Given the situation with TikTok—marked by censorship and the app’s recent control by MAGA-aligned interests—I checked Reddit to see what TikTok users are saying. It turns out many are asking for alternatives. Most replies suggest other proprietary apps, and I haven’t seen any recommendations for decentralized platforms like LOOPS and others from the Fediverse.
In my opinion, we now have a small but critical window of opportunity to introduce people to the Fediverse. We need to go where young people are—Reddit, Instagram, or whatever platforms they use—and explain the basics of decentralization and why choosing another proprietary app will only lead to the same outcome. LOOPS is easy to join and feels exactly like Tiktok.
I had the chance to discuss this topic with my college students just last semester. Young people are not the “imbeciles” mainstream media often portrays them to be. They see what’s happening and want to participate in change. I am firmly convinced that they are a key component of the social revolution we need, and that with their help, we could dismantle the GAFAM economy in just a few weeks.
So I believe we have to seize this moment: share, explain, and promote the Fediverse wherever you can—especially in the coming days—because every invitation is a step toward a truly free and user-owned internet.
I just gave Loops a look. Seems kinda cool. The bulk of TikTok users are likely to flock to something like Lemon8, though.
One thing I don’t like about loops is that in their page they only prominently link to the main instance. Other instances are listed all the way to the footer. They don’t even try to decentralize it and it kinda sucks
I think they’ve really dropped the ball not having Loops do some kind of soft re-launch this week. We’ve known the changeover was coming, there probably won’t be a better moment than this to tell anyone “Hey, Loops is an alternative if you’re leaving”.
Not having a ready to download app in any store, even F-Droid, is such a shame. IMO, short form video makes more sense on worse platforms like a mobile phone. (I’m observing, not complaining too much - it’s not like I rolled up my sleeves and contributed.)
For anyone that wants to make videos, every category is wide open. If you’re making anything compelling (outside maybe Linux and politics), there’s not much competition. Claim your spotlights now.
If anyone that makes videos on Loops reads this: I’m begging you, please put captions on your videos. Most of my ‘doomscrolling on the phone’ time doesn’t happen in situations where turning the volume up is convenient/appropriate.
That’s the problem, since open source projects have no stable income and no profit incentive, there’s no one person to make tactical, executive decisions for the good of the project like these. I’m saying this because if open source ever wants to become a serious, competitive alternative (ie. have people turn to it out of convenience (90% of ppl) and not ideology or foresight (10% of ppl)), this is a weakness it’s going to have to engineer a solution to. I genuinely think you have to play the game to beat the game.
Hi I’m the bot who links loops and I approve this message: https://joinloops.org/
it was already known it was going to happen, tiktok was bought to stop any anti-israeli protests, and anti-conservative movement, since they originally were licking trumps arse.
Yes. The structure of the deal, with 20% revenue royalty, in addition to 20% ownership, leaves 0 possible chance of any profit. Only Zionist supremacist control of media can be motive.
The alternatives to many of these services should be nothing
Fully agree.
Unfortunatly though, apps like that are like crack (The Office jokes incoming…?). And if you take that away the first response isn’t happiness, but the opposite and they’ll go for the next best drug, maybe meth.
For real. It feels like we are trying to sell people heroin as a less addictive alternative to morphine.
Exactly, fediverse tikrok gives a lot of “eco-friendly cigarette” vibes.
It truly is! I’m seeing some politicians move away from X, gamers away from Windows, now the TikTok exodus. A ray of hope in these troubled times.
Oh, yeah. Loops recently started doing a recommended algorithm and I haven’t opened it up for a while to see how that’s going. Cuz my two main issues with it has been a lack of variety in content due to the low user count, and the complete inability to find anything I might actually like.
Yeah, there’s just not enough people using Loops. :(
it’s still in beta guys
Why isn’t the fediverse more popular? At futurology.today we have the benefit of also moderating r/futurology on reddit, which has 21.6 million subscribers. Out of the tens of thousands of people who’ve read our posts about the fediverse site, only a few hundred have signed up. Most of our subscribers are from elsewhere in the fediverse.
Regarding the Threadiverse in general, it seems that (1) many people find having to choose an instance first to be very confusing (not applicable to your situation I guess), (2) upon arrival these primarily Western people immediately see content proposing the murder of Westerners and demolition of the entire Western culture, whereupon they nope right back out (can you blame them?) and then complain bitterly about their toxic experiences here on other platforms, including Reddit and Bluesky and X.
Most of us forget how extensive our blocklists here have grown to be over time, and how much effort we put into Linux levels of tinkering to discover communities we like while blocking content we do not.
If I am wrong then please ignore me, but it’s a thought to consider.
Of course mostly it’s a network effect, so I am speaking about issues that we might actually be able to do something about.
Just checked my blocklist to remind myself and… yep. Yeah that’s a big blindspot for us, the pruning and curating of the space has to be done by hand. New users, and especially younger users, are often used to that being done for them by the platform itself.
The fediverse is like a massive yet untamed garden filled with various species, some beautiful, many poisonous. They don’t see gloves and shears and see opportunity, they see a chore.
Agreed.
It does not help that moderation reports do not federate among Lemmy instances. They do in PieFed, I don’t know about Mbin, but between Lemmy instances they do not, making the level of effort placed upon moderators really high by limiting the available pool to those on the same instance as the community.
It also does not help when instance admins protect those doing the bullying, such as hexbear admins that have even been caught lying to the admins of other instances, and refuse to police (i.e. ban) their own account holders as they constantly violate the rules on other instances. At that point, defederation becomes the only option left, except that many instances including yours are so high averse to defederations that instead the behaviors in question are essentially given carte blanche to continue without any means at all to stop it.
A fact that new visitors very much see - even if we old hands do not anymore, after having set up personal blocks aka blacklisting or otherwise view only Subscribed content aka exclude such via our whitelisting procedure. And new users that see what we have chosen to forget exists here go back and tell others about how unfriendly this place was to them.
So long as we leave the vast majority of the moderation burden on the individual user themselves, the Threadiverse is not going to grow and instead will continue to shrink. i.e. all the weeds are choking the garden.
Does defederating from hexbear also require defederating from other instances thar federate with hexbear?
No? Life is rarely binary.
For instance PieFed.zip both does not defederate with hexbear while at the same time not exposing new users to them unawares by placing a user-level block (which unlike Lemmy’s actually stops showing all content from those users) upon new account creation but then explains to the user how to remove that at any time. This makes interactions with them opt-in rather than have to discover it and be opt-out, so I consider it ideal. (Although I haven’t tested how that would show up to users browsing without an account - that might be a loophole.)
Or, a true opt-out solution could place a message underneath every post from that instance explaining how users are known to be combative, arguing in bad faith for “the dunk” and extremely likely to break your own instance’s rules and not conform to generally accepted standards of behavior. Something similar is done for Beehaw on PieFed.social, using that community’s own exact wording and linking to their ToS that differs greatly from the norm. However, I would wager that virtually all 3rd party apps would ignore this.
Defederation is not a first resort, it is rather the last one and for Lemmy, literally the only one provided when instance admins refuse to enforce both the rules of others and even their own stated ones (to keep trolling inside the community yet do not spread it to others WITHOUT CONSENT). Defederation from hexbear is not punitive - even members of hexbear have expressed a desire to defederate themselves from the outside world, to avoid all this drama - but rather protective of the wider Threadiverse overall, for new members to feel more comfortable joining us here.
Got it. Thanks for the answer!
The way I understand the ActivityPyb protocol, it is Publisher/Subscriber paradigm. That means when you federate with another instance, you receive (Subscribe to) the things they Publish, and they subscribe to the things Hexbear publishes. So they don’t “reblog” Hexbear just because they receive Hexbear content. Their users would have to deliberately reshare the content in some way (on Kbin/Mbin, this is done by Boosting, on Mastodon it’s Resharing, etc etc).
Oh, okay. Got it.
Thanks for the answer!
Personally I think IPFS or similar will be a better solution to decentralised video, federation seems inefficient for it, but I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.
Shame the US gov killed LBRY, that seemed kinda promising too.
There is a new (not certain) platform called UpScrolled that people are moving to.
I know it can be challenging to convince people to migrate, but it’s crucial that we keep spreading awareness. I recently tried posting about decentralized alternatives on r/tiktok, but it seems the post was suppressed. I ended up sharing the same message as comments in relevant discussions instead.
Even small actions matter. If each of us can introduce just three people to the Fediverse—and they do the same—we can create a ripple effect that drives real growth.
Personally, alongside talking with my students, I’ve started running free workshops in Montreal on “deGAFAMing” your digital life. The first sessions had only 5–6 attendees, but the online version I’m hosting in February already has 30 registrations. I’ve even helped a small organization transition from Google Workspace to Nextcloud.
No matter how small your action may seem, every effort counts. Keep sharing, keep inviting, keep building. The future of the internet depends on it.
Here is a message aimed at tiktok users you could share around:
*If we leave TikTok for another proprietary app, we’re just moving from one walled garden to another. Sooner or later, the same issues—censorship, political control, or corporate takeover—will follow us there.
That’s why we should try Loops instead. https://loops.video/
Loops is a decentralized alternative. No single company, political group, or billionaire can buy it or control what you see. You own your space. You shape your feed. You keep your voice.
Yes, Loops is smaller right now—and it might take a little time to adjust. But with your help, it will grow into the vibrant, free, and people-powered platform we deserve
Here’s a short video introduction the Fediverse and decentralized social media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRJHIJy5Nno *
Out of curiosity, have you got a link or something for these workshops (and are they done in English or French)? I’m out in Ottawa, seems like a useful thing to have in my pocket to share with folks since there’s a lot of movement between the two cities (and if online geography isn’t a barrier).
If not, no worries and keep up the good fight.
Yep! It’s in french but I’m working on an english version. Here is a link to the organizer’s website, It should pop up in the calendar by the end of week max. https://mnj.quebec/en/
- it’s scheduled for February 24
Cheers!
Every single person that I’ve told about Lemmy has outright scolded me for having mentioned it to them. I may have lost a couple of acquaintance connections even as a result.
When people Google search for “Lemmy” or otherwise get taken to lemmy.ml (didn’t someone say that the so-called “random” instance picker chose either it or hexbear like 90% of the time?), see the content calling for murder of Westerners and the demise of Western civilization, is it any wonder that they choose not to come here, or if they create an account, to not remain?
Their preferences matter - to themselves at the very least, even if not to our instance admins that do not want to block it out so that potential new joiners won’t have to see it presented with zero warning or any distinction at all that it may differ from any of the other content in this place.
I must add, the fediverse only caters to those who can host an instance for their country, those who can nurture a community for themselves or those who were used to the internet being heavily usa centric.
I tried bringing some people here but there’s nothing for them (I skip a shitload of posts too) so I have nothing to offer for their time. They are not people who post or creative, so repeating the “you can do it yourself” is moot… And stupid.
And then lemmy users love to defend goverment propaganda from those that call themselves leftist and attack those who live there and have to deal with those assholes who are just populists shitting all over their country.
Sigh… yup.
Though Lemmy is still in beta (almost out though) and PieFed barely that as well. We of the “early adopter” mindset are helping polish the interfaces so that “one day” non-technical normie users can enjoy coming here.
At that time, availability of content will be crucial. But for now, I understand why they do not bother to do so. Anytime I want to know about some worldwide or local event that is happening, I end up having to go back to Reddit to have even a ghost of a chance at learning about it - and note that REAL normies don’t bother with Reddit even, as it is too niche and nerdy for them.
Only protest communities have a strong need to get out from under the authoritarian boot heels, but those should not be on the open clear web to begin with, leaving the Threadiverse as a tiny side project offshoot of Mastodon’s wider Fediverse. For now, but the tools are getting better all the time… PieFed practically weekly! 🥧🍰😋
Why are you replying with AI
It’s no AI. I write in french and use my translation software (Antidote) to translate and optimize my text. I actually know how to write pretty well, I just don’t want to spend hours translating.
Ah, well unfortunately gives a deeply AI feel with how it translates it.
Yeah, I guess it can do that. But as mentioned, I give workshops about the Fedi to young people, so I try to write information in an “appealing” way to them. Maybe I’m overdoing it.
I heard briefly about this on Loops actually, lol. I wonder what’s the story with it? Is it some big tech company’s new product, a stand-alone startup? American or some other origin? Decentralized? Open source or proprietary?
Not deadset on any of these as deal breakers, but would be nice if some aspects inspired confidence.
It’s open source and decentralized.
I haven’t really used it, since I’m not interested in that format, but I know tiktok is where the youngster are and I believe many of them are not as stuck-up as people of my generation.
Is it? That got my interest, but I can’t find mention of it on their site or FAQ
(I know Loops is, maybe I wasn’t clear but I was meaning to ask about the other one.)
Oh, I was talking about Loops, I have no clue about upscroll…
Here is the FAQ you’re looking for I believe: https://upscrolled.com/en/faq/
They mention that are based on Australia
Thanks, good to know.
More interesting, they at least address the decentralization question:
Why isn’t UpScrolled a decentralized platform?
Because it doesn’t work for what we’re trying to build.
UpScrolled isn’t decentralized (yet) because today’s open protocols (e.g., ActivityPub, AT Protocol) don’t reliably deliver what we need for a mainstream, video-forward app: fast global discovery, stable search/ranking, and smooth media. In practice, these stacks still lean on centralized indexing to work well, so we’re shipping the experience that works now—not a theory.
We keep things open and simple with lightweight, common-sense protections—spam/bot filtering, straightforward reporting, and consistent deletes when people remove their own content. We’re building interoperable by design (clean exports, stable APIs) and will add optional bridges to open protocols as they mature, so you can reach more people without sacrificing speed or simplicity.
Which, honestly, fair. Federation does have some issues.
I’m not seeing anything on open source tho, which I have a harder time seeing the justification for not doing. But it is what it is.
It is more like Instagram than TikTok.
Good idea, how do you propose we do this
Oh, I just realized I’ve sent my reply to the wrong comment lol. Check out, my reply to frongt, it was intended for you.
I’ve been using Skylight Social for a while. It uses BlueSky’s AT Protocol. A little glitchy, but has plenty of activity.
To the moon!
