Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

by colinprince • 7 years ago

265 107 7 years ago

jesse_m• 7 years ago

can you browse without signing up? I'd like to follow from my mastadon client

robrtsql• 7 years ago

I'm wondering the same. I wanted to look at a Pixelfed instance to see if it was worth joining (or following from a different account in the fediverse)--and I can't even see whether or not I like the content without making an account?

I can see why a for-profit app like Instagram would force everyone to sign up to browse, since that helps their bottom line, but I can't see why that decision would be made here.

TicklishTiger• 7 years ago

Instagram does not make you sign up to browse.

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/ycombinator/

This seems to be the url to browse tags on pixelfed.social:

https://pixelfed.social/discover/tags/ycombinator

Unfortunately it wants you to sign in.

codetrotter4• 7 years ago

Alternatively, does it integrate with Mastodon in such a way that Mastodon hosts could easily offer immediate access to Pixelfed for their already registered Mastodon users without requiring any additional form filling etc on the part of their users?

By that I mean, does Pixelfed integrate with Mastodon in such a way that a Mastodon server could also run a Pixelfed server instance, and use the same user database for both services?

For example, the Mastodon server I am on, vis.social [1], seems like a place whose user base might want to use Pixelfed. That Mastodon server describes itself as “a social space for anyone in data, visualization, creative coding, and related arts and research.” (Said description is what prompted me to choose this specific server when creating my Mastodon account.)

[1] https://vis.social/about

jklinger4102• 7 years ago

Will be on board as soon as it has an app.

messo3• 7 years ago

Apps is being worked on by several independent developers, just like with Mastodon. Pixelfed also works well as a PWA, which I currently use on my Android phone.

eitland2• 7 years ago

For now at least it is a "web first" experience.

I think more things should be "web first". Today even Reddit keeps tirelessly pushing an app - for a web site!

jklinger4102• 7 years ago

Instagram is an app first, website second. As an Instagram clone that's primarily how I intend to use it as well.

muvek• 7 years ago

Twitter alternatives (mastodon), instagram alternative (pixelfed), reddit alternative (prismo.news)... Things are looking great!

codetrotter4• 7 years ago

For now I am still on Reddit but another open source alternative to Reddit that I learned about earlier today is https://tildes.net/. Judging from the amount of votes and comments they have very few users as of yet. Will be interesting to see how Tildes develops over time.

AsyncAwait3• 7 years ago

https://tildes.net doesn't seem to be federated. Is it?

chris_mc• 7 years ago

I used Tildes during the first round of public closed alpha and it's pretty nice, everyone was polite, and they didn't put up with rude folks or bullshit trolls. I ended up quitting because there wasn't enough content at the time and I was wasting too much time there, like I did on Reddit. However, I would say it might be worth going back there to check it out again. The platform itself is open source, I believe, and it uses as little JS as possible to make the site simple.

dilap• 7 years ago

I love the spirit, but I feel like it's gunna be hard for a straight-clone decentralized site to gain traction. I think you need to combine fresh site ideas along w/ the decent to really gain traction.

holler2• 7 years ago

check out sqwok, new & starting beta https://sqwok.im

dawnerd• 7 years ago

Gross, broke back navigation on my trackpad.

grumpy-cowboy• 7 years ago

I'm in the process to move out mass-surveillance social sites like FB, Twitter, Google, ... I'm about to install my own Matrix and ActivityPub nodes (Mastodon, Pleroma, PeerTube, ...) on a cheap VPS.

I also have my own email domain hosted at Fastmail.com (I don't want to manage an email server).

This way I'll manage MY own data. I'll share it with who I want. And it's a fun project. :)

acdw2• 7 years ago

Could you share a bit what VPS you'll use to host your ActivityPub? I've been wanting to do this too, but I have no idea at all where to begin.

Kovah2• 7 years ago

As there are simply no providers yet who offers ready-to-install packages of all these services (at least I don't know one), you go with that service you trust and that suits you best. Some examples for relatively cheap VPS are Digitalocean, Vultr, Linode or, if you want to host somewhere "safe": Exoscale, which has datacenter in Switzerland and Germany.

uptown• 7 years ago

Check out Koken for self-hosting photo albums. It's pretty great:

http://koken.me/

byproxy• 7 years ago

There is also https://www.textile.photos/ , for a more decentralized approach.

fosco• 7 years ago

from pixelfed site:

Supported Fediverse Projects

This is a partial list of well known supported projects

    Anfora – Self-hosted photo gallery social network.
    Pleroma – A federated microblogging alternative.
    Mastodon – A federated microblogging alternative.
    Misskey – A federated microblogging alternative.

beardicus2• 7 years ago

I've signed up for Pixelfed. It's nice enough. It doesn't seem like actual federation between Mastodon or other Pixelfed instances is up and running though. You can follow a Pixelfed account in Mastodon but not vice versa. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong.

Anyways. It's fun... I post silly inconsequential pictures because I know only a half-dozen people will ever see them. The public timeline is not very lively so I hope w/ better federation and more attention it can be a little more active.

I'm pretty sick of Instagram though, so Pixelfed and the fediverse in general seems fun.

The web app is fine and works fine on mobile. A little clunky, but that's how I likes my indieweb. :)

thebaer• 7 years ago

That's pretty much how things are developing in the fediverse: each platform meant for its own content type, with the microblogging platforms generally being used for a "main" identity. So platforms like Pixelfed and Peertube can focus on photos and videos, respectively, while still interacting with the larger network.

By not supporting following in the other direction, these specialized platforms can stay focused on the content shared there, instead of also supporting microblogging, video, photos, events, and whatever other types come up in the future. But of course you're not limited to just following in one direction -- comments go both ways. So someone can comment on your Pixelfed photo with a Mastodon account, and you can respond to that comment with your Pixelfed account, and they'll see your comment back on Mastodon.

Kye• 7 years ago

It's a good theory in general, but I think in this specific case it's because there's one dev and he works on this in his spare time.

skinnymuch3• 7 years ago

What’s made you sick of IG? Besides the news feed not being chronological order, nothing has susbtaintially changed for my day to day casual IG usage in a pretty long time. Yeah there are stories and more ads. If I don’t care about those, they can be easily ignored.

tgragnato2• 7 years ago

E.g. some people don't want to be forced to ignore things.

jedberg3• 7 years ago

I clicked the link and... have no idea what this is. It looks like instagram maybe? I can't even figure out how to figure out what it is. The only clickable thing I see is "@admin" which just takes me to what looks like an Instagram page. It doesn't even mention fediverse on that page, and even if it did, you'd have to know what the fediverse is.

This feels like a huge barrier to adoption for them beyond the nerdiest of nerds.

I like Instagram because I get to see what my friends are up to. How will I get my friends on this?

deft• 7 years ago

It is an instagram knockoff. I think they are avoiding the fediverse mention on purpose in order to get users by just marketing it as an alternative without any special magic. This about page as a landing page is really confusing but the homepage doesn't do much better... Also registration is closed so this is a really strange time to be advertising

ghostDancer• 7 years ago

Different instances https://the-federation.info/pixelfed

r3bl2• 7 years ago

The author posts regular updates on Mastodon that I follow. From my understanding, federation is relatively new, and he seems to focus on expanding the functionalities of the core product right now instead of focusing on the presentation.

So indeed, it is a bit of an awkward time for it to be on the front page here.

Haydos585x2• 7 years ago

The federation side of it is pretty new and Dan wants to have the core product sorted, including security testing before federation is really pushed. There's a new post UI coming soon that looks really good.

ocdtrekkie2• 7 years ago

Most people who might use a service like this won't know and maybe won't care what the fediverse is and what other services it's connected to. The goal should be for that to simply be the underlying standard everything else is built on, regardless of which site/client you use to connect to people.

But yeah, this is more or less federated Instagram, but the federation is still a work-in-progress, AFAIK.

jeena2• 7 years ago

It is. But I already can follow from Mastodon which is really cool because it's a different software.

ehsankia• 7 years ago

It's actually a pretty obvious Instagram knockoff if you go to the homepage. They have almost pixel perfect identical landing pages, and the app also looks extremely similar.

Kovah2• 7 years ago

To be fair, Pixelfed is in its early shoes. I know it from a "alternatives to Facebook etc." list but it still has to gain some traction mike Mastodon. However - and that's the problem - as long as you build an ethical service you probably won't reach the masses, because non-ethical platforms will always outperform you, and if it's just by how much they spend on marketing.

geofft• 7 years ago

pixelfed.social is a particular instance; https://pixelfed.org (the project home page) is probably a better overview.

Though - as that page points out - it's still a work in progress. There should probably be huge barriers to adoption for everyone regardless of nerdiness. But at the moment I'd guess they're targeting existing fediverse/Mastodon users.

znpy• 7 years ago

I clicked the link and... have no idea what this is.

To be quite honest that's the same reaction I had when I first landed on Instagram's homepage. Then of course, everybody was talking about it...

coldacid3• 7 years ago

Signed up but still waiting for them to introduce Instagram importing. I have quite a few pics on there and I want to completely move over without losing the order and posting times of my Insta account.

amelius• 7 years ago

A few questions:

Is this compatible with existng solutions like Mastodon?

And why just images? Why not videos/documents/music or even events?

How long will the images be available? Who is paying for storage?

How does the technology compare to IPFS?

ocdtrekkie2• 7 years ago

Yes, it is using ActivityPub, the same federation protocol as Mastodon.

Pixelfed is fairly new, and probably should get it's minimum viable product working before worrying about supporting more formats. And there's a lot of ActivityPub-based software out there, it makes sense to focus on a specific experience people are looking for.

You host Pixelfed where you want to, or use someone else's Pixelfed server. As long as either you or someone else is paying to host it, it's there.

ActivityPub style federation isn't like IPFS. Data is largely still contained on the server it's posted on, but you can communicate with other servers so that people can be notified, interact, and comment on things posted on other servers. But it's a much more traditional server model than IPFS. When a Mastodon or Pixelfed server goes offline, it's content is gone.

phoe-krk2• 7 years ago

1) Yes, these speak the common ActivityPub protocol.

2) It's purposeful specialization. PeerTube is a video hosting service, Funkwhale is a music hosting service, GetTogether is an event hosting service. No idea what services provide online document services - they likely aren't ActivityPub-compatible.

3) Ask the administrator of your instance. The Fediverse, of which PixelFed is part, is composed of a mesh of networked instances.

4) I don't have enough IPFS experience to answer.

thekyle• 7 years ago

No idea what services provide online document services - they likely aren't ActivityPub-compatible.

Nextcloud is ActivityPub compatible and might suit that use case.

cedricbonhomme• 7 years ago

What I really like is that thanks to ActivityPub it is possible to boost a Pixelfed post in Mastodon. Basically in the fediverse...

veb2• 7 years ago

I constantly boost my PixelFed posts in Masotdon :) It's such an awesome way of doing it. My latest toots are in fact, from PixelFed: https://mastodon.social/@veb

orblivion• 7 years ago

Replies to a Pixelfed post looks like Twitter in Mastodon, but looks like Instagram in Pixelfed.

I'm trying to justify to mysef how this is useful in any way but it sure _feels_ fascinating!

wicket3• 7 years ago

Registrations are closed.

I think the lack of a common name/URL is the biggest problem that is preventing federated open source social networks from gaining mass popularity. I remember when identi.ca came out as an alternative to Twitter. It seemed like it was starting to gain some traction, then they switched to pump.io and closed registrations. I haven't heard of anyone using either since. Look at Diaspora, that never took off either. You might convince someone to try it out, they'd go to the website and it'd be too complicated for them. "Which pod do I choose?" Then they would just go back to using Facebook and Twitter.

evolve2k• 7 years ago

Which pod do I choose?

That is actually a great UX question. For federated services how do you think we best solve this? I mean everyone wants to just not pick one. But different loss suits people better in terms of location/interests/something else.

UX folks, what patterns would you suggest to help solve this?

CharlesW• 7 years ago

For federated services how do you think we best solve this?

For distributed services, the solution must be such that the question "Which pod do I choose?" makes no sense. (There may not be a solution, in which case this may be distributed solutions' Achilles' Heel.)

derefr• 7 years ago

Which email provider do I choose?

Email is a mature example of a federated system, and so if there is an answer to the general question, I'd expect we'll have figured it out in the context of email.

So... what's the "general strategy for picking an email provider?"

r3bl2• 7 years ago

Did you check out Mastodon's current solution?

Scroll a bit down and you'll see that you can filter through the servers based on your language and interests, as well as see the amount of users each server has. https://joinmastodon.org/

dwighttk• 7 years ago

with email it doesn't matter what domain name you pick... why does it have to matter for other things?

aasasd2• 7 years ago

Funny enough, choosing a node wasn't such a show-stopper for users ten years ago and before. I've used local email services in my backwater town, hanged out on local forums. The entirety of Fidonet was built on people connecting to their acquaintances—and it was rather popular here almost until the 2000s.

As for the present, I'm sorta baffled that the anarchic dream of decentralization turned into not-quite-that-cool federation where you're tied to an instance, instead of the identity working across the net. If my chosen server goes down, I'd love to be able to just move to another one with my keys.

codewiz• 7 years ago

Mastodon, however, has already picked up traction well beyond any of its predecessors, and continues to grow steadily.

https://the-federation.info/mastodon

riffic2• 7 years ago

Which [instance] do I choose?

The one your employer provisions your account on. Your account will be @user@company.domain

riffic2• 7 years ago

in an ideal environment, of course. Forgot to preface this statement, unable to edit it now.

soared2• 7 years ago

Link should be changed to the homepage instead of the current weird page that has no info

https://pixelfed.social/

veb2• 7 years ago

Yep, we definitely have to update that page ASAP. Maybe next time it hits HN we'll be ready. If anyone's interested you can see from my Mastodon what I've boosted from PixelFed: https://mastodon.social/@veb

soared2• 7 years ago

Registrations are closed.

Can someone explain this?

Roujo• 7 years ago

As I recall the idea was to promote looking for a Pixelfed instance with a community that fits your needs and interests, which in turn makes the network stronger by distributing the userbase over a variety of servers.

Keeping registrations open on what is often perceived as an "official" instance can lead to that instance getting most of the new users of the network, since it's usually the one you'll find if you search for the corresponding software. mastodon.social (previously open, now invite only) is a good example of that, IMO. I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing, but I do feel it subverts the idea of a federated network if most users are on a handful of known instances.

screaminghawk• 7 years ago

That's a nice thought. I'm the kind of user that's going to give up and move on if my first attempt fails, and I imagine I'm in the majority here.

Aeolun• 7 years ago

It also subverts the idea if users are on no instance at all.

an4rchy• 7 years ago

On first glance, looks like a decentralized Instagram.

A couple of questions:

- What is the business model? If millions of people are on this and there's no ads/monetization -- how is the service covering costs?

- If people had to pay, then it might limit adoption, how are you going to handle that?

- How are you guys thinking about support, monitoring content (removing illegal/copyrighted content)

AsyncAwait3• 7 years ago

Each instance can be funded differently and you could pick the one you most like.

On Mastodon, most use Patreon, some are pay to sign up and some don't really accept donations at all.

messo3• 7 years ago

There is no corporation and no business model, and that's by design. Each instance can do what it wants regarding covering the cost of running the server. I plan to set up my own instance on my modest homelab for family and friends, and will not charge anything. Some bigger instances might choose to offer a certain amount of free storage before requiring to pitch in to cover the costs. My guess is that a big majority of instances will be populated by 10-200 users, give or take, which would be feasible to keep running with minimal cost and a modest amount of administration.

Regarding moderation; I'll keep my family and friends under control and bigger instances will have to delegate moderation rights to trusted members of that community – much like on any forum. It's a far more sustainable model compared to the nightmare Facebook and Twitter, which is relying heavily on algorithms and outsourcing.

draugadrotten• 7 years ago

Moderation is important in today's world, compare the massive work twitter, instagram et al have had to do as a result of the Christchurch massacre.

How does this scenario work with pixelfed? I take it that the content is hosted on a specific server and that the pixelfed app is just a frontend that knows how to find that server. Is abuse reporting built in to the app somehow? How does the end user know that action is being taken? How can law enforcement close down pages?

Note that legal liability for hosting illegal content may be huge. There is one 18-year old in NZ who is being charged and threatened with 14 years jailtime for sharing the terrorist video from the mosque massacre. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&object...

tzfld• 7 years ago

I would add a longer 4th one:

- If an instance is going to shut down for any reason, how you can handle your account and your content? Do you lose all your follower base and/or content? Can you transfer your account to another instance?

Questions about the whole federated ecosystem that I never saw answered completely.

kaffeeringe• 7 years ago

I love it!

AJRF• 7 years ago

Thoughts on federated services;

Just silly ramblings that hopefully open up a discussion because god knows I don't have the answers, but I do have ideas.

1. How do I get my friends to use them - Solution? Maybe we now live in a world where privacy being part of the public discourse would enable something wonderful like a rich person who cares about this to spend for an ad campaign altruistically (I'm thinking in the vein of Brian Acton giving money to Signal foundation). That would be an effective seed to start a social network. Really play on the failures of modern social; Facebook (privacy), Twitter (sloppy moderation & bots) Google+ (...)

2. For the most part, no one cares it's federated. The upside of federation is "unstoppable" apps (to steal from Ethereum). Okay fine it's federated, just make the UX of finding and jumping into those fediverse's easy. Pinterest model of discovery would lend itself to fediverse discovery, i.e I type a search term - show me related fediverse.

3. Make it known to the people it matters to, in simple terms about how you don't track them. This is really really important. People care about being tracked, but unless you make it super simple and informative that what you do is different, how can I see that using something that is open source, federated and made by people who care about privacy is actually going to reduce tracking? Startpage and Mozilla do good work here about describing the state of the union, and how what they do is different.

StudentStuff• 7 years ago

I've not done anything beyond linking friends to funny/high quality posts on the Fediverse, and already a few have made the jump. For many instances, there is a very high signal to noise ratio that is an enticing factor for outsiders to join (if the user shares the interests of the instance).

The UX for boosting, replying and interacting with users on other instances is pretty straightforward, you merely fill your handle once when trying to boost/reply to a post found on another instance (if you don't follow or otherwise have a copy of that toot on your local instance) and it will OAuth (IIRC) to boost/like, or redirect you to your instance if you chose the reply option (with said toot your replying to pulled up). Overall pretty slick IMO.

One factor in this is there is generally not a wall between linking users to content on the fediverse, and them being able to view it. No Quora, Twitter or Facebook full screen popups that cut off reading a thread or toot, just here's the thread :P

Open linking/access to public toots unlike other "social" media is a big differentiator.

jcfrei2• 7 years ago

I think I understand the mission: A federated alternative to instagram where anybody can create a server which is accessible to other users on the fediverse network (doesn't have to be pixelfed). But I don't think this is the right approach. If the public really wants to compete with large internet corporations then there needs to be a single non-profit organization akin to the Wikimedia Foundation which runs these social media applications. Of course it's both legally and technically a less resilient setup than a federated network. But you are never going to cause a significant part of the population to switch to a federated image sharing platform - not least because most users aren't going to understand the concept.

If you really want people to move away from social networks run by for-profit corporations then you need a single non-profit organization with a charismatic leadership, a captivating mission statement and lots of people to create public awareness.

AsyncAwait3• 7 years ago

Wikimedia Foundation which runs these social media applications.

Then you just moved the centralization to a different entity. Wikipedia has plenty of problems, power plays, politics, bullshit process, bias etc.

jcfrei2• 7 years ago

The goal of such a foundation wouldn't be to remove these issues - which are inherent to any type of organization - it would be to stop the ongoing erosion of privacy.

herodotus• 7 years ago

You can register - go to https://pixelfed.social I uploaded a picture and that worked too.

pixelfed• 7 years ago

Hi, pixelfed developer here[1].

Thanks for all the feedback! The project is still pretty young and we look forward to shipping a stable release in the coming months!

[1] https://mastodon.social/@dansup/101780180126913256

carlchenet• 7 years ago

The social network Mastodon, also based on a Free Software and using Fediverse, reached 2M+ uses recently https://carlchenet.com/do-not-ignore-the-mastodon-social-net...

PixelFed has a possible awesome future ahead!

Pixelfed – An alternative to centralized image sharing platforms

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