Today Meta admitted it deleted links to an Instagram competitor, Pixelfed. (thanks to Anthony Dean for posting the news on Bluesky)
If Facebook hates Pixelfed, all the more reason to check out Pixelfed as a place for my photos. I signed up as [email protected].
Ok, that’s all you really need to know. The rest is ranting.
What’s the social network for photos?
I stopped using Instagram in 2024. I don’t quite really use Flickr all that much. What’s the social media platform for photos? I decided I would just use Bluesky. Even though Bluesky is more text-based, I like photos that are more about an idea than just a photo. If you take a photo of something, you should be able to say something about that photo, IMHO.
Instagram didn’t appeal to me for many reasons. But one of them is how the text is very much downplayed. Therefore, Bluesky isn’t all that bad. There’s even someone who made a feed that shows just the images of the people you follow. But if you try that feed, you’ll see that it’s really not a photo feed. It’s more of a… feels like a tumble feed. A mix of original photography, photos people stole, screenshots, graphics, and illustrations. Not really photos.
Anyways.
I don’t see Pixelfed as the next big photo social media network. The federated-ness of it is just too confusing. Let’s say you find someone on Pixelfed. But they are on another instance. There is no easy way of following that person. Really. Like, there’s no “follow me” button. Instead, you are supposed to go back to your instance, a type in their username has [email protected].
An example of how confusing Pixelfed is
1. I joined pixelfed.social.
I joined the biggest instance because I figured that would be the least confusing.
2. There’s no easy way to find people you know on Pixelfed.
I searched Twitter for people I know that tweeted about Pixelfed.
A couple of people came up, including Ernie of Tedium. He tweeted his Pixelfed URL: pxlmo.com/ernie
3. I visit pxlmo.com/ernie
4. There is no follow button.
What? How am I supposed to follow him?
I googled: pixelfed how to follow someone on another network
Well, I’m supposed to copy his address, go back to pixel.social, and SEARCH for his address. Ok, that’s weird. But guess what? I’m not supposed to search: pxlmo.com/ernie. Oh no. I’m supposed to search [email protected]. WHICH LOOKS LIKE AN EMAIL ADDRESS.
Can you imagine the general online public trying to wrap their minds around that? The account is [email protected]. People are gonna be ending emails to an address like that.
My account would be [email protected]. Another email address! No! That’s my username.
Mastodon works exactly the same way. No wonder Mastodon hasn’t taken off like Bluesky has.
5. I searched for [email protected] on pixelfed.social. His account came up. And I followed him. But the chaos doesn’t stop there.
6. When I visit https://pxlmo.com/ernie I can see he has four posts.
7. I go to my profile https://pixelfed.social/i/web/profile/784563701662081402
8. I click on following.
9. I click on on Ernie’s account in my following list.
10. I arrive at https://pixelfed.social/i/web/profile/784602230224259545
There are zero posts.
How does one account show four in one spot, and The SAME ACCOUNT shows zero in another spot?
This whole federated thing needs to make following people a lot more intuitive. It’s hilarious that Facebook would be afraid of Pixelfed, because there’s no way people are going to want to figure out this craziness of how to follow people in Pixelfed. Like, no way.
Hi there! I got here looking for some answers about pixelfed. Off course I could’t find them haha, but it’s a good post. We need to star talking about these decentraliced social media, share our thoughts and for sure at some point it will get better. I have 0 real friends or family in the fediverse and that makes it a little hard to enjoy, but the feeling of not being feeding the technocrats is good enough. I never had an account on twitter or x, but I opened an account on Mastodon and that one is kind of replacing Instagram for me… truth be told: I’m an argentine, and there’s like 10 argentines in the whole fediverse so I don’t get many “news” or stuff from my country, which is kind of shitty, but still… it feels good, and I hope it’s a matter of time.
One last thing about this:
A couple of people came up, including Ernie of Tedium. He tweeted his Pixelfed URL: pxlmo.com/ernie
3. I visit pxlmo.com/ernie
4. There is no follow button.
What? How am I supposed to follow him?
You got a new fallower. Cheers!
Here’s hoping more people join platforms like Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Bluesky.
Thanks for the tip of looking for ernie’s pixelfed URL on Mastodon. I used Mastodon for a bit, but I personally found I need to focus in on one social network. Even my Pixelfed account has just one image. Today I finally added a second.
Fediverse products are never going to happen and I was so disappointed to learn Pixelfed is yet another in that arena.
All the issues you raise seem unsolvable, not because of decentralization itself but because of how “the fediverse” was designed. No thought was given to any of these UX pain points, no thought was given to the necessity of “limited centralization” – running for example a server/service that works akin to torrent trackers: hosting/controlling nothing but providing essential directions.
A non-Meta/Amazon/Google/Apple/etc. photo sharing platform is long overdue and almost necessary at this point. I’d be behind a decentralized platform filling this gap but Mastodon-adjacent services are doomed to niche adoption.
In a world where tech literacy is decreasing, getting critical user mass requires easy on-boarding. Pixelfed ain’t it.