tldr: Same dev as pixelfed. It’s not available yet, it won’t be open source right away (but it’s planned). Moderation TBD. iOS, android sideload. desktop later. Donations-based business model.
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.
… 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.
… 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.
dansup will almost certainly use the “limited availability while we figure things out thing” to prevent people from uploading any content critical of Israel, if his posts are anything to go by.
I was thinking about planning a hackathong to build a tiktok-like experience on top of existing fediverse services. Peertube does a lot of what you need already, but the UI isn’t really there. Loops could be “just” another type of client, but we’ll see if my motivation holds up.
Where my head has been lately is pondering “low-code” concepts as a potential method for making decentralized social media more malleable by users a la myspace, but its a tricky line. the overall idea is to redefine the relationships between service providers, developers, and users to give developers less control and put them in a role more like lego block designers who make kits rather than artisans that make the whole product.