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In a turn of events that could cause a meta headache, the decentralized alternative to Instagram is reaching leaps and bounds. Pixelfed is a free and open source photo sharing website that was originally created in 2018 and has been available mostly over the internet for the past few years. through the web or third-party applications. But this week Pixelfed announced rolling out its own mobile apps for iOS and Android, marking a major expansion for a site that already has 330,000 users and a growing support base.
Pixelfed tried to pretend to be everything Instagram was not. Unlike the Meta site, Pixelfed is ad-free and allows users to a charter respects their “fundamental rights” to “participate in online spaces that respect their privacy, dignity and well-being.” Charter promises an unsupervised experience with limited but consensual data collection, transparent algorithms and zero web tracking. “Pixelfed is many things, but one thing is that it is not an opportunity for VC or others to spoil the atmosphere. I have refused VC funding and will not advertise the project in any form,” said Daniel Supernault, founder of Pixelfed. wrote recently In Mastodon. “Pixelfed is for people, period.”
This respect for user autonomy may be the reason for the app’s growing popularity. Indeed, Pixelfed’s growth has exploded over the past week, with the platform announcing an influx of users that sometimes tests the small team’s available resources. “We are seeing an unprecedented level of traffic to pixelfed.social and are working to maintain the service and provide additional resources!” Mastodon page of the site wrote on Sunday.
You can understand how this might make Meta more than a little uneasy. Earlier this week, 404 Media had doubts reported the tech giant was caught censoring and removing links to Pixelfed on its sites. Meta has been acquitted of violating its spam policy. However, when reached for comment by Engadget, Meta claimed Pixelfed said the removal of the links was a “mistake” and would be restored later.
Gizmodo has reached out to Meta for comment.
The social media industry is in a state of flux like never before, and the competition between mainstream platforms and low-fi alternatives has reached new heights. There are Mastodon and other Fediverse sites has been around for yearsElon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has made such sub-sites mainstream. Now that users are looking for X alternatives on sites like Bluesky and Hive, it makes sense that web users might also be interested in looking for alternatives to Meta’s offerings. With TikTok in danger of disappearing forever, web users are even flocking to another Chinese app. RedNotealthough they may be wiser to move to Loops, another Fediverse alternative The Supernault was released last year.
