his post on mastodon is here:
https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/113849098386232034
Dear Mark, I hope this finds you well. I noticed something interesting today - it seems Instagram is blocking links to my little open-source project. You know, the one that lets people share photos without harvesting their personal data or forcing algorithmic feeds on them. I have to admit, I’m flattered. Who would’ve thought a small team of volunteers could build something that would catch your attention? We’re just trying to give people a choice in how they share their memories online. No VCs, no surveillance capitalism, just code and community. Remember when Facebook started? It was about connecting people, not maximizing engagement metrics. Our project might be tiny compared to Instagram, but we’re staying true to that original spirit of social media - giving people control over their online presence without turning them into products. You could’ve ignored us. Instead, by blocking our links, you’ve given us the best endorsement we could ask for. You’ve confirmed what we’ve been saying all along - that big tech is more interested in protecting their walled gardens than fostering genuine innovation. Every time you block a link to our platform, you remind people why we built it in the first place. Your action tells them there are alternatives worth exploring, ones that respect their privacy and agency. So thank you, Mark. You’ve turned our little project into a symbol of resistance against digital monopolies.
“Oh hi Mark…”
Remember when Facebook started? It was about connecting people
I remember that it was about abusing the private information of all the “dumb fucks” who created an account.
The letter is good though, but zucky will still be a billionaire whether he will read it or not.
Wasn’t it about ranking female students by attractiveness or something?
Apparently, that was some other Zuckerberg project: https://www.metro.us/everything-to-know-about-facemash-the-site-zuckerberg-created-in-college-to-rank-hot-women/
I dont think it was ranking, no.
But it was for getting their PII. Like photos, location, relationship status, and phone number. Helped a lot of college kids get laid, myself included.
Does pixelfed work for this too?
Is hotornot.com still live?
It was first provided to college/edu addresses. It wasn’t what it is today at all.
As evil as it’s sounds, he’s not wrong.
Facebook was about, “connecting people” though. It was the first stage in its growth. It was also before monetization and was actively losing money.
it was always all about the data, even back in the hot-or-not clone days.
It was about growing the user base so more data could be harvested, not about the connections being made.
That’s just it. Zuck could sell off and close shop and live large for the rest of his life. And yet he chooses to fuck around with people instead.
It’s weird.
There’s creating. And then there’s harvesting content and creations of others. The former is the only one that makes you interesting.
When you think about it too you realize these people have nothing good inside them. They seek power because externally people covet power. They covet it because they want control of their own lives but Mark has control and doesn’t fucking get it. He thinks power is inherently good so he steals it all away for himself but no matter how hard he trys he can’t look inward and find anything that means something more than that. It’s truly sad and grotesque. My mind could be set on 100 different paths that would fill me with so much satisfaction that nothing else would matter and mark can’t find one for himself.
I deleted my account when that came out, so I’ve been Facebook free since something like 2006.
I didn’t even join until then. I thought that info came out way later?
Maybe it was 2008 instead of 06? Seemed like it came out very early, I’d only had an account for a year or so I think, shortly after it was opened up outside EDU domains.
Yeah also facebook started as an evolution of men rating women on his campus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Facemash It should be no surprise that zuck has recently started proclaiming that he wants a more masculine corporate identity, it’s been that way from the beginning
“The Kirkland Facebook (referring to the Kirkland House intranet) is open on my computer desktop, and some of these people have pretty horrendous Facebook pictures. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.” - Zuck, 2003
The only Meta product I’m kinda forced to have is Whatsapp, as my work and my family use that to communicate, and I have tried to explain Signal to my mom, but to no avail.
lol. so I told my mom im deleting Whatsapp. if she wants to keep in touch with me she can install signal, or pay for international texts and calls.
she installed signal 😃
Seriously. There is no need to be patient with moms or anyone not „understanding“ Signal. It’s the same thing as WhatsApp just with a different coat of paint when it comes to using it.
I did exactly what you did. And lo and behold my mom is now using Signal to message me.
I just got set up on Simple X Chat. From my cursory research it seems to have the best security going in a chat app right now. I find the UI really slick too. It has all the features I use in a chat app anyway. The only thing to be aware of is that all the messages are saved locally, so backup/recovery needs to be handled by you. There’s a couple videos an YouTube that go over the app.
All that being said, I still have WhatsApp on my phone. There’s still the same problem of getting everyone in your life to download another app.
I send a lot of pics, especially with work, texting a pic costs money.
Texting costs extra, specially internationally? Also it has a limited feature set and poor intercompatibility.
The only benefit of living in America is I can just use iMessage most of the time.
Why would you
All my family use it like OP
how is that a benefit
Switching masters isn’t freedom. I say this but I am forced to use both.
Multiprotocol apps helped keeping a variety of apps to communicate wherever we were.
Now it’s WhatsApp in Europe and usa, telegram in Russian countries, Viber in Greece, wechat in China, line in Japan (?)
While I really wish for PixelFed to take off, like Mastodon and Lenmy did, the current situation, IMHO, is just confusing to say the least.
So, here are two pixelfed mobile apps, an older one which is just a wrapper of the web version, and a newer polished one.
I’ve the new “polished” one installed for a few months now, and it seemes as if it’s development has stalled. The app just feels unfinished at this point.
Now, I get it, it’s a volunteer project, and there are probably just a handful of people working on it. And this is totally fine, I’m not expecting them to deliver an Instagram clone anytime soon.
However, a few months ago, they announced “Loops”, with pre-signups and some marketing yada yada… All this, while there’s still an unfinished app for their core product. But, I went ahead and signed up, just to find out, it was just crickets for a few months.
Then, recently I logged in again (on the web), and saw an they have an App for Loops which seems to be in the works, and upon testing it, I came to the same conclusion, it’s just an unfinished barebones TikTok.
Again, I’m not ranting about PixelFed, but IMHO, if they want to get serious, they should focus on one thing, until time and resources allow them to explore other things.
I would love to see it succeed as an alternative.
That’s not how FaceBook started, if it were then Mark Zuckerberg would have been using it.
It started so he could creep on girls on their campus. Nerds had hard time to socialize, so they made a digital social network to help them with the cause. Dunno if it did. But his early interviews are creepy af, lol
Never heard of them until this Streisand created issue.
Everyone with their own domain should set up a
307 Temporary Redirectwith some short URI and start publishing it for people to use instead.What url should the 307 redirect to?
Maybe main pixelfed instance?
Where do i download it?
FYI, put two spaces after the end of a paragraph to put whitespace onlrmmym (and any platform that uses markdown).
Please edit the post
for clarity he built Facebook to rate how hot women at his college were…
This letter reads like if Zuck was an ideologically driven tech-anarchist that wanted to connect people that became old and fell for the money but that’s not really true lol
To be clearer he stole the whole thing because he was always an entitled sack of poo. He never created a thing, just like Elon.
Smart enough to realize it, but not smart enough to not say it.
Rather than write a public letter pointing it out, he could have just let it happen.When your enemy is helping you, don’t point it out.
It might encourage them to stop.After the news reported on it (404 media and others) Facebook already reversed their decision and unblocked it, I thought
The letter will get published by the media. This was a good idea.
Will it? I doubt CNN, Faux News, WaPo, or any big news org will even know Pixelfed exists, much less that the creator wrote a snarky message to Zucc.
I said media, not corporations
What’s “media” to you?
Orgs who employ journalists who do journalistic work
And here we are talking about the letter. In this instance, no news is bad news.
This is what we call a home run.
Why are you trying to appeal to the better nature of a bad faith actor…
Because this is free advertising as well
The dream: releasing a scathingly cordial open letter to an oligarch that has a real chance of ruining their day.
It would probably work on Musk. I’ll bet you his ego is that fragile.
Nah, musks to much of a manly man to be bothered by it.
Adrian Dittman might lose his goddamn mind, however.
Cut the explanation back out, let the idiots seethe.
you right. done.
Doubt. He took away a basement dwellers check mark because the basement dweller said he’s bad at video games
deleted by creator
You aren’t even wrong. I stopped reading when I read Elon musk is a manly man completely ignoring the Adrian line
You should look up a picture of that dweeb sometime, or listen to any of the bitchly things he says. It’ll cure you of that notion in about a third of a second.
Adrian Dittman is Musk’s alt account on Twitter.
Reread his comment. It was pretty clever.
The same richest man in the world that cosplays as an elite gamer but outs himself on stream all for the approval of the gaming community?
You might want to do a bit more research, as it seems settled that Adrian Dittman is an actual real person and not Muskrat’s sockpuppet. Maybe be less of a dick about it too.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/05/bad-news-for-adrian-dittman-elon-musk-truthers/
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/adrian-dittmann-elon-musk-1235224131/
Zuck sucks but this open letter is embarrassing. Dial back the smarm and self-righteousness a couple notches. I get it’s marketing and not really an open letter but still, cringe
Yeah. Remeber Twitter blocking Mastodon links? Nobody wrote ANY letter. Cringe
