The state of tech these days is in turmoil: tech companies sucking up to the incoming Trump administration; Meta rolling back its hate speech rules; TikTok (apparently) banned in the US for dubious reasons; Microsoft and Google forcing even more AI into their products (while hiking prices).
Fortunately, there are tech options that aren’t out to nickel and dime their users, or trying to appease bigoted billionaires/presidents. One option that’s gained attention lately is Pixelfed, a photo sharing social network that’s similar to the early version of Instagram. Pixelfed is part of the “Fediverse,” using the same ActivityPub protocol as Mastodon (a Twitter-like social network). Like Mastodon, Pixelfed is federated—users can sign up for any number of servers (or “instances”) while still seeing posts on other servers.
Pixelfed’s been around since 2018; I’ve written about it a few times, in 2019 and 2022. However, Pixelfed hasn’t gained much mainstream attention until last week, when news broke of Meta blocking links to Pixelfed as supposed “spam.” Thanks to this and people growing fed up with Instagram, sign-ups for Pixelfed have soared, helped by Pixelfed’s iOS and Android apps finally coming out of their longtime beta. As of this writing, Pixelfed has about 421,000 users. As for its business model, Pixelfed’s developers and main server relies on donations and sponsors.
Pros and cons of Pixelfed
While it’s unclear if this burst of popularity will last, I’m hoping it’s a good sign for the “Fediverse.” Unlike Mastodon, where picking a server confused non-techie users, most users seem to be signing up for the main server (pixelfed.social), which as of this writing has 220,000 users. Also unlike Mastodon, whose culture some found too pedantic/scolding, Pixelfed doesn’t seem to have a specific “culture,” and thus less of a turn-off. There’s also rules on most Pixelfed servers (including the main one) banning hate speech, harassing people of color/LGBTQ users, etc.
The main complaints about Pixelfed to date seem to be about the apps having bugs, as well as pixelfed.social being slow (likely from the volume of user sign-ups). Pixelfed also has the same downsides as Mastodon and other open source/ActivityPub-based social networks. If Pixelfed isn’t for you, I also suggest Flickr or a photo blog (in WordPress, Tumblr, etc.) as Instagram alternatives. Bluesky is also planning its own app, “Flashes,” which is just a photo-specific filtered version of the main app.
Signing up for Pixelfed
My suggestions for signing up with Pixelfed (Pixelfed has more details on a “getting started” FAQ page):
- Signing up through your browser/on your computer (versus phone) might be easier, though signing up through the app’s possible.
- For most people, you should just sign up with the main Pixelfed server, pixelfed.social. It’s where most users are going, so you’ll likely find others easily there. For techies, pixelfed.de is probably the second most-popular Pixelfed instance (61,000 users as of this writing), and might be less crowded/overloaded than the main instance.
- Pixelfed also offers a feature for importing an Instagram account, letting you migrate from Meta easily. However, as of this writing, it’s currently turned off on the pixelfed.social server; I assume it’s due to the volume of sign-ups, but should be back on eventually.
Pixelfed accounts worth following
Pixelfed is still in its early stages, and thus the list of users isn’t anywhere near what Instagram or Flickr feature. Still, here’s a few accounts that might be worth following. I’ll update this list as appropriate:
Photo by Jessica Lewis (Pexels)
I did wonder about Pixelfed so thanks for this. Instagram was so much fun when it first released but I feel like it lost authenticity and it was too much showing off not to mention all the other mess that comes with it.
I quit all social media a while ago and just have a Bluesky now to compliment my blog and youtube channel. Still not sure I want to sign up for another social network but I guess it’s good to swipe the username and point a link to my blog lol.
Nice to find you (via google btw) 👋
Thanks for finding my blog!