Is anyone using PixelFed? How is your experience so far?
from Blaze@reddthat.com to fediverse@lemmy.world on 01 May 2024 12:46
https://reddthat.com/post/18242759

#fediverse

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demesisx@infosec.pub on 01 May 2024 13:13 next collapse

It’s a ghost town (much like this comment thread). ;)

Being an early adopter can be boring sometimes.

DmMacniel@feddit.de on 01 May 2024 13:17 next collapse

I don’t know much about pixelfed. Is it comparable to deviantart or more like Instagram?

cyborganism@lemmy.ca on 01 May 2024 13:19 next collapse

Federated Instagram

yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml on 01 May 2024 14:42 collapse

Except that the explore/discover pages aren’t federated, but otherwise, yeah.

Blaze@reddthat.com on 01 May 2024 13:19 collapse

More like Instagram from what I’ve seen

Blaze@reddthat.com on 01 May 2024 13:19 collapse

Interesting, which instance are you on?

aniki@lemm.ee on 01 May 2024 13:20 next collapse

I have a bot on pxlmo

demesisx@infosec.pub on 01 May 2024 13:24 collapse

the most mainstream one for the moment.

Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee on 01 May 2024 13:29 next collapse

I haven’t figured out how to find good photographers to follow but my last two posts there has both gotten over 25 likes which is more than I used to get on Instagram so I guess that’s something. My only complaint is how much they scale down my pictures and absolutely butcher the quality.

meldrik@lemmy.wtf on 01 May 2024 14:18 collapse

This is a setting by the admin of that Pixelfed instance. Try another instance, if you are unhappy with the quality.

ericjmorey@discuss.online on 01 May 2024 14:57 next collapse

Since storage costs money, does it allow the admin to offer tiered access to higher quality storage?

meldrik@lemmy.wtf on 01 May 2024 17:03 collapse

Not natively in Pixelfed.

Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee on 01 May 2024 15:18 collapse

Well damn. I already copied my entire Instagram library there so I guess I’ll just deal with it.

meldrik@lemmy.wtf on 01 May 2024 17:06 collapse

Also consider that Instagram uses aggressive image compression and then you import from that to Pixelfed, which also does its own compression. No wonder the quality is questionable.

Have you tried adding an original image to Pixelfed?

Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee on 01 May 2024 19:00 collapse

No I mean the new pictures I’ve uploaded there since too.

noodlejetski@lemm.ee on 01 May 2024 13:30 next collapse

I do have an account (and PixelDroid installed on my phone), but most of the accounts I’d follow there I’ve already got added to my Mastodon, so I don’t check it that often.

mbirth@lemmy.mbirth.uk on 01 May 2024 13:31 next collapse

Instagram for geeks. My geeky followers follow me there, the normal people are still on Instagram where I post the same.

MakePorkGreatAgain@lemmy.basedcount.com on 01 May 2024 13:31 next collapse

tried it for a bit. not much going on there. got bored & quit

makmarian@kbin.social on 01 May 2024 13:48 next collapse

Yes, I have a user on pixelfed.social. I like it, and use it daily.
It is kind of like Instagram, but in the fediverse and is open source.
A cool feature Pixelfed has is the ability to follow hashtags, so your home feed will be a mix between posts from the users you follow and the hashtags you follow.

yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml on 01 May 2024 14:43 collapse

ability to follow hashtags

Are hash tags working for you? Whenever I click on a hash tag, it takes me to a missing page.

makmarian@kbin.social on 01 May 2024 15:00 collapse

Yes, the hashtag feature works for me. Are you logged in to Pixelfed? It seems like you have to be logged in to be able to see the hashtag feed.

yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml on 01 May 2024 15:17 collapse

Hmm… that may be the case on some instances (e.g. pixelfed.social), but I know an account is not required on others because I’ve tested it on several instances without registering. The only one it breaks on is pixelfed.social, which unfortunately is also the largest instance.

But still good to know, thanks for pointing that out. It’s too bad the unauthenticated discovery is still broken, though.

mannycalavera@feddit.uk on 01 May 2024 14:20 next collapse

Sign up on mobile was absolute trash, completely buggered and I had to sign up over the web in the end (which then told me my username was taken FFS). A big put off.

Love what the dev is doing, but he needs to get the basics right before plowing ahead with features.

MxRemy@lemmy.one on 01 May 2024 14:27 next collapse

I use it fairly frequently and enjoy it! My instance is Pxlmo but it hardly matters, federation doing its thing and all. The official app is quite buggy atm, but not unusably so, and it’s fun to watch the updates slowly improve things. I do follow a lot of people who are actually on mastodon but only ones who mostly post pictures anyway, so they fit better in my pixelfed feed.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention! I also kinda use it as image hosting for other apps! Only for pictures worth posting though, not trying to clutter it up. All my picture posts on Lemmy are stored there. If you put the direct link to the pic in the Lemmy image field, it shows up just as if you’d uploaded it directly to the post, no click-through necessary.

Blaze@reddthat.com on 01 May 2024 14:29 next collapse

Interesting, thanks!

Etnaphele@lemmy.world on 01 May 2024 17:09 collapse

Interesting tip on linking the url, I will try it. Tested it in the past but I think I did something different and didn’t work as I hoped

MxRemy@lemmy.one on 01 May 2024 17:29 collapse

Interesting, maybe it didn’t used to work! It does have to be the direct link to the image, if that helps. Like, “right click on image, open in new tab”, then use that link? The link to the post itself doesn’t do it.

Etnaphele@lemmy.world on 01 May 2024 17:53 collapse

That must be it, I wasn’t smart enough to link the actual image URL, I linked the post as you wrote 😆

yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml on 01 May 2024 14:46 next collapse

It’s a cool concept with a lot of potential, but currently very buggy and incomplete. For example, basic functionality like hash tags need to be fixed and federated for it to be usable IMHO. It has piqued my interest, though, so I might sign up someday if the usability issues are ever addressed.

Plopp@lemmy.world on 01 May 2024 14:53 next collapse

I use it a little bit. I think it’s pretty good but I don’t come from Instagram or anything like that, so I had no expectations. And I only use it very sparsely. I’m guessing that if you’re a heavy browser you might run out of content. But for me personally such platforms are more for posting photos than endless browsing.

I’m not the biggest fan of the UI of the official app, but it’s not bad bad.

[deleted] on 01 May 2024 15:23 next collapse

.

chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de on 01 May 2024 15:39 next collapse

I used to use but no more because there are few users

aCosmicWave@lemm.ee on 01 May 2024 16:17 next collapse

Not a big fan of the name. Even PixelFeed would make more sense.

scytale@lemm.ee on 01 May 2024 16:55 next collapse

“Fed” pertains to federation so it kinda works. Compare that to Lemmy or Mastodon that have no relation at all to the fediverse (AFAIK).

aCosmicWave@lemm.ee on 02 May 2024 18:12 collapse

I’m a huge fan of the fediverse and I didn’t even get the fed reference haha. A typical user surely wouldn’t get it either!

lemmyreader@lemmy.ml on 05 May 2024 20:48 collapse

Guess only North-Americans will worry about PixelFeds names :-)

electricprism@lemmy.ml on 01 May 2024 22:10 collapse

Agreed, IRL people say the same thing and stuff like eww The Fed.

Not sure what he’s supposed to do about it now, even PixelMail could have done the thing explaining that its federated

wjrii@lemmy.world on 01 May 2024 16:31 next collapse

You mean the thing for hosting galleries because Lemmy can’t do that yet and Imgur won’t work on Mobile without an app? Yes.

As a social network? No, and even when I tried it wouldn’t let me switch my post’s visibility from unlisted to public, so I shrugged and used it as an image host as I’d originally intended.

aasatru@kbin.earth on 01 May 2024 16:38 next collapse

I have posted some pictures I've taken from hikes, and check in now and then when I feel like posting something or looking at pictures.

My experience is very different from what other people here seem to report. I am just posting into the void, I have posted 11 pictures to date, and I never linked the account to anything or told anyone about it. Still I have more than 50 followers, only from people who stumbled over my content and decided to follow. I'm only following half of that number, so it's not a politeness thing.

I've also gotten a few comments, though mostly people just click like and/or boost. It seems every time I post something I gain at least a follower or two.

So overall I'm pretty impressed by PixlFed. If you have something to share it's a good platform to do so. And there's nice landscape photography on there, at least.

Blaze@reddthat.com on 01 May 2024 17:10 collapse

Interesting, thanks!

Crumbgrabber@lemm.ee on 01 May 2024 16:49 next collapse

Pixelfed is awesome. Like a lot of Fediverse things you have to follow just about every hashtag to get enough content. I love particularly all the human made art, although I also follow a lot of AI art. Compared to other social media it is oddly peaceful and calm, no ads, no algorithm forcing engagement means you can safely go down some obscure rabbit holes and keep your peace of mind. Fediration itself between softwares is a work in progress, Lemmy/Mastadon/Pixelfed often does not work and even migrating all your follows from one instance to another isn’t user friendly too. Considering that all this was done without billions of corporate dollars and with volunteers doing all the work, its a nice place to visit.

AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space on 01 May 2024 16:58 next collapse

The official app appears to be written in React Native and is as laggy and janky as you’d expect. Other than that, more people are using it (and/or interacting with it from elsewhere in the fediverse).

UnfairUtan@lemmy.world on 01 May 2024 17:22 next collapse

I used to be into Instagram for the photography communities, now I’m exclusively using Pixelfed.

It’s obviously not as good, and there isn’t as much account variety, but it’s getting there!

Merlin@discuss.tchncs.de on 01 May 2024 23:08 next collapse

I like it but I wish I can migrate my account. When I moved to a friend’s instance I had to manually upload all the photos and descriptions . I wish it was like peertube where I could just sync .

Omniraptor@lemm.ee on 01 May 2024 23:46 next collapse

Can someone less lazy than me explain how it’s functionally different from sharing images on e.g. mastodon?

lemmyreader@lemmy.ml on 05 May 2024 20:51 collapse

Mastodon is about micro-blogging, with text, images and videos. PixelFed is only about images which can have a short or longer description. There’s Loops, a work in progress, which will enable short videos for PixelFed. If you would follow others on PixelFed from your PixelFed account you’d only see images.

HawlSera@lemm.ee on 09 May 2024 21:04 next collapse

What IS PixelFed?

hanrahan@slrpnk.net on 15 May 2024 01:51 collapse

A little IG like

hanrahan@slrpnk.net on 15 May 2024 01:49 collapse

Yes I’m on it, and don’t post much, I guess to dip my toe to check it out but while I take photos for myself I don’t look at the photos of others. I was never on IG at all so …