41
votes
How to move your Instagram feed to Pixelfed, the photo app that doesn't track your every move
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Authors
- Justin Pot, Adrienne So, Julian Chokkattu, Martin Cizmar, Matt Jancer, Reece Rogers, Medea Giordano, Brenda Stolyar
- Published
- Aug 12 2023
- Word count
- 221 words
The problem with pixelfed is the same faced by all challengers to incumbent social media platforms: lack of critical mass. Certainly websites die and people join new platforms en masse (see Xitter, Digg, or arguably Reddit) but these platforms gain inertia that takes a major shift to drive away users. I don’t think Instagram is going anywhere soon, and obviously data tracking hasn’t impeded its growth so far, so I don’t see pixelfed, which is advertising itself as a privacy friendly alternative, siphoning away many current Instagram users, let alone establishing the kind of critical mass needed to make it a compelling social media platform.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the fediverse in principle. But social media by its design needs as many users as possible. The draw of these platforms is their ubiquity. I can follow all of my friends and they can follow me. If I wanted a private photo hosting locker I’m probably going with something more robust as a photo locker (something that can serve high res or even raw photos). But pixelfed doesn’t do that either. So if I can’t follow all of my friends, and I can’t store high quality files, what is pixelfed offering me really?
The good news with the Fediverse is that it makes it much easier to start new platforms. You aren't completely starting from scratch: If you're compatible with the Fediverse, you benefit from the entire existing Fediverse. Starting new platforms and dealing with the network effect is still difficult, but starting from something rather than nothing is a good start.
I would also submit that people who liked the old Instagram, focused on photos, may like PixelFed better than what Instagram has become, focused on reels.
The photo experience on Pixelfed is great, and there are some great apps for it (for iOS at least). I’ve recently gotten into photography more seriously and it’s been nice to have a place to post pictures that isn’t part of Google or Facebook. I think it would be well worth moving over if the use is personal.
There is a lack of users for sure, and I don’t really have anyone following me, but it will grow slowly. Hopefully with quality users that post interesting things rather than people trying to game the system for likes and views.
Nobody is going to do this because there are no users. All the more serious photographers already have three other websites to move to with more users; 500px, VSCO, and Glass.
Simply being "instagram but federated" isn't enough to actual gain and retain users.
I personally use the Instander app for Instagram to avoid the original apps tracking. Similarly Frost from F Droid for Facebook. Third party is usually the better way to go for social media.
yet