2019 was the first year when I exclusively photoblogged over at pixelfed.social, and I have to say, I’m very happy with it.
Now, after using it for a year, I can be candid about this: I was a bit worried about the Instagram → Pixelfed change: is the site stable enough? am I going to get likes? how will it feel when, inevitably, I won’t? will I lose friends/community?
Let’s tackle these one by one.
Yes, the site/sw is stable. It actually changes frequently, but the changes are small, gradual, and in a good direction. (Unlike Instagram, or, say, Twitter, Fediverse stuff usually changes along the needs of users, not the needs of more ad revenue.) I think there were maybe a total of 2 hours in the year when something actually didn’t work for me — I remember once I could not post properly, probably because I hit an update window. I waited and posted later — successfully. I still didn’t get around to install it on my own server… maybe I never will, pixelfed.social is more than enough for my needs. Does it do what Instagram is doing now (except for the user base)? Yes. Could it do more along federation support etc.? Also yes. But let’s not get greedy, it’s actually very enjoyable the way it is.
Now, the likes. I’m getting some likes, but the fact that this is not Instagram, is somehow liberating, and the lack of them I don’t mind anymore. Feels a bit weird to be open about this, but of course the whole setup of Instagram is to spin you into this “I need to get more likes” gratification cycle and I admit it did work on me… once you move away and detox, it becomes irrelevant surprisingly quickly.
And about the community… I did lose whatever it was that I had on Instagram. But what I realise is that most of it I don’t miss. The benefit (no Insta) outweighs the cost. I also realised I’m mostly on photo sharing for nice photos (the inspiration bit, if you will) and not for stories. (For stories you need very few photos. For stories I have blogs and Twitter.) So if you give me a site that has nice sunset photos, some cityscapes and the occasional cloud pr0n, I’ll happily take it. (In fact even before this change I was an active lurker on 500px before they changed their licensing and ToS and I deleted my account.) And the community of Pixelfed gives me this, there are really nice photos up there too.
Anyhow, so as Pixelfed now does embed too and I want to try it, let me put here 3 photos as a 2019 lookback.
This, because it is the one with the most ❤︎ (yes, cat content is, unsurprisingly, going well on pixelfed.social too:
This, because it is I think my “home” favourite, showing IJburg as I like to see it:
And this, as my (I think) favourite from abroad:
The rest of course are here… It also has RSS, if you just want to follow me around.