This might be a bit of a niche thought, but I’ve been wondering: is it just me, or has anyone else ever thought about how cool (and possibly important) it would be to have a federated alternative to platforms like Giphy and Tenor?
These platforms are everywhere—embedded into our keyboards, messaging apps, social media tools—but they’re centralized, proprietary, and often raise questions around privacy, data mining, and corporate consolidation of internet culture.
In the age of the Fediverse, where we’re seeing federated replacements for Twitter (Mastodon), Reddit (Lemmy), YouTube (PeerTube), Instagram (Pixelfed), etc., it seems like the next logical step would be a federated GIF repository and search engine.
Imagine a platform where communities could host and share GIFs in a decentralized way. Artists could upload and tag their own content, instances could have their own moderation rules, and apps could tap into the federation to serve GIFs without relying on corporate APIs.
It could even potentially extend beyond GIFs into stickers, short looping videos, meme formats, Bitmoji - style Emoji’s, etc.
That said—I’d absolutely love to attempt something like this, but I’ll be honest: I just don’t currently have the knowledge, time, or energy to build such a project myself.
Still, I can’t shake the feeling that this could be a valuable addition to the wider Fediverse ecosystem.
So I wanted to put this out there and ask:
Has anyone ever considered/already started working on something like this?
Are there any existing tools or protocols that could make this easier to develop?
What kind of features would you want to see in a federated GIF platform?
Curious to hear your thoughts.
The software part is easy. The hassles are more in dealing with abuse, ddos attacks, inappropriate content, etc. Hosting can also get expensive if usage gets high enough. But, things like this have been done plenty of times and there is lots of such software already available.