Artists have finally had enough with Meta’s predatory AI policies, but Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run, anti-AI social platform, Cara has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users within the last week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts.
Instagram is a necessity for many artists, who use the platform to promote their work and solicit paying clients. But Meta is using public posts to train its generative AI systems, and only European users can opt out, since they’re protected by GDPR laws. Generative AI has become so front-and-center on Meta’s apps that artists reached their breaking point
People talking about pixelfed are missing a key point: Cara is super easy to find and join. You go, type your email or login with your google account and that’s it. You don’t even have to remember a password. Nobody wants to find a server, apply to join, hope to get accepted, then somehow find all other artists like you.
Also, it looks good. Like, really good. That’s a thing that grab the attention of artists.
This right here. I tried to join Mastodon today.
Download the most recommended app, Moshidon
Open app and get asked which instance i want to join. There are no suggestions.
Do a search for instances and pick one, go to the website and register with email and password. Requires email confirmation. Still waiting on the email confirmation link, 4 hrs later and 2 resends.
Literally haven’t been able to sign up yet.
Even if it had worked, the workflow would have been to change back to the app, type out the instance then re-login.
I’m not sure how anyone expects anyone other than the most hardcore to sign up for these services. Maybe that’s the point but if the point is to grow the user sign up process to significant overall
Biggest problems I have had with Mastodon are the fact that:
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The app I wanted to use didn’t even recognize the instance I signed up for and…
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I had to wait nearly a month and a half before being able to actuallyuse my account and access Mastodon because I joined an instance where they review people signing up or something similar.
I definitely see the appeal of a find the site, sign up, and you’re done services over the fediverse join an instance and pray service.
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If you just used the Official app, they have a simplified sign-up procedure. Dug your own grave there.
Thats not fair, since everyone says the main app suck and you’ll have a better experience with Moshidon. This is true if you’re already there, but the comment makes it clear that it still lacks for newbies.
Actually, it’s not that bad
I use the official app, is not incredible but do his job.
btw. just use the official (or the web site) x sign in, is not like you can’t use the credentials elsewhere.
Never heard of Moshidon, so clearly not everyone. Why would anyone try to register via a non-official app first (especially for a procedure like signin-up) is beyond me. Some apps are better than others, but always start with the official one and then, if it lacks something, look for something else. This applies not only for mastodon, but for everything. Basic stuff…
Why would anyone try to register via a non-official app first (especially for a procedure like signin-up) is beyond me.
You may or may not have heard this before, but the app is not the instance is not the platform. I registered both my Mastodon account and this Lemmy account via their respective instance websites. I used mastodon in the browser for literally over a year before installing an app for it on my phone.
Apps are alternative front-ends to the fediverse, even “official” ones.
“Basic stuff” is very weird to read for me when many of the internet services I have accounts for don’t have apps - and I would rather they never make an app for it. My electricity bills, my hosting costs, my home internet, all are done through web pages that I can access from any internet-connected device, unlike an app.
Not to mention I appreciate being able to type things on a bigger screen and physical keyboard when I register for things.
Lastly, it is much easier for me to deal with a sloppily made website than a sloppily made app. I can use extensions, and if need be can open up the network tab to see if the registration request was accepted or not before the website malfunctioned on my end.
You assumed I don’t do this. Of course, number 1 place I go to if I want to sign up, is the website.
I was saying that it’s weird to blame Mastodon for “complex sign-up”, when you’re using a “3rd-party” tool to do so. That’s completely down to the app.
I’ve never, ever signed up to something via an unofficial app.
I was saying that it’s weird to blame Mastodon for “complex sign-up”, when you’re using a “3rd-party” tool to do so. That’s completely down to the app.
Ah, I understand now. Thanks for the correction.
Can you point me to the email official app? Or at least official site that explains how to register an email? Fediverse tends to think that it should be like email, sure it needs some getting used to , but the beauty is that defaults aren’t really necessary.
They’re just gonna have to leave whenever Cara makes some dumb decision. It’s the capitalist app cycle.
Hopefully in a couple of cycles’ time, we’ll be ready for them
Whether it’s “capitalist” or not doesn’t matter. You could have government owned/created apps that make dumb decisions as well.
At least with capitalism you have the option to go somewhere else when a dumb decision is made.
Most capitalist apps dont allow you to fork the code.
Lemmy, for example, is not owned by anyone and can altered if the main lemmy devs did something dumb.
Of course you already know this, its why you are here. You fled capitalism (Reddit) like the rest of us.
I think you’re confusing the word “corporate” with “capitalism”, they are not the same.
Edit: If you swap the word “capitalist” with “corporate” I completely agree with you.
No one flees capitalism. Stop talking like a Marxist. It’s not possible to have communism in any guise without it collapsing. Exchanging goods and services for money incentives people to produce more. What you’re talking about is corporate greed
Exchanging goods and services for money incentives(sic) people to produce more.
What you’re describing here is commerce, which existed looong before capitalism. What you describe as “corporate greed” is capitalism
Ever heard of open source?
When capitalists say nobody would work under communism, they really mean that capitalists would never work under communism.
But communism is a replacement for capitalism, just like capitalism replaced feudalism. It’s something that will come with time and technology, not something that can be forced to happen.
Aside from that, people spamming about Pixelfed are missing the point that this is also a deviantart alternative. The landing page showing tons of art you might be interested in is great.
Also Pixelfed would straight up share their images to other servers that might allow web scraping bots which is part of the reason they made this website.
Pixelfed isn’t even in the App Store and isn’t geared towards artists. Cara has specific features for artists including finding jobs
Fuck a buncha Google SSO though. Hopefully that’s not the only option
It’s not
A decentralized system with cryptographic identities wouldn’t even require that. All these rituals about “dragging your mouse around for 2 minutes” and overloaded UIs, like in Retroshare and Freenet, were simply aimed at people who felt more comfortable, not less, seeing them.
Needs sybil attack protection.
A few solutions:
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Federated identity services. Like old Skype had identity service as its only centralized part, one can make the same thing, but federated. Would require registration and finding one just like the comment I was answering to complains.
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F2F and trust elements - people can trust each other via QR codes or something, with 1 trusted peer beating any number of untrusted peers.
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Reputation system elements (like Kad network has), which is not enough a protection, but makes them more expensive.
Federated identity services
Like an SSO system?
Yes. I meant specifically something like old Skype authentication servers, sharing identities via ActivityPub. So that one person is registered on one server, another on another server, but they’ll both find each other in contact directory and will be able to communicate.
But that’s only for contact info, the actual content of the network should be decentralized and not stored on federated servers. Again, like old Skype (in the point of division between what’s centralized and what’s not).
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It’s still a centralized system
That’s the thing, nobody cares. Its even better to be centralised because there’s someone you can sue for damages if that’s the case.
Not only does nobody care, but they prefer centralized services. Tbh I still prefer centralized services and Lemmy is the only federated anything I use, because the others don’t do anything better than their alternatives.
Well that’s just not true
Yeah, of course not. Oh, wait…
I think they meant the “no one cares” part
Posted to the fediverse
Ooohhh… I see, my bad. But a little disclosure would help…
Thanks for being reasonable
These people should create an instance on Pixelfed, a libre alternative to Instagram.
I think it would be great for new social things like this to just speak ActivityPub. They can build up their own user experience and culture while joining a larger network. I don’t have a problem with the software itself being non-free if the protocols are and they commit to supporting account migration.
Pixelfed already does support the image import from Instagram.
Mastodon doesn’t seem to support any import from Twitter/X.
I’m assuming account migration from the main social media platforms to be an important feature.
But I don’t think supporting ALL social media is realistic unless they all follow the same norms. Which I really doubt.
ActivityPub supports alsoKnownAs and movedTo so that users can migrate their social graphs to a different server or software. Of course that doesn’t work for migrating from networks that don’t support ActivityPub.
Content import is a separate issue, but I can imagine it being helpful as well.
ActivityPub supports alsoKnownAs and movedTo so that users can migrate their social graphs to a different server or software.
The annoying thing with ActivityPub is that your username/handle is tightly coupled to a particular server, and moving server requires you to change your handle. Everywhere you’ve mentioned/documented your old handle is now out of date.
Bluesky handles this a lot better. If you own a domain, you can use it with any Bluesky server by creating a TXT record for validation. Your username is the domain name - if you own
example.com, you can be@example.comon Bluesky, without having to self-host it. If you move server, you don’t have to change your username. Currently there’s just one main Bluesky server but they plan to introduce federation at some point, and their protocol is already mostly designed for it.And the losing server has to cooperate, which is why I mentioned the commitment to support migrating away.
ATProto/Bluesky has some interesting ideas, and I’m interested to see how that develops as third parties start supporting the protocol. For a new service launching now, I think ActivityPub is the more important protocol to support, but it’s presumably possible to support both.
This would be a good approach to improve growth of the community.
Does the ActivityPub protocol support copyright for user content? E.g. an artist releases some picture and they explicitly prompt a license. Each client should accept that they are obligated to prompt this license when using the content… Something like this
Not found anything on send license or agree before receive for protocol.
But could maybe do with federation: federate only with instance that agree on license for all user content, make all user read and sign license. Turn off access without account.
People can always break license, so can never be perfect.
Would this again segregate the users? Some attribute on a submission which refers to a license would be nice though
Don’t focus on specific apps or you will start all over again from the beginning when every new piece of anti-libre software, malware, appears.
People chose Cara because they identify with the art aspect of this social network. They don’t care if it’s anti-libre. They probably don’t even know what it means.
The purpose of a federated instance like Pixelfed is to be a blank state. You can do anything with it. Any niche. Art in this case.
The issue here is to bring these people to Pixelfed and make them feel at home within their niche.
They don’t care if it’s anti-libre.
And that’s why keep getting abused again and again. So, this is what we must target. Unless we like wasting all of our time just to restart when the next malware arrives because they don’t see the difference, see it’s anti-libre.
Yes and no, you and me both value software freedom so we both understand that.
Education is obviously part of the process.
But I think most people don’t really care if libre or not. Libre or anti-libre is mostly tech jargon for non-tech people.
They just want to be part of their own communities and be where the party is.
Does libre just mean “free?” The way I have been seeing it used in context, I assumed it was a platform of some kind. This thread made me not so sure of that.
Libre means free as in freedom rather than free as in cost. A service that costs money to use, but communicates using open protocols, gives you full control over your data, and allows you to easily migrate to competitors and self-hosted solutions might be described as “libre”.
Libre is free and open
Libre is open, but not necessarily no cost.
It’s not illegal to charge for a derived product.
most people don’t really care if libre or not. Libre or anti-libre is mostly tech jargon for non-tech people.
Yes, that’s the problem to solve.
They just want to be part of their own communities and be where the party is.
Which they can’t when their software keeps abusing them, anti-libre software. So, we connect the effect to this root cause.
