This app could potentially supplant Tik Tok overtime. As Tik Tok's censorship following it's acquisition by US investors such as Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX, and UpScrolled already having questionable ethics, this may be the path forward.

UpScrolled is also for-profit right?

It would be amazing to ditch the company control and so. The main problem is that it's difficult to get users to join it.
I mean just look at how many people still use reddit and discord.

It's getting there, but still needs a good amount of ui fixes. The below mentioned are my personal issues with the app.

• scrolling is sometimes wonky with flicking to the next video and goes past 2 to 3 other videos
• double-tapping to like is a sorely missed feature
• tapping the home button should refresh the feed
• using foldable cause issues with how things are displayed and sometimes causes a takeaway you back to there beginning of the feed

All this being said I still use it. They are making progress and I hope they keep going.

My problem with loops is I can only scroll four videos before it stops scrolling. No matter what. I've tested it a few times on different devices because I wanted to try moving friends off Tik Tok.

I can't figure out why it just stops.

Yup and it's closed source, it's of course likely to be more lax for a time than Tik Tok&Instagram until it takes over...

Is it ready? It's been promised for a year or so now and was only available available by some signup list.

Tbf Lemmy is still lacking on many things like media(comics, games, tv shows, cartoons, anime/Manga etc), Reddit right now is THE place aside from niche sites specific to each median, but as for Discord I agree, alternatives are not so hard there... Lemmy is getting there though.

It needs an app (edit: that is available through Play store or the corresponding apple shop)

And it needs to render uploaded videos to the maximum allowed file size. Regular people don't know how to make their videos smaller. I only managed to do it by uploading to you tube the then downloading it from there. Then it was small enough to to be uploaded to loops

Also, easier sign up and more content

Same!

That's misleading, they plan on being open sourced according to pubs:

Similar to how Mastodon offers an open source, distributed version of X, the fediverse is getting its own TikTok competitor. This week, an app called Loops began accepting signups on its new platform for sharing short, looping videos. Still in the early stages, Loops is not yet open sourced, nor has it completed its integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and other federated apps.

However, both those efforts are in the works and when complete, will allow Loops to add another layer of social activity to the growing open social web known as the fediverse, which now has north of 11.6 million users and over 1 million monthly active users. (Mastodon accounts for roughly 65% of that activity.) Growth in this space has also encouraged other apps to adopt ActivityPub, like social magazine app Flipboard and Meta’s Threads. The latter is not yet fully integrated but already has more than 200 million monthly active users.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/25/the-fediverse-is-getting-its-own-tiktok-competitor-called-loops/

That article is over a year old and it's still not open source.

Isn't piefed open source? You might be right, but we'll see, yeah?

Edit: What would be the benefit of waiting to become open source? Piefed seems to be a great platform, that's why I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. But again, I could be wrong and he's super greedy.

loops has a app if you are talking about them, I just had to uninstall the previous to install the newest as it's been awhile since I've used it.

Wait, what's this if it's closed source? https://github.com/joinloops/loops-server

I felt my back break when I went on the app and sorted by retro and saw stuff I didn't think was that old.

It needs an app

There is an app both for apple and android. Just scroll down the page a bit: https://joinloops.org/join-the-beta

I'm not trying to fight with you, I'm trying to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe we could get the creator to come in here and explain what's going on.

UpScrolled already having questionable ethics

Which questionable ethics? I’m out of the loop.

EDIT: I’m sorry but I’ll take this post and some of the allegations with a grain of salt. Your account is made in January 2026 and this is your first and only post. Your comments are only in here as well. However, I do hope you can clear up about which ethics are questionable on UpScrolled.

Pixelfed ≠ Piefed

but it is open source

Pixelfed is open-sourced software licensed under the AGPL license.
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed?tab=readme-ov-file#license

edit:
Looks like Loops is open-source as well :

https://github.com/joinloops/loops-server#license

You're right, I thought it was the Piefed guy.

What is closed source ?
Aren't those up to date?

https://github.com/joinloops/loops-server#license

Loops Server is open-sourced software licensed under the AGPL license.

and UpScrolled already having questionable ethics, this may be the path forward.

I am definitely Out of the loop on this.

My apologies, I called UpScrolled closed source because it is, not Loops.

So Loops is open sourced then?

It has an app, it is kinda weird how you get it though. When you click tk join it gives you the choice of app. It's not on an app store for android. Not sure about apple. So for me updates dont seem to happen to it that I know of.

Yes.

Oh, that makes a lot more sense.

Loops has a lot of bugs, but my biggest issue with it is the video quality is awful for anything with lots of motion, especially moving water. If I wanted videos without motion I’d take a picture.
When I asked dansup about this his reply was “we’re happy with the quality”, glad he is, no one else is though.
The app has had more “coming soon” announcements than anything actually materializing.
I appreciate his vision and effort but not his delivery, and dear lawd his egotistical posts, yikes.
I would love to see Loops turn into what he keeps promising but so far, it hasn’t.

It's available, but I don't know about ready. You can register freely, you can download a phone app (through apk) and you can scroll. When I tried it the other week it still failed to deliver any worthwhile content in a quick enough time. I don't think the recommendation algorithm is good enough (although there also just isn't a ton of stuff on there in general).

It does also lack a lot of features, I think the biggest one is a built-in editor. Right now every video must be single take and that's going to be in the way of mass adoption.

Let us hope that it gets there one day.

The benefit is less distractions and pointless organization for a project in the early stages

Open sourcing things is a pain in the ass. It's common to get the core project working before doing so

Microsoft will take its name.

I mean just look at how many people still use reddit and discord.

And Twitter

I've seen other people on Mastodon/Bluesky mention that the site takes an 'anti-censorship' approach to moderation, so there's a bunch of far right people doing Nazi stuff on there.

That mixed with not having an algorithm, I've seen a lot of sexual stuff I was not looking for.

Seems already pretty solid. Was testing a bit in the last days:
https://loops.video/@ordos
Still very few users. But this could change as soon as the app is available in the app stores.

I have been on UpScrolled for about 23-25 days and have not seen any Nazi stuff. However, I keep my feed and the people I follow mainly about Anime and Palestine.

If there’s indeed Nazi stuff on it, I hope the developer removes it. Zionism and Nazi are both insanely shit ideologies that should have never come to existence.

That mixed with not having an algorithm

Is not that a part of the advantage? You, the person, deciding what you want to see and follow. I think Mastodon and BlueSky are similar in that regard.

I've seen a lot of sexual stuff I was not looking for.

Follow the developer of the app and you’ll understand why;

as you may already know, many bad actors are trying to flood the platform with all kinds of illegal and nasty content, for the obvious reasons. we are working around the clock to counter this. it will get better. we apologize for any disgusting content you may encounter while we fix this.

I definitely seem to be in the minority with this issue

🤞

I think it's hurting them that it says "join the beta". To me, that means being put on a waitinglist and hoping to be picked. Better wording would've been "Join us (in beta)" or simply "join us". Only now did I click on it and found out that I had to download a raw apk. Which brings me to the next point: it's only on the iOS App Store. The majority of phone users on the planet (overwhelmingly so) are Android users. Why target the minority first? And why provide the majority with a link to a file that requires extra actions? It should be on the Google Store and on F-Droid first, then the App Store.

Anyway, I'm not the target audience, nor am I a programmer, so I'm grateful that somebody is putting in the work. Hopefully they can convince enough people to join and get off of closed-source platforms!

Testing linking @ordos@loops.video

If this is another tool using ActivityPub, I’m gonna get mad.

I see your local profile here on fedia with no contact. When I try to click though I get a https warning. I don't have the app though...

If it doesn't have an algorithm aren't you responsible for what you're seeing?

I have no idea why it's been prioritised for the iOS app store, but either it's a case of its creator being an iPhone user, or American I guess (I believe iPhone still has a majority market share in the US).

What is the point of recreating media format designed exclusively to grab attention as much as possible and monetize it?

Edit: I'm not saying that loops is planning to monetize it. I'm trying to say that the short video format was designed as being additive, so that the addiction can be monetized.

• !movies@piefed.social
• !television@piefed.social

Since it's federated, is there a better way to share or a way to shrink for browser people?