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Similar to how Mastodon offers a distributed, open-source version of X, Federation is getting its own TikTok competitor. This week, an app called Episodes It has begun accepting subscriptions for its new platform for sharing short, looped videos. Loops is still in its early stages, is not yet open source, and has not yet completed its integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and other monolithic apps.
However, these efforts are underway and, when completed, will allow Loops to add another layer of social activity to the growing open social network known as the fediverse, which now includes North 11.6 million users And more than one million monthly active users. (Mastodon accounts for approximately 65% of this activity.) Growth in this area has also encouraged other apps to adopt ActivityPub, such as social magazine app Flipboard and Meta’s Threads. The latter is not yet fully integrated but already has more than 200 million monthly active users.
Meanwhile, Loops was developed by Daniel Supernault, who also created the unified Instagram competitor pixelvid. In fact, the episodes will run under the Pixelfed project, according to Instructions On its website.
In addition to the ultimate benefit of being open source and distributed, Loops claims that it will not sell or provide user data to third-party advertisers, use your content to train AI models, or acquire the rights to any content uploaded to its service. Instead, users give Loops permission to use only their content, but they will retain full ownership of their contributions, Loops’ website explains.
Like many federal projects, Loops does not depend on investor support. To raise money, you will seek rings User donations Via Patreon, Open Collective, and Liberapay. It is also finalizing a grant that will support Loops’ development for one year.
Targeted at users 13 and above, Loops lets you follow other users, as well as like, comment on or share their videos. But as part of the Unified Web — the open social web that ActivityPub runs on — remote users from other platforms like Mastodon and Pixelfed will also be able to follow users’ Loops accounts and then view videos in their home feed on those respective platforms. These remote followers will also be able to like, comment on, or share videos if their platform supports it.
Videos posted to the app will be held for moderation if the uploader has a low trust score, but trusted users will be able to skip the queue and post immediately. The trust score is also used to hide problematic comments on posts and implement content warnings, Supernault Notes.
The site notes that other features, such as profile sharing or the ability for Loops users to follow Mastodon and Pixelfed users in return, remain “unannounced.”
Although signups for Loops are now open after the month-long countdown period has ended, an email will be sent to interested testers when it’s possible to actually start using the new app. (This may take a day or so, Supernault He saiddue to rate limiting.)
According to For Supernault, a side-loadable APK will be made available to Android users, and the iOS app will initially arrive on Apple’s TestFlight testing service upon approval. The web interface will not be an immediate focus But that will come later.
Currently, the founder is also He asks To get community feedback on things like Loops terms and privacy policy and looking for moderators.
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