Mastodon has a new plan to make money: Hosting and support services for the open social web

Mastodon has a new plan to make money: Hosting and support services for the open social web

Mastodon, the non-profit organization that maintains the software powering the decentralized alternative to social networks like Threads and X, has a new plan to make money. Instead of relying entirely on donations and grants as before, the company announced this morning it will now offer paid hosting, moderation, and support services for organizations that want…

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Bonfire’s new software lets users build their own social communities, free from platform control

Bonfire’s new software lets users build their own social communities, free from platform control

Bonfire Social, a new framework for building communities on the open social web, launched on Thursday during the FediForum online conference. While Bonfire Social is a federated app, meaning it’s powered by the same underlying protocol as Mastodon (ActivityPub), it’s designed to be more modular and more customizable. That means communities on Bonfire have more…

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#Ditching Meta? Open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp fundraise on Kickstarter

#Ditching Meta? Open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp fundraise on Kickstarter

The developer behind Pixelfed, Loops, and Sup, open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, respectively, is now raising funds on Kickstarter to fuel the apps’ further development. The trio is part of the growing open social web, also known as the fediverse, powered by the same ActivityPub protocol used by X alternative Mastodon. The…

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