OpenFeed: a European place to follow people and communities without an algorithm deciding what you see - [public beta]
OpenFeed, an EU-run social network with an open JSON API, is live (public beta).
- Public feed, open spaces, invite-only private spaces
- EU company (Netherlands), EU hosting, no ads, no profiling
- Posts appear in the order they were written, newest first. Nothing is ranked for you, and nothing is sold about you.
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![OpenFeed: a European place to follow people and communities without an algorithm deciding what you see - [public beta]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4923b522-1ca4-49c4-8a76-fa9ffef815cd.png)
https://openfeed.eu/Open linkView original on scribe.disroot.org
7 replies
In what way is this better than the existing fediverse platforms?
Who is behind this platform?
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Doesn't seem like it's a Fediverse platform. and they have an about section at the bottom. "A small, independent team" from the Netherlands is behind it.
Why use a closed platform when you can have an open universe of places?
Why make yourself dependent on a small team when you can instead be independent and use sofrware create by a large community without being bound to a single provider?
idk, I don't see the point.
Hi all, I'm Martin, the founder of OpenFeed. Thanks for sharing it, and these are fair questions.
Is it Mastodon or part of the fediverse? No, and that's a deliberate choice. Federation deserves real credit, but when your data is spread across hundreds of servers, you lose track of it. A deletion request depends on strangers honouring it, and your account can vanish when a volunteer's server goes offline. OpenFeed has one operator, with a name and an address under EU law, who you can question, complain to and hold to account. If you prefer the fediverse, that's completely fine. We're just making a different trade-off.
Who's behind it? A small, independent team at a Dutch company. We host on Hetzner in Germany and publish every location and supplier that touches your data.
How does it make money? Right now it doesn't. We pay for it ourselves, with no investors and no ads. Over time the plan is optional paid extras and services for organisations that want their own protected space. The rule is that whatever is free stays free: we'll never put a price on a feature you already have. I'll be honest that the revenue model isn't finished yet, and I'd rather admit that than make up a confident answer.
What about Reddit and its API? That's a fair worry. The best protection I can offer is that leaving is easy: export and delete are in your settings, not hidden behind a support ticket. We also wrote our principles down publicly so you can hold us to them. [link to the manifesto]
It's in public beta and it could still fail. We think it's worth trying anyway, and criticism like this helps. Ask me anything.
Yet another needless alternative.
A Mastodon instance?
yeah well... reddit also started out with an open and free API... well we know how that turned out.
No ads for now, they need to have a monetization plan otherwise they will go under sooner than later (or they will try to apply for EU funds, then its even more heinous and just another L-Social.)
we live in the today internet where we simply can't afford centralized platforms anymore!