Dan is constantly talking about buyout requests he’s receiving for Loops and Pixelfed, so much so that it makes me a bit suspicious of those claims. Nearly every other post I see from his Mastodon feed is bragging about another alleged buyout offer, and how he’s not for sale.
Has he ever shown proof of any of these offers he’s received? It’s not that I want to doubt him, but he’s been very persistent with this claim and I think it’s fair to scrutinize it at this point.
It is a time of predatory billionaires grabbing all forms of media. It would not surprise me if he did get offers. It would also be very unprofessional to broadcast the valuation of Loops and Pixelfed while turning down the offer. It would be like recording and showing someone asking for a date and getting rejected.
Where’s the code? There’s only 9 commits to the backend and its only scaffold code. There’s not even activitypub?
Same with the app. Was this just a publicity stunt?
The Loops app certainly feels like it. Not to diminish a solo dev doing something on his own, but it just seems like a standard video player with like, comment, follow. Search feature is only by user; when you type a comment, it doesn’t wrap the text, it just moves horizontally until you post it. I think the feed is literally just a chronological list of every video posted, and for some reason, most of the videos I see on it are just like…atmospheric videos. Still camera, nature background, rain in someone’s backyard. People love the concept, but I don’t see how it’s anywhere near ready to compete for users like other options are right now.
The web UI has been teased for so long, too. I’m losing trust with dan. I mean im glad he found success with pixelfed, and i wouldn’t even have a problem with how long it takes loops; but he’s just dishonest. If he was more honest, transparent and open sourced the code early on i would’ve had no problem. But this? what is this?
I’m not a big Fediverse proponent, like…the concept is good, if not still a little young (activity pub isn’t ironed out across mediums and is still a bit jank in my opinion) but it seems a bit like a cash grab to be the savior dev making all the X-equivalent of Fediverse, and just hopefully something sticks. With PixelFed blowing up, feel like Loops is gonna take a back seat for quite a while.
