Similar to how Mastodon offers an open source, distributed version of X, the fediverse is getting its own TikTok competitor. This week, an app called Loops began accepting signups on its new platform for sharing short, looping videos. Still in the early stages, Loops is not yet open sourced, nor has it completed its integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and other federated apps.
However, both those efforts are in the works and when complete, will allow Loops to add another layer of social activity to the growing open social web known as the fediverse, which now has north of 11.6 million users and over 1 million monthly active users. (Mastodon accounts for roughly 65% of that activity.) Growth in this space has also encouraged other apps to adopt ActivityPub, like 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.
Loops, meanwhile, was developed by Daniel Supernault, who also created the federated Instagram rival Pixelfed. In fact, Loops will run under the Pixelfed project, according to an FAQ on its website.
In addition to the eventual benefit of being open source and distributed, Loops claims it will not sell or provide user data to third-party advertisers, use your content to train AI models, or gain the rights to any content uploaded on its service. Instead, users only grant Loops permission to use their content, but will retain full ownership of their contributions, the Loops website explains.
Like many fediverse projects, Loops isn’t reliant on investor backing. To raise funds, Loops will seek user donations via Patreon, Open Collective, and Liberapay. It’s also in the process of finalizing a grant that will sustain Loops’ development for one year.
Aimed at users 13 and up, Loops will allow you to follow other users, as well as like, comment on, or share their videos. But as a part of the federated web — the open social web running on ActivityPub — remote users from other platforms like Mastodon and Pixelfed will also be able to follow users’ Loops accounts and then view the 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 published 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 publish immediately. The trust score is also used to hide problematic comments on posts and apply content warnings, Supernault notes.
Other features, like profile sharing or the ability for Loops users to follow Mastodon and Pixelfed users in return, are still “to be announced,” the site notes.
While signups for Loops are now open after a monthlong countdown period wrapped, interested testers will be emailed when it’s possible to actually start using the new app. (That might take a day or so, Supernault said, due to rate limiting.)
According to Supernault, a side-loadable APK will be made available to Android users, and an iOS app will initially arrive on Apple’s TestFlight testing service when approved. A web interface won’t be an immediate focus but will come later on.
Currently, the founder is also asking for community feedback on things like Loops terms and privacy policy and is searching for moderators.