How to Move Your Instagram Feed to Pixelfed, the Photo App That Doesn't Track Your Every Move

www.wired.com How to Move Your Instagram Feed to Pixelfed, the Photo App That Doesn't Track Your Every Move

The decentralized Instagram alternative is a great option if you want to back up your feed, focus on photo-sharing, or cut loose from Meta's empire entirely. And making the leap is surprisingly easy.

Pixelfed got featured on the Wired and here's what @dansup@mastodon.social, the author of @pixelfed@mastodon.social, says:

[...]
All those long nights working on backend scalability and performance improvements are about to be put to the test
I wasn't anticipating this attention for a few more months, but I'm ready 😎

57 comments

Damn the fediverse is really having it's moment. I guess even non-techie people really are truly getting fed up with corporate social media.
- impossible people, sponsored content, ads and your data on a buffet - it was long overdue, but i'm glad it's finally gaining momentum.
- My personal observation is that people have been fed up for quite a while, not so much by the Instagram app itself but by Meta's brand, their untrustworthiness and the general vapid and scammy nature of the hordes of Influencers and "hustlers". It's just regular folks aren't aware of decent alternatives or the alternatives aren't quite there yet.
- I mean we're still a long long way from reaching mainstream status.
  
  I think lemmy and it's growth is the biggest step forward in the direction of the fediverse becoming "mainstream" alongside twitters implosion As this platform specifically develops more and the front end UI improves in spite of its current flaws, I feel like lemmy and kbin are probably the most likely to be picked up by the general public as it is the easiest to navigate and populate with content. You can federate whole communities in with tons of content, instead of just individual users. There are quirks but I think it has the most potential, it's like the fediverse was made for this kind of platform in mind specifically.
  
  Not everything needs to be mainstream to be great. Sometimes being less known is what makes sites great since you are sure that the user base that is on there are there because of similar reason. Unlike mainstream apps where users trend to be there only because it is hip to be there but don't care for what the sites actually stands for. Hence the proliferation of garbage material in large mainstream sites.
- Someone asked this before, but is there a Canadian instance for pixelfed? That's what's kept me from trying it out.
  I see that pixelfed.ca is registered, but doesn't seem to go anywhere.
  Otherwise is there another good instance to make an account on?
  
  It's a platform still in its infancy but improving rapidly, social.photo is a pretty good one if you want a smaller instance, it's hosted by the admin over at discuss.online. I'm not a member of discuss.online but I can vouch that @jgrim@discuss.online is an awesome sysadmin and I have full faith in him maintaining that instance long term (if you're ever worried of signing up to a small instance and it disappearing.. I highly doubt his stuff will.). Currently migration isn't added into pixelfed yet (its being worked on though) but I am gonna sign up to that one anyway, it's always best to spread around the federation.
  Might be worth reaching out to lemmy.ca admins though and seeing if they have one spun up or would be willing to as well.

Pixelfed is great but it never had a mass migration like Mastodon or Lemmy. So it lacks users.
- Yes, but things can change. Stories of Mastodon and Lemmy are inspiring. When Reddit backslash happened, Lemmy was already there as a good alternative for people to switch to. So was the case of Mastodon with the Twitter exodus. It's good that we've Pixelfed, it may be just a matter of time.
  
  I'm on pixelfed, and truthfully, the lack of professional grade photos there are what actually made it great for me. I want to see ordinary photos from ordinary people. Taken during their ordinary day to day life.
- I already registered, you don't have to sell it to me!
- Knowing tech companies, it's just a matter of time lol

I've been posting on pixelfed.social but haven't had much interaction, but maybe this will get the word out a bit.
- Some will say
  Touch the real grass, outside...
  *JK, better have real social interaction outside tbh
  
  All my pictures are of outside activities, figured maybe someday someone local may see then interact outside as well.

Someone give me a hard sell here! Why should I use this app? I used to use Instagram (photographer/cinematographer), and I stopped using it because not just the tracking and all of that, but frankly, the content itself. Not to mention the algorithms are so busted and all they do is show me rage bait or flagrant ads disguised as content I would actually care about.
Why do people like pixelfed?
- In my experience it is very much focused around photography, similar to Instagram when it was still good. The lack of algorithms pushing bullshit makes the feed feel much more organic, showing the people you follow - and there are already, in my experience, a healthy amount of talented people sharing interesting content.
  Then again, I appreciate nature photography, so I'm not hard to satisfy.
- @hoodatninja
  You just described the reason yourself;)
  @dansup @pixelfed @bady @fediverse
  
  Lol guess so. So it really strips that stuff away?

Of all the social media I've been on over the years, I don't think any of them have given me less joy and more frustration than Instagram. Anything's better than that garbage.
- I see you haven't used Facebook in a while
  
  Honestly like it better, barely.

Interesting, is Pixelfed mature enough today? Do they support stories?
- Stories feature is there. But I haven't used it myself, so I can't tell more about it.
- Ive been using Pixelfed since late June quite happily. I’ve never used stories, but it looks like they have them if that’s something that interests you:
  
  More importantly, can I disable stories?
  
  Good to know! I'm not big on them (or at Instagram as a whole to be honest), but I know that can be a deal-breaker for potential users

That's great and all, but after you move, how do you get anyone at all to look at it?
- Same way you get someone to bother with Instagram. Uhhh.... "somehow."

So I wonder if the comments get imported too, but I guess no.
- Then it’d be showing nonexistent users, I think it just imports the posts, captions and timestamps

Someone give me a hard sell here! Why should I use this app? I used to use Instagram (photographer/cinematographer), and I stopped using it because not just the tracking and all of that, but frankly, the content itself. Not to mention the algorithms are so busted and all they do is show me rage bait or flagrant ads disguised as content I would actually care about.
Why do people like pixelfed?
- As with all the fediverse stuff, it feels like early Instagram when you weren't bombarded by a million ads and celebrity bullshit all the time. It feels like a great community of amateur photographers coming together to share and be inspired again to take photos. That's why I like it.
  
  Sounds great. How does sorting work on it? Is it just who you subscribe to and show what was the most recent?
- Well, for starters it has none of those things that you dislike so much about instagram.

The photo app that is terrible at telling me what is NSFW and what isn't.
Literally, I had a picture on Pixelfed that was marked NSFW and opening it revealed a fucking tree.
Then I scroll down and I think, "oh it is another NSFW tree." No it was an image of two people fucking." I don't care if there is porn but the algorithm to determine what porn is on Pixelfed is shit. Make it work better or just give me a damn toggle to turn it all off.
- Isn't it the user who decides if their photo is marked as sensitive?
  
  Yes it is the user who toggles whether their posts are NSFW or not. Clearly OP here is just repeating something they thought they heard and has no experience in using pixelfed.
- Ideally there should be no algorithm for this stuff but it would make moderation harder

You know, on the one hand, I really want to support the Fediverse. But on the other hand, too much social media is bad. So it's kind of a delicate balancing act.

Has this actually worked for anyone? I click on Review Uploads and the website either crashed or nothing happens.

Ok, yet another fediverse copy of a previous app where none of the people/things I want to follow are at...at least Mastodon has bird.makeup which clones twitter accounts so I can still see the people I follow who don't use Mastodon.
Does Pixelfed have a version of that for Instagram?
- Just use Instagram? You can't engage with Fediverse clone accounts.
  
  I don't care too much about interacting overall. Guess I will just stick with Insta

57 comments