Well, according to the Join loops website, Loops federates with Mastodon and Pixelfed only, so you do need to make an account either on Loops or one of those other media sites. Do note that your Masto or Pixelfed instance would need to federate with Loops instances. I wish I could verify but I don’t think my Pixelfed instance federates with Loops.video

As for which instance to pick, you can see a list at fedi.db and filter by Loops under the “All Software” drop down menu. Do you want the main popular instance? Do you want to focus on a topic? Do you want to stick with your country? There’s not many instances as of now, so maybe stick with the original Loops.video, since you can always migrate later.

Edit: Instance migration isn’t available yet, but it’s planned on the roadmap for Q3 2026.

And coming to F-droid soon!

Unfortunately that’s just not how people work. I hate Tiktok and never used it, but I still want Loops to do well so people can have a far healthier and privacy-considerate service. There are many inventions huamns have made that do harm instead of good, but we have to learn how to minimize what we can as we depend on them. Forcing people to “not have Tiktok-like services” is not a solution.

Funny that you say that, as Loops just posted to their Kickstarter and blog on Thursday that Loops is in the App Store, and no longer beta!

Hopefully that drives up some engagement.

I still never beat the original TTYD, man. I miss old Paper Mario…

TL;DR: Misskey/Sharkey is our best bet, but network effect exists and I’m sad because I want more artists.

Honestly, I used Amino forever ago in middle school so I have no idea what it looked like before it died, but I feel like the closest Fediverse comparison of it’s functionality would be Misskey/Sharkey. It has a sleek UI that has a text and media focus (blog style), polls, offers chats (I think), reaction emotes, etc. You could totally make an instance around Anime/Games/Movies/whatever in general, or do focused communities on a specific media, like this Splatoon-themed Japanese Misskey server I used to visit, ikaskey.bktsk.com. I use Aria as a mobile app for Misskey/Sharkey and it’s not too bad, although the webUI for Misskey/Sharkey is truly beautiful and engaging. Threadiverse is too forum focused to truly count as a Amino replacement imo, but none of Fediverse truly fits with how Amino ran (for good reasons lol, we’re a federated social media, they weren’t).

The only issue with Fediverse anything is truly just the network effect. I have a Sharkey account at Sakurajima.social that I barely use because I just can’t find the people I want to follow. Same for my Pixelfed.art account and my Urusai.social (mastodon) account that I have following the mastodon.art instance. Federation kills a lot of interaction too, like not seeing another instance’s posts yet, or trying to like something and it failing to do so, or when you have to pull them up on their local instance. Misskey probably has most of the active artists, but you have to usually know Japanese (I am learning at least), use a VPN since foreginers are banned (and VPNs might not work), and then they defederate with most English instances anyway. Tbf Misskey did start as a Japanese made service, so that’s why it’s like that.

There are so many artists that I wish would at least move to Bluesky and use bridgy fed so I could see them, but most are sticking with Twitter and Instagram because they don’t want to have to move their followers. Fediverse doesn’t have the numbers, and we’re so tech/political focused that it’s hard to advertise ourselves. I check some of the anime communities here, but it’s mostly just posting news about upcoming anime, some borderline empty discussions (about anime I don’t watch unfortunately), and memes. I can’t even find communities focused on individual games and media I like, and of the ones that do exist, they have months between posting times.

It’s based off a joke about Tumblr banning porn and nudity. We Allow Female-presenting Nipples. It makes it memorable and instantly loveable to me, and I think most of the people who lived through the Tumblr porn exodus to Twitter would chuckle.