It's time for a community driven TikTok

The last two years of social media apps has been a whirlwind of emotions. It seems like at each turn, the true colors of our interweb overlords continues to show. First, it was Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Facebook has always been a black hole of mostly bad influence on the internet. Threads seemed like the one thing that might have positive vibes, but is now obviously just another Meta product.

During this time we have seen some light at the end of the tunnel. The issues with the corporate run models has shown us that decentralized community driven options not owned by a single entity might be the long-term answer with the rise of Mastodon and Bluesky. Onboarding might have been a little shaky on both, but the popularity over the last 18 months or so has shown that these are viable alternatives.

In just a few days, TikTok will most likely be banned by the United States government behind security concerns of its Chinese ownership. This is yet another example of the US machine shutting down or tainting a social media platform with millions of users. And much like the others, it’s a lucrative one that many users have found ancillary, or even primary, income streams now at risk.

I’m here to make the argument that the protocols behind Bluesky and Mastodon should be the answer. We can argue about whether to use Bluesky’s AT or Mastodon’s ActivityPub, but one needs to be the development platform of a TikTok clone. Literally, just give users the TikTok scrolling video feeds with the backbone of decentralized networking. It’s time to build the next generation of these products and money streams removed from a single oversight org.

Mark Cuban has laid out a similar challenge on Bluesky already. He’s even promising funding to the first option to meet this demand. He’s backing the AT protocol for the moment, but seems open to Fediverse alternatives from the Mastodon world. It seems far-fetched, but I honestly believe this is the answer.

Just look at Bluesky’s growth over the last six months and the more recent 72 hours of an Instagram clone Pixelfed after Mark Zuckerberg announced removal of most of Meta’s moderation, including removal of hate speech and fact checking obvious misinformation. Pixelfed is in the top 20 of both the Apple Store since then and rising on the Android Play Store as well.

It’s not as simple as it sounds, of course. You’ll need dev buy-in along with new revenue opportunities to replace paid posts and the TikTok store, but I really hope this movement happens regardless. Taking this out of the hands of a single entity makes it much more future-proof for those creating content and burning countless hours to produce it.