6d ago

Pixelfed & Loops Kickstarter Campaign Just Launched

To celebrate the release of the Pixelfed Mobile app going live on the Apple App Store & Google Play Store, we’re proud to be launching our first Kickstarter campaign. All funds raised will go toward continued development and support of the core Pixelfed Foundation applications and the ActivityPub ecosystem at large.

The Pixelfed Team builds open source and ethical social networks for the masses. We aim to be the first Fediverse app with a billion people by taking on the worlds biggest players using open source standards. Designed and built for a better society, to bring us closer together without tracking or surveillance.

Edit: They met their funding goal!!! 🎉

46 comments

I reaaallllly would urge people not to get involved with this kickstarter. He gave similar lists of things he would do with the money he’s been receiving from his backers on his Patreon for years. He never had enough money from his patreon to do that and the claims should not have been made. (I’ve also noticed how on his posts about the kickstarter he goes out of his way to say his work is “entirely self funded”) Instead he’s been jumping from project to project and has been incredibly awful toward folks who want to help improve the stuff he’s neglected.
Take it as a red flag that he’s still the only dev actively working on three incredibly half baked fedi apps, and if you can, look through his mastodon profile to see the kinds of things he says. Check the GitHub issues for Pixelfed and how long some of the most basic ones have been sitting there for.
I genuinely do hope this kickstarter yields something the Patreon I supported does not, as I still run a Pixelfed instance and like it conceptually. But the software itself has been and only gets more broken, and given the way he has privately treated the pixelfed-glitch team all the while publicly acting like he’s been great to and is actively working with them, I really don’t think this dude is acting in especially good faith.
Edit: Took feedback from a reply and clarified the intention behind my point about his Patreon.
- Well that's a bit disappointing.
- It's kind of misleading to express it in number of backers. How much is it? Is it 400 people donating $100 each? It could be a lot! The lowest tier on his Patreon is $1.50. He was getting about $1200/mo. which is used for all of his projects.
  Who can believe that he wasn't able to meet his lofty goals with $1200 (Canadian!) while working entirely in the downtime from his unrelated full-time job?
  Pixelfed just passed Lemmy and is now the 4th largest server software by user count. By MAU, it's the 2nd largest and is about 25% the size of Mastodon. Do you know what Mastodon pulls in every month? Based on their most recent financial report, about $40,000. They're 4 times the size but getting nearly 40 times the amount in donations.
  Do you know how much Stux pulls in every month for running mstdn.social (and a couple other things)? Almost $4000/mo.
  Mstdn.social:
  Accounts: 251,174
  MAU: 17,528
  Pixelfed.social:
  Accounts: 272,979
  MAU: 157,829
  I wonder where all the money's going...
  edit: sass level adjustment.
  
  Good point! I’ve edited my original post to clarify my intention behind bringing up the Patreon.
  Overall, the main point I’m trying to make is that the man has a history of chronic project hopping and being hostile to other people who want to contribute to his projects. The goal was not to say that he should be able to fund his entire project via Patreon, but rather that I don’t know he’s the best person to spearhead three fedi platforms at once.
- Another relevant post: https://lemmy.world/post/24487031
  
  I have no horse in this race and tend to believe the poster, but those comments have no context and make no sense to me.
  
  That doesn't really seem that bad, but Dan's New Year's resolution really ought to be not posting while drinking. Every time something like that happens, it's invariably 3am local time and he's been smoking weed and having a few drinks. It's not a great look for him or his projects. No one's at their best drunk at 3am.

Didn't know about sup
Open source, modular, instant messenger. Coming soon! Made by @dansup (Proof: https://mastodon.social/@dansup/111493816842232424)
A big downside to fediverse messaging is that it isn't secure, and so we're warned when using it. Would anyone have more details on why we might use this over a more private messenger?
- I wouldn’t hold your breath. He’s been promising it for a while, but nothing has come to fruition. I don’t blame him one single bit though, he is a single dev working on all these awesome projects and I just wish he’d be a little more realistic with how many projects he can actually keep up in the air.
  I feel something as important and critical as an E2EE messenger would need someone watching it round the clock- it’s not a sort of release and forget thing is it
  
  I don’t blame him one single bit though, he is a single dev working on all these awesome projects and I just wish he’d be a little more realistic with how many projects he can actually keep up in the air.
  yeah, and instead of doing that he makes sure to remain the single dev and paints himself as the second coming of Steve Jobs.
  
  Yeah, no, not at all. I'd feel intensely uncomfortable using Sup for anything when something like Signal exists. The network effect issue is the exact same on both platforms, so why am I going to take the most trusted communication application and protocol in the world and choose Sup which is the work of a single dev with no obvious background in cybersec, let alone the kind of math necessary to properly understand encryption?
- The Fediverse also includes Element/Matrix which doesn't use the ActivityPub protocol and it's end to end encrypted.
  Edit: other decentralized apps are SimpleX and DeltaChat, very cool apps
- Yeah I'd rather the Matrix/Element people got that funding. They need it.
- Matrix and Element?
  
  Exactly. Does what Signal does, but federates as well.
- Sup is a bad idea and I am not really convinced about Loops in its current form either, but the Pixelfed dev has done a lot of good work otherwise on various Fediverse projects so I think this Kickstarter deserves support.
- It's supposed to be e2ee so it should be another more private messenger.
  
  Interesting ok, I hope the donations take off because it felt like the team was spreading itself too thin working on all three things at once

Is this why there was all the hate against 3rd party apps recently?
- That was really something. Quite ironic for an open source advocate to be so angry with 3rd party apps
  
  May I ask what you're referring to?

Designed and built for a better society, to bring us closer together without tracking or surveillance.
And the Kickstarter link is posted with a referral code.

without tracking or surveillance.
Nice federal code in that URL lol.

I don't have a lot of money. I have been unemployed for more than 1.5 years and I am already spending a lot of my parents' money to set up a small business. Still, I really want to support it. I will try to give like 5 dollars or so, just as a show of support.
- You can support it for free by generating content or even just liking/boosting other folks content.
  Don’t put yourself in a precarious position unnecessarily
- Not in any way associated with Pixelfed but there are lots of ways to show support. You definitely don't need to donate cash you need for living. Support fckreddit!
- 🫡 props to you

I don't understand. These both already exist. What is the Kickstarter for?
- Goals and Stretch Goals Primary Goals
  undefined
  
  Accelerate development on Pixelfed (Web, Apple iOS and Android) Accelerate development on Loops (Web, Apple iOS and Android) Plan development on Sup (Apple iOS and Android) Expand the moderation, security, privacy and safety platforms Get Pixelfed/Loops/Sup translated into multiple languages
  Stretch Goal
  undefined
  
  Full time development Hire additional developers Build a cloud/CDN platform for the Fediverse Register a Pixelfed Foundation as a legal entity (more details below)
- For funding the servers and further development.
- It's almost like you could check out the linked campaign and answer that question with a couple of minutes reading.
  The money goes to supporting pixelfed, loops and sup development, with the goal being financing full time development for the entire team.
  
  It's almost like I already did read it and it didn't answer the question.
  "Kickstarter" is supposed to be a crowdfunding campaign to "kickstart" a project, not string it along.

Dansup is a weirdo tbh someones gotta fork pixelfed and give it a better name
- I've gotten some odd vibes from him (his recent posts hyping up Loops and Pixelfed have slightly manic energy to them), but I'm curious what you find weird about him.
  
  Exactly that. He comes off as manic. Doesn't seem to be good at working with others. I just get a really bad vibe like he's doing it out of ego.

46 comments