Short-form video might in fact be the next frontier for federated media. The dev behind a popular photo-sharing platform is diving in headfirst.

The Fediverse might be getting their own mashups of Tiktok, YouTube, and Vine sooner than anyone thought, thanks to the work of one prolific dev spearheading an effort. The best part? He’s helping other projects in the space, too.

  • @[email protected]
    2•8 months ago

    That’s my main concern. Seeing content from other platforms in my Mastodon feed is pretty great right now (Lemmy, PeerTube etc). But hashtag feeds could quickly get overrun by something like this if it works the same way.

    That said, making this its own thing instead of building a “reels” for Pixelfed suggests the dev already knows separation will be important, so 🤞

    • AJ Sadauskas
      1•8 months ago

      @thegiddystitcher @helenslunch I think hashtag feeds being overrun with vertical videos is an excellent point. (One I hope @dansup considers!)

      But beyond that, I think vertical videos through Loops on the Fedi are likely to be far less obtrusive than they have been on other platforms.

      What’s so annoying about them on Instagram and YouTube is that the algorithm automatically drops vertical videos into my feed.

      And there’s *lots* of them in my feed, often on topics I’m not interested in.

      They’re not there because I’m interested, but because they serve the commercial interests of the social media app’s owners.

      Hashtags aside, on the Fedi, they’ll only appear in your feed if you follow a Loops account you’re interested in, or someone you follow finds one interesting enough to share.

      And if people on your Mastodon server all find them really annoying, there’s always the option to just block the Loops servers and be done with it.