tik Tok without the engagement bait. On the other, replacing the additive sites with something just as addictive seems pointless. It is a tricky puzzle.
  - bastawhiz 8mo ago
AuthAuth 8mo ago
I do not know how to phrase this politely. I like the platform and the concept is interesting. But the people on it are just so far away from what me (and men my age) deem interesting and seem to be hostile to anything that doesnt fit their very restrictive ideals. You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it. I havent used Loops but im assuming its the same crowd as on Mastodon.
- krapp 8mo ago
  >You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it. I'm pretty sure you can find all of those things on TikTok and Youtube Shorts. If you're talking about federated platforms, probably all of it but guns. And if you can't of course no one is stopping you from starting a channel or instance yourself.
  - AuthAuth 8mo ago
    I posted a cool clip from the UFC and got banned even though the content had a warning. It wasnt even that violent just a clean headkick ko. If I started an instance it would get defederated because people would take one look and assume its toxic. But its not, Im not, I've spend years in the leftie techie activist spaces and cause no issues.
    - bee_rider 8mo ago
      You’d get defederated by instances that find that sort of thing objectionable, I guess. But, if you think it is a popular niche, couldn’t a separate community grow? That’s the whole promise of decentralization.
      - AuthAuth 8mo ago
        I do think its a popular niche but currently no one on the fediverse enjoys that stuff. But how can it grow when its rejected?
koreanguy 8mo ago
[dead]
dana321 8mo ago
I signed up and had a look, its full of garbage
umrashrf 8mo ago
How is it decentralized? Decentralized as in bitcoin?
- atomicfiredoll 8mo ago
  Decentralized as in not needing a central server. I don't know about Loops specifically, but generally [Fediverse][0] projects tend to: - Not rely on a central server. - Allow you to set up your own server. - Connect to a web of other servers through the Activity Pub protocol. - Allow you to modify policies on your server (including restricting which other servers information is shared with.) Many are also open source. The creator of Loops also built a different project called [Pixelfed](1) with a focus on decentralized photo sharing (although it can also host video.) Because all these projects speak the same protocol, it's possible that at some point, Loops could show content from Pixelfed. Apparently Loops content is already appearing in Mastodon. Meta's Threads also has Activity Pub support. Hypothetically, Threads content could appear on Loops and vice versa, if the UI is built to accommodate that style of content and a server admin doesn't block the Threads server (many servers block Threads specifically.) TL;DR: A web of servers using different pieces of open source software to share social media, without a centralized server. - [0] https://fediverse.info/ https://fediverse.info/ - [1] https://pixelfed.org/ https://pixelfed.org/
  - atomicfiredoll 8mo ago
    Just a side note, reading through some of the other comments, it sounds like Loops specifically isn't currently open source and the intent is to open source it at some later date.
mschuster91 8mo ago
Oh dear god, another fediverse service. I mean, I love the idea behind the fediverse, but the problem is, as long as you got federated instances of anything, instance admins will use their userbase for petty bxtchfights and purity contests. and no, selfhosting is not an alternative, anything Fediverse requires a lot of resources, is ripe with exploits and exposes you to significant legal risk from griefers (e.g. you get DM'd CSAM by someone, your server automatically downloads it => congratulations, you are now a pedo under at least German law).
iamnothere 8mo ago
Glad to see more platforms on the Fediverse. Couldn’t be less interested in this particular one since it’s short form video. Those who like this medium: enjoy. I may find short form video distasteful, but it’s less distasteful than those who want to dictate the media formats that others consume. Get a grip, people.
inigyou 8mo ago
[dead]
hmokiguess 8mo ago
Aw man can we not flip the script and maybe build less of these things? It’s saturated and not really helping society but rather creating more addiction machines.
- Bayko 8mo ago
  Based on what I have seen, read and experienced, a tech doesn't just go away. It evolves (unless you know one company was building it and then got shut down). Social media in the current form if it went away, would get replaced with something even worse.
  - notpushkin 8mo ago
    From what I’ve heard, people burned out on TikTok are switching to more mindful alternatives. Perhaps what Loops could do is try to capture those people as well?
- DANmode 8mo ago
  They’re addiction machines because of how they’re built. See: custom Facebook apps that only show the part of the service you ask for - not force-feeding you whatever they want.
muyuu 8mo ago
the brainrot from tiktok amplified with the brainrot from mastodon, what's not to love?
- aembleton 8mo ago
  Lack of content
587687646343767 8mo ago
[dead]
notepad0x90 8mo ago
> Each instance admin has full control over their server's moderation policies, allowed content, and federation choices. Loops provides the tools; communities set their own rules. Yeah, but how do you maintain quality? Are users expected to shun instances that have poor quality? Quality doesn't just mean spam and unwanted content, it means hiding poor quality posts in feeds. You end up with users that are willing to invest time in curating the app to meet their needs. But that means you miss out on most people out there who expect a curated and engaging (read:addicting) experience. I am not concerned about market shares on their own. But this is a good idea, and tiktok and youtube short videos are doing lots of harm to the world. Having a viable alternative would be amazing. I'll suggest that a very strong and well funded "main" instance server exist? I'm sure there is one now, but I'm concerned this will go the way of lemmy and mastodon. I would much rather prefer a centralized social media with a sanely constructed governance and corporate structure and a clear and non-conflicting revenue generation plan. The guardian's incorporation structure is what I consider a good example. That news organization is managing to be fairly independent, prevalent and significant when all others are caving to walled gardens and billionaires. social media in general should be viewed similar to journalistic organizations in terms of governance structure. it is nice to be able to take your data elsewhere, it is nicer not having the need to begin with. In principle that sounds great, but in practice it is similar to forking software if you don't like it. Lastly, how do they plan on making money? At least to the level that sustains their operations?
bobbane 8mo ago
LOOPS, on the other hand, is an object-oriented programming environment in Interlisp-D, and one of the predecessors to CLOS.
replwoacause 8mo ago
Let me also register my disinterest in another platform that mimics TikTok. Brainrot is brainrot regardless of whether it's "federated and open-source" or not. And BTW, 95% of the people on TikTok don't care about either of those two things.
nanobuilds 8mo ago
The UX should be more "mass user" friendly if the goal is to attract mainstream users. Sign in with Apple/etc.. selecting a server is technical language and not end-user language etc.
- deminature 8mo ago
  Selecting a server is one of the reasons the fediverse appears to have not seriously challenged incumbents. As soon as a non-technical user sees this, they bounce.
  - 8organicbits 8mo ago
    Checking the Mastodon app, new users are asked to "Join mastodon.social" or "pick another server". If you just mindlessly click the primary button, you'll get an account on mastodon.social so I think the server selection challenge has largely been addressed.
    - notpushkin 8mo ago
      This does solve the problem, although I do hope it doesn’t turn into another Bluesky this way.
      - xethos 8mo ago
        I may be out of date, but last I looked there was a push to rotate the "default" through servers with open sign-ups and reasonable policies to prevent one server ruling them all
    - anigbrowl 8mo ago
      But users are not mindless drones. Even the least computer-savvy is aware that they're being asked to make a choice and is probably unpleasantly reminded of the dark patterns in user agreements etc., so they'll feel like they're being guided down a sales funnel immediately after installing the app/signing up on web. What percentage bounce at that stage? It's probably large. I did so, and although I later relented and created a Mastodon account I've felt emotionally biased against it ever since and barely use it. When I have used it I don't experience any tangible benefit to overcome my reflexive dislike. The network effects aren't anything great, the timeline/feed mechanism and presentation are not fundamentally different from other social media offerings, the QoL improvements are marginal. If I cared about architecture and ideology above all else it would be great, but what I actually care about is being able to get news faster than any other source and being able to find more people there than anywhere else. I can only think of 1 or 2 people who I check in on periodically via Mastodon because there's no other place to find them.
mortsnort 8mo ago
The reality is that the addictive algorithm of commercial social media platforms is the product. These alternative platforms are like nicotine free cigarettes. They might garner small communities, which is totally cool and valid, but they will never slay the giants.
- brutal_chaos_ 8mo ago
  To be fair, you don't need to slay giants to be a viable product.
  - echelon 8mo ago
    "nicotine free cigarettes" are a product too. We have limited time on earth, so many tend to evaluate things on how big of an impact they make or how large of a demand they satisfy. It's okay if not everything is big, but it's also okay for people to use scale as a criteria for sizing things up.
    - wongarsu 8mo ago
      I guess there is an argument that every food product should add opium to their ingredients to make sure it's bought by as many people as possible and eaten as frequently as possible But I don't think that's healthy for either the product or society
- Morromist 8mo ago
  Old-school social media can be addictive too. I don't use any social media where complex algorithms decide what I see, but I have trouble wasting far too much time on discord.
  - nine_k 8mo ago
    Discord is communication with fellow humans. Tiktok is one-way consumption mostly. Discord is mostly text. Tiktok is mostly speech-free momentary videos, adjusting to the minute hints in your reaction. There's no comparison.
yeukhon 8mo ago
Good luck, projects like these either end up getting sued or going to acquisition. Open source != morally on the end result
with 8mo ago
Ew. The content problem on TikTok was never the protocol, it's that 99% of short-form video is brainrot slop regardless of who hosts the servers. Slapping ActivityPub on it literally solves nothing for humanity.
- verdverm 8mo ago
  I'm hopeful that the decoupling of algorithms (feeds) in ATProto can change this equation. For the tiktok clones and all the other apps.
- aembleton 8mo ago
  If TikTok was decentralised then the instance that you are a member of could de-prioritise videos from those instances that were allowing the brainrot slop.
beloch 8mo ago
One thing that's awesome about this and is 100% better than TikTok: No burned-in branding. No trailing brand screen. No trademark brand noises. ---- Tiktok videos have omnipresent logos burned-in and a full-screen trailer with an annoying Tiktok brand sound. The few random loops that I looked at had none of these. I hope this doesn't change and, if it doesn't change, I hope loops displaces TikTok. I despise being constantly bombarded with branding.
- notpushkin 8mo ago
  Bombarding with branding is how TikTok got people on, and I don’t think it’s a bad strategy per se. In fact, I can’t think of any other way to overcome network effects with a product like this (word of mouth would be the best, but you’ll need a ton of creators first).
  - beloch 8mo ago
    Vandalizing every video posted on their service may have helped TikTok spread brand recognition. One can only hope that a service that doesn't vandalize the content they deliver will find a way to pull ahead.
    - notpushkin 8mo ago
      I do hope we¹ can figure it out, too. There’s a middle ground solution here. TikTok does (naturally) have a version of each video without watermarks which they show in-app. They don’t let you download it, but external tools can generally help with that. What Loops could do is default to a watermarked version, but allow downloading original as well. This way, person sharing the video can decide whether they want to help promote Loops or not. ¹ – as a humanity; I’m not affiliated with Loops in any way
atlgator 8mo ago
The HN cycle for federated alternatives is now complete: email → chat → microblogging → short video. We're speedrunning the "open-source version of things we claim to hate" timeline. Can't wait for the federated, self-hosted casino.
- dvngnt_ 8mo ago
  Is that not crypto?
- jazzyjackson 8mo ago
  I always thought a casino might make more sense if it was run as a cooperative where members were also shareholders, so you could have fun gambling but your money came back to you eventually
  - Gigachad 8mo ago
    Isn't this somewhat like how these new crypto prediction markets work? There is no house taking a cut, all of the winnings get paid out.
    - dakolli 8mo ago
      Kalshi and Polymarket take a cut and is making the markets as well. Yes you can create a market and fund it yourself, but almost no one ever does this. People have been trying to make true prediction exchange markets like this 3 decades, its basically impossible without professional market makers. Its largely impossible to fund "organic decentralized" prediction markets because the vast majority of money that goes into them is "dumb money" and there will always be sharp money that takes their cut, and has substantially more funds. Betting markets are zero sum, so the smarter participants is always going to absorb the entire bankroll of the dumber participants over time.. The closest thing to what you describe were BTC dice games, which is kind decentralized, but prediction markets are impossible, some smart guy is always going to be there to make a more accurate fair on a market and eat all the liquidity from the little guys.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
niam 8mo ago
I have no horse in the short-form video race, but I recognize that it has material affects on the world (whether I'd like it or not). Scorn for the principle of an open platform here seems misplaced. It seems too young of a format with too few examples to confidently say it's irredeemable.
- spaceman_2020 8mo ago
  HN is generally the place you come to to hate anything new in tech. No new piece of tech released in is ever liked here. Everyone nitpicks, strawmans, and complains that the v1 of the product is not perfect. It’s honestly so tiresome
  - colechristensen 8mo ago
    Unhelpful nitpicks and people complaining about them get downvotes. At this time the top comment on this post is complaining about the rest of the comments. This is not how things should be around here.
- willis936 8mo ago
  What if we could say with some certainty that the format makes people stupid? https://youtu.be/tdIUMkXxtHg https://youtu.be/tdIUMkXxtHg
  - niam 8mo ago
    We don't have many examples of short form video feeds which are divorced from the the TikTok and Reels algorithm -- both of which are aggressively incented to "engage" a user in ways they may not have preferred in the retrospect.
    - willis936 8mo ago
      Well that's why people are doing science to figure that out. Right now it looks like the format itself acutely affects short term memory. The video really is worth a watch.
b8 8mo ago
Problem will be growing the user base. YouTube Shorts will be a big competitor.
- boriskourt 8mo ago
  How is this a problem in your opinion?
ParadisoShlee 8mo ago
This project would love some additional support. If you're a developer who is interested in building this... please get in touch with them, the team is VERY small so you can do some good by just supporting them.
- verdverm 8mo ago
  Saw this comment about developer hostility first, is there a response or critique out there? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47118328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47118328
- flexagoon 8mo ago
  No disrespect to the project, but it is a bit hard to find motivation to contribute to something that will most likely end up being used by like 100 people who'll all just post videos about how they're better than Tiktok users
  - fsflover 8mo ago
    This looks like a shallow dismissal to me.
    - iskidndjd 8mo ago
      [dead]
lai0602 8mo ago
The platform is filled with so many AI generated slop
CqtGLRGcukpy 8mo ago
It's worth keeping in mind that Loops is made by dansup which has also made and runs Pixelfed, FediDB, and has a history of being hostile to developers. You can see the recounting of his hostility at https://dansup-open-letter.github.io/appendix/ https://dansup-open-letter.github.io/appendix/ (I'm not a signature of the open letter)
- Kovah 8mo ago
  Unfortunately, I can second this, both as a developer and a user. His IMHO childish behavior has ruined his image for me, and is not a good lighthouse for the Fediverse itself. Also, as a OSS veteran myself, I see it extremely critical that he is starting new projects all along, denies to get proper help and build up a maintainer team, and leaves older projects in the dust. Pixelfed is the one product he might should focus on, jet it feels like the platform is in maintenance only mode. Pixelfed is a wonderful addition to the Fediverse and deserves to be on good hands. Maybe, and this is a very personal opinion, his product success and the Kickstarter campaign raising over 100k made him feel like he's better than everybody else. And one can see the effects.
- boriskourt 8mo ago
  This comes up here and there to discredit the developer but having followed all the drama for many years now I just want to add that Dansup has apologized multiple times, and has been far more open about his process. His communication has also changed for the better over the last two years especially. Its not easy being human, and I think its a good sign to see that he takes this seriously.
- vyr 8mo ago
  yeah he has a long history of saying dumb shit in public and then trying to cover his tracks. also, having had to figure out some of the Pixelfed code for previous projects, i wonder if he's up to the task of maintaining any of this once the next shiny thing comes along. Fedi software has a lot of quirks in general (comes with the nearly nonexistent budgets) but as a representative issue, the dude managed to build a photo blogging service with no way to export or back up your photos and that hasn't been fixed in seven years. ultimately, though, if we ignore software quality and developer reputation, Loops is going to live or die based on whether anyone on Fedi actually wants to make short-form video. given existing Fedi culture, plus how expensive it can be to produce and how the RoI is basically zero, i don't think we're going to see much native to Fedi. some might get crossposted by TikTok/Shorts/Reels creators that want a backup location that won't get erased the second someone makes a spurious copyright claim, but i suspect we're just going to see a few months of stolen TikToks and then not much after that.
system2 8mo ago
The TikTok users are not conscious humans to think like "oh, this app is bad for me, let me find a clean alternative". Nice try, but missed the target by a mile.
bloody-crow 8mo ago
Who actually wants this? Kids obsesses with TikTok don't care about federated/open source bits. People who do are not on TikTok or interested in this type of brainrot in the first place. What am I missing?
- brikym 8mo ago
  Maybe it could be what prescribed Methadone is to Heroin addicts.
  - intothemild 8mo ago
    Watching all these open source, federated versions of social media platforms is like if you found out your favourite drug was actually manufactured by some really bad people and made people around the world suffer. So you make an open source version of the drug. Similar formula, just this time the people can own it. Sure you cut out the bad people, but is the situation improved now?
    - groestl 8mo ago
      There are projects where long term addicts are given pure medical heroin (Diamorphin) in a controlled environment, and they do considerably better than their control group who does not receive their drugs like that. E.g. https://patrida.de/ https://patrida.de/
      - cornholio 8mo ago
        Their drug is rage, thirst and cute trap videos generated by AI and selected for maximum engagement. If it's not harmful it's not the same drug. Unlike diamorphine, a medical grade supply does not reduce harm; it's more like sniffing glue, inhaling poison to escape reality.
    - dbdr 8mo ago
      The harm from social media is at least in part caused by the feed suggestion algorithm being optimized for screen time (aka addiction). Potentially open social media where the suggestion algorithm is not that could be a big improvement.
lloydjones 8mo ago
Is this using ATProtocol? I wasn’t clear from the site. Congrats!
himanshu1103 8mo ago
What is the actual usecase?
tamimio 8mo ago
The site is buggy, when you enable 2FA, you are given the qr code option only, no option for manual entry. When you sign up and the username is taken, you next button goes into infinite loop even after changing the username, you cannot click next, and clicking back doesn’t fix it.
pyaamb 8mo ago
I've been casually daydreaming about possible paths an "AI augmented" newsfeed experience could take. I'm imagining an initial group of agents scraping the web for events (twitter/x, science/eng/business publications) that could potentially translate to stories that their end users (humans) might be interested in. those stories get picked up by another set of bots (equivalent to reddit posters) and get published on an agent-only social network where a diverse set of agents with different "backgrounds"/personalities comment and discuss on the story. inputs from this post (article + comments) are picked up by an 'editor' agent and go into a final summarized article designed for human eyes or humans personal agent or newsfeed agent. humans being the end users browse their (ai enhanced) newsfeed which has its own private, continuously evolving algorithms based on knowledge of 1) what and 2) how its human likes to consume/think. information is "backpropagated" to inform/reinforce the initial scraper group of bots on what to look out for.
- bschwindHN 8mo ago
  How about you just _don't_ contribute to the slop pile? Also, that sounds like a machine that generates self-reinforcing echo chambers.
  - pyaamb 8mo ago
    I would argue that: 1. "slop" doesn't come from just AI. Take a look at the headlines on your daily newsfeed. Carefully crafted by humans. 2. This is an application of AI that serves human values by what it attempts to preserve.
    - bschwindHN 8mo ago
      Some humans produce slop sometimes, but AI produces slop basically always. I don't see that as an argument to just add more into the system because humans do sometimes. Your application also doesn't "serve human values". It just statistically gives someone content it thinks they'll want to hear/read, and hides content that might make them uncomfortable or question their own views. A self-reinforcing echo chamber, like I said. I know AI is all the rage and everyone is trying to come up with something actually useful for it, but this isn't it.
johnpaulgeorge 8mo ago
we need a platform that is not addictive. there is a simple solution. pass a very strict law: that every social media company is required to allow their user from turning off their feeds.
- aembleton 8mo ago
  I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean that users should be able to switch off feeds? Does that mean you would have to select a user first to see content? Or just not see any content?
swiftcoder 8mo ago
Is this 'federated' as in ActivityPub? Or 'federated' as in ATProtocol? Or 'federated' as in some custom thing? I did not find the site very enlightening about what's actually going on under the hood
- flancian 8mo ago
  It's federated as in ActivityPub.
- bigfishrunning 8mo ago
  from the site: > Built for Pixelfed & the fediverse > Loops speaks ActivityPub, so your videos can reach people on Mastodon, Pixelfed and other compatible apps — while you stay in control of your home server.
fasbiner 8mo ago
This looks interesting, but if you don't have creepy and opaque admin controls and algorthimic manipulation that create a thousand little tinpot Larry Ellisons, you should highlight that. Because that's why no one I know uses Mastadon.
- listic 8mo ago
  Could you please explain exactly why you think no one you know uses Mastodon? I'm trying to figure it out. I, personally am hesitant to use it first and foremost because Mastodon (and many of its lesser known alternatives) is a variant of micro-blogging (I'm appalled how extending character limit beyond 500 apparently counts as a feature in Fediverse!)
  - fasbiner 8mo ago
    No, nothing cute like that. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18079 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18079 The instance owner has absolute anonymity and absolute power to snoop with no access logs and no known identity. CCPA? GDPR? Access controls? Good luck! You can leave the instance, but you're leaving all your data behind for them or any future owner of the instance to do whatever they want with... forever. And even if you trust them and everyone they will ever meet, people can and do store their server logs unencrypted. Then argue they can't help it and you don't "get it" because that's just how the architecture has to work in order to... well it's not clear why this is a good design for the user or any better than other social media. 1) You still don't own your data 2) You still don't have any privacy 3) Every single part of the user experience is inferior or confusing and the people making it don't care because they're focused on doing what they can to connect kids with anonymous instance owners.
hackersk 8mo ago
[flagged]
- dewey 8mo ago
  > Instagram Reels being algorithmically hostile to small creators, and YouTube Shorts still feeling like an afterthought The average consumer doesn't care about these things, they will go to the technically inferior product that they already use (YouTube) or use IG Reels that are basically identical to TT and share a lot of the popular creators already. If the platform is hostile to small creators isn't really something that people care about, as can be seen by the popularity of Spotify.
maelito 8mo ago
Not sure how the fediverse that missed the Twitter alternative because of its design complexity, will get the video market, a lot less geek.
- listic 8mo ago
  What do you mean by 'the fediverse that missed the Twitter alternative'? I thought Mastodon is the Twitter alternative. Sorry; I didn't het it.
  - maelito 8mo ago
    Bluesky became that, while Mastodon had months of head start.
- eitland 8mo ago
  Let me present my take on why the federated alternatives struggle to replace X: Twitter didn't succeed because it was a particularly good solution - it really isn't. It succeeded purely on the back of the network effect. When every open-source alternative simply copies the existing restrictions without adding any unique value, why would users switch to an equally flawed version where none of the accounts they actually want to follow are?
  - maelito 8mo ago
    People did fly to Bluesky. Some accounts there have 1 million followers. Bluesky got the decentralisation UX right.
    - eitland 8mo ago
      My take is that Bluesky got the network effects right, with hyping and gradual release and careful curation of who seeded the network and that is - IMO - the important thing they got right.
- hypercube33 8mo ago
  I guess I don't get why all of these don't target better user experience goals - one login / trust plane and full distribution for decentralization. The way I'd look at it is more like Bitcoin where everyone can decide how much compute to give to the pool to verify people or posts and maybe everyone shares chunks of the whole pie with copies like freenet. Maybe I'm (likely) too dumb to get why this isn't what things in the fediverse is but they all are an awful experience and having so many hosts makes critical mass non existent so I can't be bothered to participate.
CodeCompost 8mo ago
I briefly hosted a Lemmy server on my machine just to see how it works and my god never again. The pictures that were automatically synced to my machine did not only make me lose faith in humanity, but it made me shut down and wipe my machine immediately because I was terrified that some of those images would land me some serious jail time. So if you choose to host something like this, be very aware that there are some sick, sick people out there.
- pjc50 8mo ago
  .. ah, yes, "completely unmoderated free speech system that supports images" does mean "may contain CSAM". Heck, even Instagram had a horrific "mirror world" incident where the moderation bit got flipped on a number of images which ordinary users were exposed to. I wouldn't run any kind of publishing system for anons myself. It's potentially valuable for an actual social group though.
  - balamatom 8mo ago
    >I wouldn't run any kind of publishing system for anons myself. It's potentially valuable for an actual social group though. That's pretty much how it works on the federated Internet. There are large open-access services run by communities with sufficient moderation capacity (to not get themselves nuked, anyway.) Turns out many "impossibilities" are trivial when you're not trying to abuse 1 billion active users at the same time through the power of their own (distr)actions - but instead you are simply trying to run a board for messages. And then there plenty of private servers, where publishing either is by invite, or does not have outsized reach in the first place. Those also defederate each other a lot, and many don't show you stuff from the big publics at all. There've been "bad people out there" always (or at least that's what the "good people in there" have been broadcasting, for about as long as I remember). The design/engineering problem here is how to figure out and deploy a relational dynamic that keeps hostiles at a safe distance. The practical problem stems from a technicality of how federation currently works: to display content from other services to your users, you have to mirror it on your storage. This mode of federating hazardous data is a real problem, and also it's exactly what some cheap-ass subcontractor of current-gen social media incumbents would be doing if said incumbents had the amount of good sense that they've demonstrated having (see e.g. https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series). Yeah cuz... it's war out there. I don't expect things to get better until everyone's phone is their personal server and cryptographic root of trust, and this is exposed to non-technicals in a way which neither scares them nor screws them over. Once civilization accomplishes that, I reckon things will be fine once again. EDIT: "Heck, even Instagram had a horrific "mirror world" incident where the moderation bit got flipped on a number of images which ordinary users were exposed to." I don't think I've heard about this before, but I must admit I find it completely hilarious - besides obviously sad and horrifying.
4k1l 8mo ago
Another TikTok alternative https://upscrolled.com/en/ https://upscrolled.com/en/
mikkupikku 8mo ago
The proprietary nature of tiktok, particularly the opaque recommendation algorithm, is only part of the problem with tiktok. I think the whole short form video medium is the bigger problem, it's not a medium that lends itself to nuance.
- cyberge99 8mo ago
  It's also very detrimental to brain development.
- mrguyorama 8mo ago
  Similarly, the problem with Twitter is not strictly who runs it. Short form content is brain rot. It requires you to eschew nuance and reason and complexity, dumb things down, handwave or ignore criticisms, parrot cliches, and will always prefer a short but nice sounding thing to something that requires more effort. Short form communication like that is inherently bad.
  - mikkupikku 8mo ago
    Absolutely. I think the proof of this is in the toxicity of the twitter alternatives. Despite being federated instead of centralized, they produce the same kind of toxicity. It's the medium itself which is corrupting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
    - yunnpp 8mo ago
      There is a lot of naivete behind the whole idea that some alternative is better because it's open source. You can clearly tell it's a project made by software developers, not by behavioural analysts, psychologists, or really anyone who has talked to another human being in the past 30 days. The only real alternative to TikTok is a big dumpster fire.
- jijijijij 8mo ago
  Vine was fun. I think, the actual problem is commercialization and advertisement. That's creating the incentives to hijack any form of social media and turn them into addictive brain rot machines.
giancarlostoro 8mo ago
Neat, looks like ActivityPub based. My only nitpick is the website and app look a little too much like Tik Tok, they might want to tweak it to not be a blatant rip off, I could see Tik Tok having a valid lawsuit due to how insanely close it looks. I could see myself getting confused as to which site I'm on if I had this open in a browser, which is probably enough for a valid lawsuit.
Brajeshwar 8mo ago
My naive thought is to NOT have these platforms, not to build an alternative.
- cush 8mo ago
  Exactly, the idea that we can "fix" social media is a completely false premise and not a technology problem
  - boxedemp 8mo ago
    That may be true, but I'm still trying with one of my side projects. If for no other reason than it's a difficult problem and fun to hack at.
    - cush 8mo ago
      I wonder if developers are so interested in recreating social media because they’re so familiar with it. To me, the “hard” part of what social media is, is the escape velocity (a pure business/serendipity problem) and the algorithm’s slow-feed of addictive content while keeping the users none the wiser. The site itself, db, interactions, etc only become hard completely unrealistic scale limits are met
susarn 8mo ago
[dead]
roger110 8mo ago
I want to see the Venn diagram of people who care about open source, care about federation, and want to use something like TikTok
SkyMarshal 8mo ago
https://github.com/joinloops/loops-server/blob/main/INSTALLATION.md https://github.com/joinloops/loops-server/blob/main/INSTALLA... Looks like an amalgam of php, node, mysql, redis and an AWS S3-compatible filesystem.
- fragmede 8mo ago
  That's one way to do it. There are 3rd parties that make it easier to deal with video than S3, though you do pay them for that privilege.

575 points by Gooblebrai 8mo ago

deafpolygon 8mo ago

We do not need another tiktok.

brody_hamer 8mo ago
Censorship.
- sheiyei 8mo ago
  No, health advocacy (societal and mental). Better formats exist
  - ftchd 8mo ago
    This format is present on all video platforms, an "open" version is definitely a step in the right direction
  - logicchains 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Almondsetat 8mo ago
      Small minority? What about all the studies and statistics both from third parties and from the social networks themselves showing a direct effect on the _majority_ of users? Not that I expected a better argument from someone that crams in "leftists" as an unwarranted snide remark
    - poolnoodle 8mo ago
      The anxious generation is a best-selling book for no reason then.
    - 587687646343767 8mo ago
      [dead]

slipheen 8mo ago

I didn't deep dive into this, but just for context and comparison, here are some other tools which are building TikTok like tools on Bluesky- https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/01/here-are-the-apps-battling-to-be-become-the-tiktok-for-bluesky/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/01/here-are-the-apps-battling...

Almondsetat 8mo ago

"Open-source TikTok" is like reading "open source slot machine". Not something you should be proud of, no matter how much you sugarcoat it with "All the fun of short-form video, none of the corporate control"

avidruntime 8mo ago
Short form content is a medium that isn't going away. Short form content is not inherently harmful, although short form content replacing or displacing other important mediums arguably is. When I think about the issues stemming from short form content, I don't think about the inherent medium, I think about the providers and their capabilities to use the sum of all consumed content by a user in the name of a ulterior motive at scale. While I haven't investigated it too deeply, Loops seems to be an effort in patching that. Is your objection in the marketing language or in the inherent technology?
- Almondsetat 8mo ago
  Short form user generated content being served in our faces in a constant and ever updating feed fucks up our brains. It does not matter if it's proprietary or FOSS or non profit. >Is your objection in the marketing language or in the inherent technology? I think saying it's like an open source slot machine is pretty much self-explanatory

HelloUsername 8mo ago

Recently released on the Appstore https://blog.joinloops.org/loops-is-now-on-the-app-store/ https://blog.joinloops.org/loops-is-now-on-the-app-store/

weezing 8mo ago

This form of content is bad regardless of platform.

CharlesW 8mo ago
The problem with TikTok isn't the form, which is effectively StumbleUpon for short-form video (or Dave Winer's "river of news" in video form, if you prefer). There's brainrot content on all platforms, but there's also ArtTok, BookTok, CraftTok, EduTok, FoodTok, GardenTok, HistoryTok, MathTok, MusicTok, PoliTok, ScienceTok, TechTok, and lots more.
- Avicebron 8mo ago
  I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women who really like the plot of 50 shades of grey.. edit: which is to say I'm not positive the format isn't the problem.
  - amelius 8mo ago
    Is that also short form?
    - Avicebron 8mo ago
      How would I know? I don't use tiktok, this is second hand from an ex
  - CharlesW 8mo ago
    > I'm pretty sure BookTok is just porn for women… Those aren't the kinds of book-related videos that I see, so at some point The Algorithm must've decided I wasn't interested in porn for women (not that there's anything wrong with that).
- ajam1507 8mo ago
  Short form video is the brainrot.
- wolvoleo 8mo ago

throwa356262 8mo ago

Congrats. All that remains now is spending $$$ on some D-level celebs to lure in the users...

umairnadeem123 8mo ago

[dead]

nosrepa 8mo ago
The less ai generated video I see the better.
Pulcinella 8mo ago
Counterpoint: The format is bad. The constant stream of videos, skipping between videos at (relatively) your own pace, the anticipation about the next video; it's similar to electronic gambling machines.
- dangus 8mo ago
  To use the analogy of other vice industries like gambling or alcohol, would you rather buy those products from shady unregulated vendors or more transparent regulated entities? That’s the type of analogy we might make in this case. Obviously many people (literally billions) like this format and use it in relative moderation to unwind and kill time. Hell, I’ve even gotten productive helpful information out of the format on occasion. It’s also taken a critical role in journalism and current events. Unless you’re advocating prohibition, the cat is out of the bag. Being able to find a short form video alternative that isn’t owned by commercial/government interests is a positive thing.
  - OrangePilled 8mo ago
    [dead]
  - inigyou 8mo ago
    > would you rather buy those products from shady unregulated vendors or more transparent regulated entities? Some people are saying Las Vegas died when it became corporate pandering to rich people, and they preferred the good old days when the Mafia ran it, because they wanted you to come in and gamble.
- logicchains 8mo ago

Aeroi 8mo ago

two hardest problems for a platform like this. 1. users and initial flywheel. 2. content moderation.

ftchd 8mo ago

I want this to be succesful so much, but almost nothing works in the mobile app Needed 2 tries to sign up, and uploading a video from the camera roll failed (5-7 tries)

nagaiaida 8mo ago
yeah, there's a consistent pattern of overpromising across this and other projects by the same person

throawayonthe 8mo ago

how good is the For You feed? the tiktok secret sauce is the creepy algorithm, who's clamoring for "crack but not addictive?"

binary132 8mo ago
It sounds like you’re suggesting federated crack…
- throawayonthe 8mo ago
  is it really a tiktok alternative if there's no crack?
- verdverm 8mo ago
  locally sourced, organic, ethical [south park clip] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyOzp9pR6iE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyOzp9pR6iE

SilverElfin 8mo ago

There have already been some TikTok alternatives that have become popular after it got bought by the Trump / Oracle / Silver Lake group of buyers. One alternative I’ve heard of that apparently became popular is Skylight: https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/tiktok-alternative-skylight-soars-to-380k-users-after-tiktok-u-s-deal-finalized/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/tiktok-alternative-skyligh...

gempir 8mo ago

Good that they have a web version. But the most basic functionality of going to the next video is only available via scroll (no keyboard arrow down?) and it has a really long animation and delay? Just feels awful to use. I feel if you wanna win in this space, especially with people who prefer more "free" platforms, then the non-app version should be a bigger priority IMO.

pear01 8mo ago
[flagged]

wolvoleo 8mo ago

I like the app but it really needs a mute function (ideally an option by default).

TensorToad 8mo ago

This is actually pretty exciting. Excited to see how this turns out. But I am wondering how to keep it financially possible to operate the platform. Also, 95+% of the users probably don't care that much about censorship and privacy enough to switch platform.

zahlman 8mo ago
I would have thought that the point of federation is not to require centralized servers that cost a lot to operate. But sure, something like this probably requires a fundamentally different revenue model. Maybe even the one where people donate to server operators.
- Barrin92 8mo ago
  centralized servers cost less to operate, that why data intensive applications centralize over time. That's division of labor. The higher the complexity the the higher degree of specialization. And a video service is very demanding. And you need to solve the economics first because otherwise your decentralized service is simply going to centralize over time to deal with demands for a more reliable and higher quality service. (and how to compensate creators)
  - verdverm 8mo ago
    This so much, the Tiktok clones in ATProto face this same issue and several rely on Bluesky CDN & VC funding to have an acceptable UX (in terms of just delivering video content)

cogman10 8mo ago

It's interesting, I doubt it'll ever be successful. Look, the reason a lot of content makes it's way to Youtube, tiktok, and twitter, etc is because the creators can earn money from the platform. On youtube and tiktok, you can send gifts to your favorite creator. That incentivizes creators to create content. loops will never have that feature. It's really hard to legally distribute money like that. But further, the decentralized nature of it means that you'll never know if your funds ends up in your creator's account or the instant account. Without any sort of path to make money, the only content on the platform will be works of passion. Maybe that's a good thing, but it means these people will ultimately burn out. But on the plus side, it means you probably won't end up with an endless stream of AI slop.

wolvoleo 8mo ago
Instagram pays hardly anything. I don't know anyone doing it for that reason. It's more advertising for their other services. Like onlyfans, selling physical stuff, lectures, events etc. And of course the people who do it for fun, usually the best content. It doesn't matter they'll eventually stop. There's always new ones. I'm not sure about tiktok, but I doubt they pay much more than insta.

aaurelions 8mo ago

[dead]

jmyeet 8mo ago

For 20+ years World of Warcraft has dominated the MMORPG genre. There have been a host of challengers and they've all miserably failed. In fact, there have only been a handful of successes (eg UO, EQ, FF14). And what do almost all of these challengers have in common? Some version of "the PvP is going to be amazing". Why do these companies like PVP? Because it's essentially user-generated content. It increases time spent in game without having to create content, which is expensive. Thing is, players of this genre don't want PVP. Even in WoW, I'd be surprised if 10% of the playerbase actively engages in PVP activity. So, by focusing on PVP, you're actually cut your potential market by 90%. Before you've written a single line of code or created any artwork. Put another way, you're spending valuable development effort on features only a tiny minority of players care about or even want. I'm reminded of this whenever somebody on HN talks about federation. The only people who care about federation are... other people on HN. It does literally nothing for users. It greatly complicates the implementation. The last successes of federation are POTS and Email. It's quite literally never succeeded since. And the problems with federation that POTS and Email continue to have to this day should be an object lesson in why it's a bad idea. Choosing federation from the start is choosing to lose. I'm sorry but it's true.

rrr_oh_man 8mo ago
This didn’t go where I thought it would. You made me chuckle. Thanks!
fsflover 8mo ago
> The only people who care about federation are... other people on HN. It does literally nothing for users. Until enshittification happens. Example: the fall of Freenode.
wiredpancake 8mo ago
[dead]
eddythompson80 8mo ago
completely agree. Every time I see a "fediverse" on a project, I know its not going anywhere.

dangoodmanUT 8mo ago

I can appreciate the effort, but the UI is indistinguishable from tiktok.

blueboo 8mo ago

Open source meth is still bad in absolute terms even if it’s better than the alternative meth

evolve2k 8mo ago

Great to see this progressing. Tried it out just now after last testing it over 6 months ago. I’d say the main “feature” id want to see added is a mandatory field on upload to tick if it’s AI content. Then a tag on videos that are Ai and at the account level to filter out AI content. Otherwise it’s going to be a slops fest.

bigfishrunning 8mo ago
What is the incentive for people producing AI slop to tick the "This is slop" box? Reminds me of the evil bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit

gnarlouse 8mo ago

"Everything you love about short-video" Ha haha

b00ty4breakfast 8mo ago

this is like using an "ethically produced" brick to smash your foot with; The method of manufacturing the brick isn't the problem. These formats are designed for a specific purpose; maximizing engagement to extract value. so we've remove the incentive to extract value but we leave the predatory design that maximize engagement? You working in a different milieu but you are bringing the worst parts of the previous milieu along for the ride. Please, anybody working on this kind of alternative social platform, we need to rethink how we interact online; decentralization leaves the worst parts of modern social media completely unaddressed.

blackcatsec 8mo ago
One of the unspoken parts of the open source social media movement is to put the 'social' back in the 'social media'. There has been a fine line between true user-driven content and centrally-controlled (and often authoritarian-lite) algorithms; with major players (advertisers, oligarchs, governments) putting their thumb on the latter half to ensure that everyone stays isolated, divided, and pacified. Everything you called out is a symptom of that control: engagement baiting, algorithmic manipulation, censorship and suppression. Absent these items, social media can be an incredible force for good and a hopeful longer term future of more peace.
akdev1l 8mo ago
The incentive is still there. If there is an algorithm putting stuff on people’s faces then there will always be an incentive imo.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
bee_rider 8mo ago
On one hand, it seems impossible to supplant with Tik Tok without the engagement bait. On the other, replacing the additive sites with something just as addictive seems pointless. It is a tricky puzzle.
- bastawhiz 8mo ago

AuthAuth 8mo ago

I do not know how to phrase this politely. I like the platform and the concept is interesting. But the people on it are just so far away from what me (and men my age) deem interesting and seem to be hostile to anything that doesnt fit their very restrictive ideals. You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it. I havent used Loops but im assuming its the same crowd as on Mastodon.

krapp 8mo ago
>You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it. I'm pretty sure you can find all of those things on TikTok and Youtube Shorts. If you're talking about federated platforms, probably all of it but guns. And if you can't of course no one is stopping you from starting a channel or instance yourself.
- AuthAuth 8mo ago
  I posted a cool clip from the UFC and got banned even though the content had a warning. It wasnt even that violent just a clean headkick ko. If I started an instance it would get defederated because people would take one look and assume its toxic. But its not, Im not, I've spend years in the leftie techie activist spaces and cause no issues.
  - bee_rider 8mo ago
    You’d get defederated by instances that find that sort of thing objectionable, I guess. But, if you think it is a popular niche, couldn’t a separate community grow? That’s the whole promise of decentralization.
    - AuthAuth 8mo ago
      I do think its a popular niche but currently no one on the fediverse enjoys that stuff. But how can it grow when its rejected?

koreanguy 8mo ago

[dead]

dana321 8mo ago

I signed up and had a look, its full of garbage

umrashrf 8mo ago

How is it decentralized? Decentralized as in bitcoin?

atomicfiredoll 8mo ago
Decentralized as in not needing a central server. I don't know about Loops specifically, but generally [Fediverse][0] projects tend to: - Not rely on a central server. - Allow you to set up your own server. - Connect to a web of other servers through the Activity Pub protocol. - Allow you to modify policies on your server (including restricting which other servers information is shared with.) Many are also open source. The creator of Loops also built a different project called [Pixelfed](1) with a focus on decentralized photo sharing (although it can also host video.) Because all these projects speak the same protocol, it's possible that at some point, Loops could show content from Pixelfed. Apparently Loops content is already appearing in Mastodon. Meta's Threads also has Activity Pub support. Hypothetically, Threads content could appear on Loops and vice versa, if the UI is built to accommodate that style of content and a server admin doesn't block the Threads server (many servers block Threads specifically.) TL;DR: A web of servers using different pieces of open source software to share social media, without a centralized server. - [0] https://fediverse.info/ https://fediverse.info/ - [1] https://pixelfed.org/ https://pixelfed.org/
- atomicfiredoll 8mo ago
  Just a side note, reading through some of the other comments, it sounds like Loops specifically isn't currently open source and the intent is to open source it at some later date.

mschuster91 8mo ago

Oh dear god, another fediverse service. I mean, I love the idea behind the fediverse, but the problem is, as long as you got federated instances of anything, instance admins will use their userbase for petty bxtchfights and purity contests. and no, selfhosting is not an alternative, anything Fediverse requires a lot of resources, is ripe with exploits and exposes you to significant legal risk from griefers (e.g. you get DM'd CSAM by someone, your server automatically downloads it => congratulations, you are now a pedo under at least German law).

iamnothere 8mo ago

Glad to see more platforms on the Fediverse. Couldn’t be less interested in this particular one since it’s short form video. Those who like this medium: enjoy. I may find short form video distasteful, but it’s less distasteful than those who want to dictate the media formats that others consume. Get a grip, people.

inigyou 8mo ago

[dead]

hmokiguess 8mo ago

Aw man can we not flip the script and maybe build less of these things? It’s saturated and not really helping society but rather creating more addiction machines.

Bayko 8mo ago
Based on what I have seen, read and experienced, a tech doesn't just go away. It evolves (unless you know one company was building it and then got shut down). Social media in the current form if it went away, would get replaced with something even worse.
- notpushkin 8mo ago
  From what I’ve heard, people burned out on TikTok are switching to more mindful alternatives. Perhaps what Loops could do is try to capture those people as well?
DANmode 8mo ago
They’re addiction machines because of how they’re built. See: custom Facebook apps that only show the part of the service you ask for - not force-feeding you whatever they want.

muyuu 8mo ago

the brainrot from tiktok amplified with the brainrot from mastodon, what's not to love?

aembleton 8mo ago
Lack of content

587687646343767 8mo ago

[dead]

notepad0x90 8mo ago

> Each instance admin has full control over their server's moderation policies, allowed content, and federation choices. Loops provides the tools; communities set their own rules. Yeah, but how do you maintain quality? Are users expected to shun instances that have poor quality? Quality doesn't just mean spam and unwanted content, it means hiding poor quality posts in feeds. You end up with users that are willing to invest time in curating the app to meet their needs. But that means you miss out on most people out there who expect a curated and engaging (read:addicting) experience. I am not concerned about market shares on their own. But this is a good idea, and tiktok and youtube short videos are doing lots of harm to the world. Having a viable alternative would be amazing. I'll suggest that a very strong and well funded "main" instance server exist? I'm sure there is one now, but I'm concerned this will go the way of lemmy and mastodon. I would much rather prefer a centralized social media with a sanely constructed governance and corporate structure and a clear and non-conflicting revenue generation plan. The guardian's incorporation structure is what I consider a good example. That news organization is managing to be fairly independent, prevalent and significant when all others are caving to walled gardens and billionaires. social media in general should be viewed similar to journalistic organizations in terms of governance structure. it is nice to be able to take your data elsewhere, it is nicer not having the need to begin with. In principle that sounds great, but in practice it is similar to forking software if you don't like it. Lastly, how do they plan on making money? At least to the level that sustains their operations?

bobbane 8mo ago

LOOPS, on the other hand, is an object-oriented programming environment in Interlisp-D, and one of the predecessors to CLOS.

replwoacause 8mo ago

Let me also register my disinterest in another platform that mimics TikTok. Brainrot is brainrot regardless of whether it's "federated and open-source" or not. And BTW, 95% of the people on TikTok don't care about either of those two things.

nanobuilds 8mo ago

The UX should be more "mass user" friendly if the goal is to attract mainstream users. Sign in with Apple/etc.. selecting a server is technical language and not end-user language etc.

deminature 8mo ago
Selecting a server is one of the reasons the fediverse appears to have not seriously challenged incumbents. As soon as a non-technical user sees this, they bounce.
- 8organicbits 8mo ago
  Checking the Mastodon app, new users are asked to "Join mastodon.social" or "pick another server". If you just mindlessly click the primary button, you'll get an account on mastodon.social so I think the server selection challenge has largely been addressed.
  - notpushkin 8mo ago
    This does solve the problem, although I do hope it doesn’t turn into another Bluesky this way.
    - xethos 8mo ago
      I may be out of date, but last I looked there was a push to rotate the "default" through servers with open sign-ups and reasonable policies to prevent one server ruling them all
  - anigbrowl 8mo ago
    But users are not mindless drones. Even the least computer-savvy is aware that they're being asked to make a choice and is probably unpleasantly reminded of the dark patterns in user agreements etc., so they'll feel like they're being guided down a sales funnel immediately after installing the app/signing up on web. What percentage bounce at that stage? It's probably large. I did so, and although I later relented and created a Mastodon account I've felt emotionally biased against it ever since and barely use it. When I have used it I don't experience any tangible benefit to overcome my reflexive dislike. The network effects aren't anything great, the timeline/feed mechanism and presentation are not fundamentally different from other social media offerings, the QoL improvements are marginal. If I cared about architecture and ideology above all else it would be great, but what I actually care about is being able to get news faster than any other source and being able to find more people there than anywhere else. I can only think of 1 or 2 people who I check in on periodically via Mastodon because there's no other place to find them.

mortsnort 8mo ago

The reality is that the addictive algorithm of commercial social media platforms is the product. These alternative platforms are like nicotine free cigarettes. They might garner small communities, which is totally cool and valid, but they will never slay the giants.

brutal_chaos_ 8mo ago
To be fair, you don't need to slay giants to be a viable product.
- echelon 8mo ago
  "nicotine free cigarettes" are a product too. We have limited time on earth, so many tend to evaluate things on how big of an impact they make or how large of a demand they satisfy. It's okay if not everything is big, but it's also okay for people to use scale as a criteria for sizing things up.
  - wongarsu 8mo ago
    I guess there is an argument that every food product should add opium to their ingredients to make sure it's bought by as many people as possible and eaten as frequently as possible But I don't think that's healthy for either the product or society
Morromist 8mo ago
Old-school social media can be addictive too. I don't use any social media where complex algorithms decide what I see, but I have trouble wasting far too much time on discord.
- nine_k 8mo ago
  Discord is communication with fellow humans. Tiktok is one-way consumption mostly. Discord is mostly text. Tiktok is mostly speech-free momentary videos, adjusting to the minute hints in your reaction. There's no comparison.

yeukhon 8mo ago

Good luck, projects like these either end up getting sued or going to acquisition. Open source != morally on the end result

with 8mo ago

Ew. The content problem on TikTok was never the protocol, it's that 99% of short-form video is brainrot slop regardless of who hosts the servers. Slapping ActivityPub on it literally solves nothing for humanity.

verdverm 8mo ago
I'm hopeful that the decoupling of algorithms (feeds) in ATProto can change this equation. For the tiktok clones and all the other apps.
aembleton 8mo ago
If TikTok was decentralised then the instance that you are a member of could de-prioritise videos from those instances that were allowing the brainrot slop.

beloch 8mo ago

One thing that's awesome about this and is 100% better than TikTok: No burned-in branding. No trailing brand screen. No trademark brand noises. ---- Tiktok videos have omnipresent logos burned-in and a full-screen trailer with an annoying Tiktok brand sound. The few random loops that I looked at had none of these. I hope this doesn't change and, if it doesn't change, I hope loops displaces TikTok. I despise being constantly bombarded with branding.

notpushkin 8mo ago
Bombarding with branding is how TikTok got people on, and I don’t think it’s a bad strategy per se. In fact, I can’t think of any other way to overcome network effects with a product like this (word of mouth would be the best, but you’ll need a ton of creators first).
- beloch 8mo ago
  Vandalizing every video posted on their service may have helped TikTok spread brand recognition. One can only hope that a service that doesn't vandalize the content they deliver will find a way to pull ahead.
  - notpushkin 8mo ago
    I do hope we¹ can figure it out, too. There’s a middle ground solution here. TikTok does (naturally) have a version of each video without watermarks which they show in-app. They don’t let you download it, but external tools can generally help with that. What Loops could do is default to a watermarked version, but allow downloading original as well. This way, person sharing the video can decide whether they want to help promote Loops or not. ¹ – as a humanity; I’m not affiliated with Loops in any way

atlgator 8mo ago

The HN cycle for federated alternatives is now complete: email → chat → microblogging → short video. We're speedrunning the "open-source version of things we claim to hate" timeline. Can't wait for the federated, self-hosted casino.

dvngnt_ 8mo ago
Is that not crypto?
jazzyjackson 8mo ago
I always thought a casino might make more sense if it was run as a cooperative where members were also shareholders, so you could have fun gambling but your money came back to you eventually
- Gigachad 8mo ago
  Isn't this somewhat like how these new crypto prediction markets work? There is no house taking a cut, all of the winnings get paid out.
  - dakolli 8mo ago
    Kalshi and Polymarket take a cut and is making the markets as well. Yes you can create a market and fund it yourself, but almost no one ever does this. People have been trying to make true prediction exchange markets like this 3 decades, its basically impossible without professional market makers. Its largely impossible to fund "organic decentralized" prediction markets because the vast majority of money that goes into them is "dumb money" and there will always be sharp money that takes their cut, and has substantially more funds. Betting markets are zero sum, so the smarter participants is always going to absorb the entire bankroll of the dumber participants over time.. The closest thing to what you describe were BTC dice games, which is kind decentralized, but prediction markets are impossible, some smart guy is always going to be there to make a more accurate fair on a market and eat all the liquidity from the little guys.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

niam 8mo ago

I have no horse in the short-form video race, but I recognize that it has material affects on the world (whether I'd like it or not). Scorn for the principle of an open platform here seems misplaced. It seems too young of a format with too few examples to confidently say it's irredeemable.

spaceman_2020 8mo ago
HN is generally the place you come to to hate anything new in tech. No new piece of tech released in is ever liked here. Everyone nitpicks, strawmans, and complains that the v1 of the product is not perfect. It’s honestly so tiresome
- colechristensen 8mo ago
  Unhelpful nitpicks and people complaining about them get downvotes. At this time the top comment on this post is complaining about the rest of the comments. This is not how things should be around here.
willis936 8mo ago
What if we could say with some certainty that the format makes people stupid? https://youtu.be/tdIUMkXxtHg https://youtu.be/tdIUMkXxtHg
- niam 8mo ago
  We don't have many examples of short form video feeds which are divorced from the the TikTok and Reels algorithm -- both of which are aggressively incented to "engage" a user in ways they may not have preferred in the retrospect.
  - willis936 8mo ago
    Well that's why people are doing science to figure that out. Right now it looks like the format itself acutely affects short term memory. The video really is worth a watch.

b8 8mo ago

Problem will be growing the user base. YouTube Shorts will be a big competitor.

boriskourt 8mo ago
How is this a problem in your opinion?

ParadisoShlee 8mo ago

This project would love some additional support. If you're a developer who is interested in building this... please get in touch with them, the team is VERY small so you can do some good by just supporting them.

verdverm 8mo ago
Saw this comment about developer hostility first, is there a response or critique out there? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47118328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47118328
flexagoon 8mo ago
No disrespect to the project, but it is a bit hard to find motivation to contribute to something that will most likely end up being used by like 100 people who'll all just post videos about how they're better than Tiktok users
- fsflover 8mo ago
  This looks like a shallow dismissal to me.
  - iskidndjd 8mo ago
    [dead]

lai0602 8mo ago

The platform is filled with so many AI generated slop

CqtGLRGcukpy 8mo ago

It's worth keeping in mind that Loops is made by dansup which has also made and runs Pixelfed, FediDB, and has a history of being hostile to developers. You can see the recounting of his hostility at https://dansup-open-letter.github.io/appendix/ https://dansup-open-letter.github.io/appendix/ (I'm not a signature of the open letter)

Kovah 8mo ago
Unfortunately, I can second this, both as a developer and a user. His IMHO childish behavior has ruined his image for me, and is not a good lighthouse for the Fediverse itself. Also, as a OSS veteran myself, I see it extremely critical that he is starting new projects all along, denies to get proper help and build up a maintainer team, and leaves older projects in the dust. Pixelfed is the one product he might should focus on, jet it feels like the platform is in maintenance only mode. Pixelfed is a wonderful addition to the Fediverse and deserves to be on good hands. Maybe, and this is a very personal opinion, his product success and the Kickstarter campaign raising over 100k made him feel like he's better than everybody else. And one can see the effects.
boriskourt 8mo ago
This comes up here and there to discredit the developer but having followed all the drama for many years now I just want to add that Dansup has apologized multiple times, and has been far more open about his process. His communication has also changed for the better over the last two years especially. Its not easy being human, and I think its a good sign to see that he takes this seriously.
vyr 8mo ago
yeah he has a long history of saying dumb shit in public and then trying to cover his tracks. also, having had to figure out some of the Pixelfed code for previous projects, i wonder if he's up to the task of maintaining any of this once the next shiny thing comes along. Fedi software has a lot of quirks in general (comes with the nearly nonexistent budgets) but as a representative issue, the dude managed to build a photo blogging service with no way to export or back up your photos and that hasn't been fixed in seven years. ultimately, though, if we ignore software quality and developer reputation, Loops is going to live or die based on whether anyone on Fedi actually wants to make short-form video. given existing Fedi culture, plus how expensive it can be to produce and how the RoI is basically zero, i don't think we're going to see much native to Fedi. some might get crossposted by TikTok/Shorts/Reels creators that want a backup location that won't get erased the second someone makes a spurious copyright claim, but i suspect we're just going to see a few months of stolen TikToks and then not much after that.

system2 8mo ago

The TikTok users are not conscious humans to think like "oh, this app is bad for me, let me find a clean alternative". Nice try, but missed the target by a mile.

bloody-crow 8mo ago

Who actually wants this? Kids obsesses with TikTok don't care about federated/open source bits. People who do are not on TikTok or interested in this type of brainrot in the first place. What am I missing?

brikym 8mo ago
Maybe it could be what prescribed Methadone is to Heroin addicts.
- intothemild 8mo ago
  Watching all these open source, federated versions of social media platforms is like if you found out your favourite drug was actually manufactured by some really bad people and made people around the world suffer. So you make an open source version of the drug. Similar formula, just this time the people can own it. Sure you cut out the bad people, but is the situation improved now?
  - groestl 8mo ago
    There are projects where long term addicts are given pure medical heroin (Diamorphin) in a controlled environment, and they do considerably better than their control group who does not receive their drugs like that. E.g. https://patrida.de/ https://patrida.de/
    - cornholio 8mo ago
      Their drug is rage, thirst and cute trap videos generated by AI and selected for maximum engagement. If it's not harmful it's not the same drug. Unlike diamorphine, a medical grade supply does not reduce harm; it's more like sniffing glue, inhaling poison to escape reality.
  - dbdr 8mo ago
    The harm from social media is at least in part caused by the feed suggestion algorithm being optimized for screen time (aka addiction). Potentially open social media where the suggestion algorithm is not that could be a big improvement.

lloydjones 8mo ago

Is this using ATProtocol? I wasn’t clear from the site. Congrats!

himanshu1103 8mo ago

What is the actual usecase?

tamimio 8mo ago

The site is buggy, when you enable 2FA, you are given the qr code option only, no option for manual entry. When you sign up and the username is taken, you next button goes into infinite loop even after changing the username, you cannot click next, and clicking back doesn’t fix it.

pyaamb 8mo ago

I've been casually daydreaming about possible paths an "AI augmented" newsfeed experience could take. I'm imagining an initial group of agents scraping the web for events (twitter/x, science/eng/business publications) that could potentially translate to stories that their end users (humans) might be interested in. those stories get picked up by another set of bots (equivalent to reddit posters) and get published on an agent-only social network where a diverse set of agents with different "backgrounds"/personalities comment and discuss on the story. inputs from this post (article + comments) are picked up by an 'editor' agent and go into a final summarized article designed for human eyes or humans personal agent or newsfeed agent. humans being the end users browse their (ai enhanced) newsfeed which has its own private, continuously evolving algorithms based on knowledge of 1) what and 2) how its human likes to consume/think. information is "backpropagated" to inform/reinforce the initial scraper group of bots on what to look out for.

bschwindHN 8mo ago
How about you just _don't_ contribute to the slop pile? Also, that sounds like a machine that generates self-reinforcing echo chambers.
- pyaamb 8mo ago
  I would argue that: 1. "slop" doesn't come from just AI. Take a look at the headlines on your daily newsfeed. Carefully crafted by humans. 2. This is an application of AI that serves human values by what it attempts to preserve.
  - bschwindHN 8mo ago
    Some humans produce slop sometimes, but AI produces slop basically always. I don't see that as an argument to just add more into the system because humans do sometimes. Your application also doesn't "serve human values". It just statistically gives someone content it thinks they'll want to hear/read, and hides content that might make them uncomfortable or question their own views. A self-reinforcing echo chamber, like I said. I know AI is all the rage and everyone is trying to come up with something actually useful for it, but this isn't it.

johnpaulgeorge 8mo ago

we need a platform that is not addictive. there is a simple solution. pass a very strict law: that every social media company is required to allow their user from turning off their feeds.

aembleton 8mo ago
I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean that users should be able to switch off feeds? Does that mean you would have to select a user first to see content? Or just not see any content?

swiftcoder 8mo ago

Is this 'federated' as in ActivityPub? Or 'federated' as in ATProtocol? Or 'federated' as in some custom thing? I did not find the site very enlightening about what's actually going on under the hood

flancian 8mo ago
It's federated as in ActivityPub.
bigfishrunning 8mo ago
from the site: > Built for Pixelfed & the fediverse > Loops speaks ActivityPub, so your videos can reach people on Mastodon, Pixelfed and other compatible apps — while you stay in control of your home server.

fasbiner 8mo ago

This looks interesting, but if you don't have creepy and opaque admin controls and algorthimic manipulation that create a thousand little tinpot Larry Ellisons, you should highlight that. Because that's why no one I know uses Mastadon.

listic 8mo ago
Could you please explain exactly why you think no one you know uses Mastodon? I'm trying to figure it out. I, personally am hesitant to use it first and foremost because Mastodon (and many of its lesser known alternatives) is a variant of micro-blogging (I'm appalled how extending character limit beyond 500 apparently counts as a feature in Fediverse!)
- fasbiner 8mo ago
  No, nothing cute like that. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18079 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/18079 The instance owner has absolute anonymity and absolute power to snoop with no access logs and no known identity. CCPA? GDPR? Access controls? Good luck! You can leave the instance, but you're leaving all your data behind for them or any future owner of the instance to do whatever they want with... forever. And even if you trust them and everyone they will ever meet, people can and do store their server logs unencrypted. Then argue they can't help it and you don't "get it" because that's just how the architecture has to work in order to... well it's not clear why this is a good design for the user or any better than other social media. 1) You still don't own your data 2) You still don't have any privacy 3) Every single part of the user experience is inferior or confusing and the people making it don't care because they're focused on doing what they can to connect kids with anonymous instance owners.

hackersk 8mo ago

[flagged]

dewey 8mo ago
> Instagram Reels being algorithmically hostile to small creators, and YouTube Shorts still feeling like an afterthought The average consumer doesn't care about these things, they will go to the technically inferior product that they already use (YouTube) or use IG Reels that are basically identical to TT and share a lot of the popular creators already. If the platform is hostile to small creators isn't really something that people care about, as can be seen by the popularity of Spotify.

maelito 8mo ago

Not sure how the fediverse that missed the Twitter alternative because of its design complexity, will get the video market, a lot less geek.

listic 8mo ago
What do you mean by 'the fediverse that missed the Twitter alternative'? I thought Mastodon is the Twitter alternative. Sorry; I didn't het it.
- maelito 8mo ago
  Bluesky became that, while Mastodon had months of head start.
eitland 8mo ago
Let me present my take on why the federated alternatives struggle to replace X: Twitter didn't succeed because it was a particularly good solution - it really isn't. It succeeded purely on the back of the network effect. When every open-source alternative simply copies the existing restrictions without adding any unique value, why would users switch to an equally flawed version where none of the accounts they actually want to follow are?
- maelito 8mo ago
  People did fly to Bluesky. Some accounts there have 1 million followers. Bluesky got the decentralisation UX right.
  - eitland 8mo ago
    My take is that Bluesky got the network effects right, with hyping and gradual release and careful curation of who seeded the network and that is - IMO - the important thing they got right.
hypercube33 8mo ago
I guess I don't get why all of these don't target better user experience goals - one login / trust plane and full distribution for decentralization. The way I'd look at it is more like Bitcoin where everyone can decide how much compute to give to the pool to verify people or posts and maybe everyone shares chunks of the whole pie with copies like freenet. Maybe I'm (likely) too dumb to get why this isn't what things in the fediverse is but they all are an awful experience and having so many hosts makes critical mass non existent so I can't be bothered to participate.

CodeCompost 8mo ago

I briefly hosted a Lemmy server on my machine just to see how it works and my god never again. The pictures that were automatically synced to my machine did not only make me lose faith in humanity, but it made me shut down and wipe my machine immediately because I was terrified that some of those images would land me some serious jail time. So if you choose to host something like this, be very aware that there are some sick, sick people out there.

pjc50 8mo ago
.. ah, yes, "completely unmoderated free speech system that supports images" does mean "may contain CSAM". Heck, even Instagram had a horrific "mirror world" incident where the moderation bit got flipped on a number of images which ordinary users were exposed to. I wouldn't run any kind of publishing system for anons myself. It's potentially valuable for an actual social group though.
- balamatom 8mo ago
  >I wouldn't run any kind of publishing system for anons myself. It's potentially valuable for an actual social group though. That's pretty much how it works on the federated Internet. There are large open-access services run by communities with sufficient moderation capacity (to not get themselves nuked, anyway.) Turns out many "impossibilities" are trivial when you're not trying to abuse 1 billion active users at the same time through the power of their own (distr)actions - but instead you are simply trying to run a board for messages. And then there plenty of private servers, where publishing either is by invite, or does not have outsized reach in the first place. Those also defederate each other a lot, and many don't show you stuff from the big publics at all. There've been "bad people out there" always (or at least that's what the "good people in there" have been broadcasting, for about as long as I remember). The design/engineering problem here is how to figure out and deploy a relational dynamic that keeps hostiles at a safe distance. The practical problem stems from a technicality of how federation currently works: to display content from other services to your users, you have to mirror it on your storage. This mode of federating hazardous data is a real problem, and also it's exactly what some cheap-ass subcontractor of current-gen social media incumbents would be doing if said incumbents had the amount of good sense that they've demonstrated having (see e.g. https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series). Yeah cuz... it's war out there. I don't expect things to get better until everyone's phone is their personal server and cryptographic root of trust, and this is exposed to non-technicals in a way which neither scares them nor screws them over. Once civilization accomplishes that, I reckon things will be fine once again. EDIT: "Heck, even Instagram had a horrific "mirror world" incident where the moderation bit got flipped on a number of images which ordinary users were exposed to." I don't think I've heard about this before, but I must admit I find it completely hilarious - besides obviously sad and horrifying.

4k1l 8mo ago

Another TikTok alternative https://upscrolled.com/en/ https://upscrolled.com/en/

mikkupikku 8mo ago

The proprietary nature of tiktok, particularly the opaque recommendation algorithm, is only part of the problem with tiktok. I think the whole short form video medium is the bigger problem, it's not a medium that lends itself to nuance.

cyberge99 8mo ago
It's also very detrimental to brain development.
mrguyorama 8mo ago
Similarly, the problem with Twitter is not strictly who runs it. Short form content is brain rot. It requires you to eschew nuance and reason and complexity, dumb things down, handwave or ignore criticisms, parrot cliches, and will always prefer a short but nice sounding thing to something that requires more effort. Short form communication like that is inherently bad.
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  Absolutely. I think the proof of this is in the toxicity of the twitter alternatives. Despite being federated instead of centralized, they produce the same kind of toxicity. It's the medium itself which is corrupting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
  - yunnpp 8mo ago
    There is a lot of naivete behind the whole idea that some alternative is better because it's open source. You can clearly tell it's a project made by software developers, not by behavioural analysts, psychologists, or really anyone who has talked to another human being in the past 30 days. The only real alternative to TikTok is a big dumpster fire.
jijijijij 8mo ago
Vine was fun. I think, the actual problem is commercialization and advertisement. That's creating the incentives to hijack any form of social media and turn them into addictive brain rot machines.

giancarlostoro 8mo ago

Neat, looks like ActivityPub based. My only nitpick is the website and app look a little too much like Tik Tok, they might want to tweak it to not be a blatant rip off, I could see Tik Tok having a valid lawsuit due to how insanely close it looks. I could see myself getting confused as to which site I'm on if I had this open in a browser, which is probably enough for a valid lawsuit.

Brajeshwar 8mo ago

My naive thought is to NOT have these platforms, not to build an alternative.

cush 8mo ago
Exactly, the idea that we can "fix" social media is a completely false premise and not a technology problem
- boxedemp 8mo ago
  That may be true, but I'm still trying with one of my side projects. If for no other reason than it's a difficult problem and fun to hack at.
  - cush 8mo ago
    I wonder if developers are so interested in recreating social media because they’re so familiar with it. To me, the “hard” part of what social media is, is the escape velocity (a pure business/serendipity problem) and the algorithm’s slow-feed of addictive content while keeping the users none the wiser. The site itself, db, interactions, etc only become hard completely unrealistic scale limits are met

susarn 8mo ago

[dead]

roger110 8mo ago

I want to see the Venn diagram of people who care about open source, care about federation, and want to use something like TikTok

SkyMarshal 8mo ago

https://github.com/joinloops/loops-server/blob/main/INSTALLATION.md https://github.com/joinloops/loops-server/blob/main/INSTALLA... Looks like an amalgam of php, node, mysql, redis and an AWS S3-compatible filesystem.

fragmede 8mo ago
That's one way to do it. There are 3rd parties that make it easier to deal with video than S3, though you do pay them for that privilege.