I disabled my PixelFed account last week.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog (and aren’t following via RSS), you may have noticed one fewer button in the header on my website. If you were one of my followers on PixelFed I’m willing to bet you didn’t notice anything unusual there — I haven’t posted or interacted with it in a while.
I didn’t have any issues with the platform or the service itself. It worked well every time I tried to use it, and behaved exactly as I would hope and expect. The only missing feature that I ever brushed up against is that it lacks the ability to export your photos when you try to export data from your account (I still think this needs to be fixed rather urgently, if for nothing else than providing a means for backing up). Aside from that, I found it very solid.
The main reason I decided to walk away from my PixelFed account is that I fundamentally don’t understand its purpose. I mean, I get it conceptually. It’s a place to see photos posted by your friends and people you follow, and in turn, a place to share photos for others to view. In practice though, I never really grasped it.
I love looking at photos that my friends post, don’t get me wrong. And occasionally I like sharing pictures that I take as I go about my daily life. But I tend to like the photos sprinkled in with all the other posts that people make. For this, simply following folks on Mastodon and seeing their pictures there makes the most sense. I don’t think I’ve ever had the urge to look at only photos.
Then there are the practical elements that come into play. Let’s say I take a photo that I think might be worth uploading. Do I put it on Mastodon, where the majority of the people who follow me are? Do I upload it on PixelFed, and then boost from the other account? Do I upload it in both places? Do I expect people to follow me on both platforms?
Not to mention the broader issues regarding mental health, personal well-being, and privacy. I tended to self-select about the pictures I would post on PixelFed. I didn’t want people to see sub-par pictures or anything that might paint my life as less than perfect. I wanted to build a little profile of beautiful, or interesting, or at least pleasant photos. I think almost everyone there is trying to shape an “ideal” version of their life, just like people do on Instagram. Then, when others go to compare, their own lives don’t seem to measure up to these idealized lives they’re comparing against.
That’s not to say that PixelFed doesn’t massively improve on the Instagram formula. It does! For one, it’s open source, federated, and self-hostable. It has better support for unofficial/third-party apps. Plus, it avoids the tracking and advertising, which are really some of the more egregious parts of Instagram. I like PixelFed! And I think it is filling a genuine need in the community, especially for those who are coming from Instagram or similar services.
But I only ever dabbled, and the experience never hooked me.
So from here on, I will continue posting pictures from time to time on my Mastodon, and will follow my friends and their adventures there as well — just as I always have.