First Look: Loops, by Pixelfed – Decentralised TikTok Competitor (2024)

Kinda funny to read all these comments looking at a single-person&#x27;s effort and going &quot;he, he, he cannot win against the adtech billions and their addiction machines&quot;.<p>What Pixelfed (and Loops and various other still half baked initiatives) prove is that there is an entire space of very interesting applications that are possible with the technologies of here and now. Bluesky was better resourced but essentially still in the same dwarf category versus big adtech.<p>Some people will take these proof-of-principle efforts to heart and build a beautiful future while others will cling on milking the totally broken paradigms of yesteryear.

My impression of the two demographics this targets (ie people that use TikTok and people that want to use decentralised social media) is that the set intersection of the two won’t be anywhere near the critical mass necessary to get a TikTok like algorithm working

Can the word &quot;competitor&quot; really be used to describe something that can&#x27;t compete?<p>It&#x27;s an alternative, one which the world would be way better off adopting, but far from being a competitor, unfortunately.

For me the website is down, but it is on the archive: (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20250125101223&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wedistribute.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;11&#x2F;loops-early-look&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20250125101223&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wedistrib...</a>)<p>It feels very hard to find any sort of information on &quot;Loops&quot;. Especially regarding their decentralization model.

Technological craftsmanship aside, I’m wondering, what’s the use case for these platforms?<p>I don’t debate the value of long form written content (blogs) and video content (YouTube), but even these are mainly polluted with SEO garbage articles, or the same idea in 100 different videos, because the content creation machine needs to keep going.<p>But what’s the real value of short form content like twitter&#x2F;instagram&#x2F;tiktok? You can’t convey a meaningful message in a limited amount words&#x2F;seconds; you can’t use them as a diary or for sharing moments with people you love (I was toying with the idea of staying in instagram just to share pictures with my family, but there is no way I’m going to explain them how decentralized alternatives work); and they don’t have any decent monetization strategy other than ads, which means “influencers”, which means the same thing over again.<p>So why do we keep recreating the same tools but with a twist of “decentralized” (which has no appeal to the average person, aside from some online “anarchist”&#x2F;people who like technology [myself included])? What’s the value other than “for fun”&#x2F;“decentralization”?

Good attempt but TikTok also makes people rich. Amassing a huge following and being popular brings brand deals etc.<p>I hope this takes off though.

Site is down for me<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20250123192931&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wedistribute.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;11&#x2F;loops-early-look&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20250123192931&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wedistrib...</a>

If I understand correctly, the core value of TikTok lies in its algorithm, which is not mentioned in the article.

How are decentralised platforms managing abusive content? TikTok had some bumps in the road maybe five years back with this, but got it under control. I know I don&#x27;t want to be scrolling through video content and see illegal or unethical content.<p>That compliance aspect seems like one thing that pushes us towards centralised architectures for social media, but I&#x27;m guessing that AI models to screen images &#x2F; videos are pretty widely available now and cheaply deployable?

Will this take TikTok&#x27;s (or even Reel&#x27;s) marketshare? No. Will it get enough users to take off in the first place? Also probably not (see bobnamob&#x27;s comment). This is still really awesome. It&#x27;s an awesome app and an even cooler project.

I understand the want for these new social networks to be less-controlled and more distributed, but I think there is a line in general for dopamine dependence and algorithmic targeting.<p>TikTok, Reels, YT Shorts, all are a net-drain when it comes to doom-scrolling&#x2F;wasting time. I [[kind of]] understand keeping more traditional methods and making more open versions: Pixelfed (Insta), Bluesky (Twitter), etc. as people want some form of connection, but I don&#x27;t think these short vid platforms should be put on a pedestal.

If your product is related to media (news, magazines, etc.), that&#x27;s really good for you. because you got the people&#x27;s attention. This is an assertive headline. but if you claim your product is better or equivalent to them. if your product does not meet your claims. This is not good for your product. They just try once and send it to trash urgently. Also, you lose potential users. The main issue here is user trust, not how your competitor is big.

Fundamentally, all social medias have two purposes:<p>1) Connecting with family and friends... for me, messaging Apps already solve that.<p>2) Curating new, exciting and relevant content.<p>What I always find interesting is that most projects try to solve 2) by building a platform that is exactly like the competitor but &quot;decentralized&quot;.<p>If such a system instead runs entirely on the users device the curation could even use data such as browser bookmarks or history without infringing massively on privacy.

No faith on a piece of software of the author of the now abandoned Pixelfed, a software that is not finished and still very buggy.

Went to the <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;loops.video&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;loops.video&#x2F;</a> and installed the iOS TestFlight version of the app.<p>Tried to create an account. They said they sent me a confirmation link I have to click, but I haven’t received any link and it’s been an hour. It’s not in spam either.

Could we in theory have an algorithm to promote things like interaction, inclusiveness, culture matching etc?<p>I get that money has to come from somewhere, but I wouldn&#x27;t mind a social network that&#x27;s not focusing on making you stay and scroll.

Is this a suitable place to import my yet unfinished looping SWFs?

I am very much in support of offering alternative options to centralized black-box apps with dubious profitability mechanisms. An option that doesn&#x27;t catch on to the tune of a billion+ users is better than an option that never existed. The success of technology scaling to a global amount of users should be weighted also with possible-to-measurable harm.<p>Is there activity in the space of developing open-source social media <i>algorithms</i>? It has been interesting to see Threads and bluesky build integrations with Activity Pub (though there is risk for the embrace-extend-extinguish playbook to be applied against it). Are there similar possibilities for generating algorithmic standards for social media feeds that can be understood as deeply as one wishes to?

Website is down. Anyone has a mirror link?

For me acc system is kinda broken

Bröther can finally have all the Lööps they wanted?

they are censoring as much as classical social media networks. lol.

TikTok competitor must have a functional live tool for users with over x amount of followers. Lives are very popular. Gifting cuts also help company revenues.

pixelfed looks like it&#x27;s even worse at being user-friendly and approachable at all than mastodon, and it currently has all the same old problems mastodon did. user journey, onboarding, ease of use, are like they didn&#x27;t even learn from mistakes of others. going to pixelfed website and then trying to get to a profile of someone tells me a lot about the state of that experience, when it can&#x27;t even get the basics of basics right. (like, how to get to a profile on a such network. bizarrely, they don&#x27;t show full handles with instance name in them, even though it simply doesn&#x27;t work in a way that&#x27;d let you get to some profile through just the username alone from every server. you cannot even access profiles in a consistent and straightforward way.) honestly, hopefully it doesn&#x27;t take off, cause it seems just mostly user hostile. even though it&#x27;s free in some ways, it&#x27;s just not better at being usable.