On November 13, 2020, I published An Early Review of Pixelfed – Instagram Alternative. At that time I had been using an account on Pixelfed Social, the Pixelfed instance managed by the lead Pixelfed developer, for about one month. That post has generally been successful in terms of drawing viewers (and I know it inspired at least one reader to try Pixelfed), and it ranks as our 1st, 6th, and 11th most-read article in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively. I noticed it has been receiving more views in January 2025 than it has at any point since October 2022, which I suspect is due to some combination of dissatisfied Instagram account-holders and the release of Pixelfed mobile apps on Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
I still have and use my Pixelfed account for sharing photos that I publish in New Leaf Journal articles along with commentary and links to their associated articles, and I have long thought about writing a follow-up Pixelfed review. The reason why I did not write a follow-up review was because my view of Pixelfed remained largely unchanged from when I wrote my initial 2020 assessment, which (fun fact) is cited to as an authority on the Finnish- and Russian-language versions of Wikipedia. While my view of Pixelfed remains similar to what it was then, I suppose that it is high time for an updated review not only to touch on improvements made to the Pixelfed software in the four-plus years since I wrote my first review but also to reflect my changing views on alternative social media projects.
Review/Essay Limitations
As a threshold matter, note that this review centers on, and is limited by, my own experiences and interactions with Pixelfed.
- I maintain an account (@nafnlj@pixelfed.social) on the flagship Pixelfed instance, pixelfed.social. This is and has been my only Pixelfed account, meaning I have no experience using Pixelfed on a smaller server.
- I primarily use Pixelfed to share higher quality versions of photos that I use in New Leaf Journal articles.
- When I log into Pixelfed to publish a new post, I take some time to go through my timeline and find and engage with (usually by liking or bookmarking) good posts by other account-holders.
- I use Pixelfed exclusively in a web browser on my computer. I have never used it on a mobile device. I understand that Pixelfed’s release of a stable mobile app has generated some interest in the project in recent weeks. However, I will not discuss the mobile app (or apps) because I do not use them.
I note these points to explain the scope of my review and, by extension, why I may not talk about some features and functionality that people may be interested in learning about.
What is Pixelfed?
Let us start with the basics since I do not presuppose that everyone reading this is familiar with Pixelfed. Moreover, while the official project website is aesthetically pleasing, I am not sure that it provides people with no prior knowledge of ActivityPub-based social media clients with a clear and distinct idea of what Pixelfed is and what sets it apart from similar social media platforms and clients. However, having offered a critique of the official website, I will qualify my own description by noting that I am not a developer – so it is entirely possible my way of describing X or Y may not be as precise, much less accurate, as it should be (feel free to let me know if anything should be improved).
On a surface level, Pixelfed is designed to have similar functionality to Instagram. It is social media designed first and foremost for sharing photos and interacting with other people sharing photos. Because Instagram is not subtly the ’s inspiration for Pixelfed, I will use that as a primary point of comparison here. However, note that I have never had an Instagram account, so my knowledge of what it is like to actually use Instagram is second-hand.
Pixelfed is free and open source social media software. Anyone with access to a server and the necessary technical skills can install Pixelfed on a server. This distinguishes it from proprietary centralized social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, X, Pinterest, and TikTok (which should be banned). Someone who is dissatisfied with Instagram could not decide to go install their own version of Instagram or join another Instagram. However, in the case of Pixelfed, anyone can, in theory, install Pixelfed on their own server and run it with their own rules.
Pixelfed is built on ActivityPub, which is a decentralized social media protocol. In practical terms, Pixelfed allows separate Pixelfed servers to communicate with one another (the idea is similar to how you can send an email from a Gmail account to an Outlook account). For example, I have an account on https://pixelfed.social. It goes without saying that I can see posts by all other people who have accounts on Pixelfed Social. But thanks to ActivityPub, I can see posts by people on other Pixelfed servers, provided that those servers “federate” with Pixelfed Social. For example, I did not have to scroll down too far in the list of accounts I follow to see that I recently followed an account on the https://pixel.tchncs.de/ server.
Another unique feature of ActivityPub is that other kinds of social media are built on top of it. Pixelfed is at best the third best-known social media compliant with ActivityPub. Mastodon, which was originally designed as a sort of decentralized Twitter alternative, can also federate with Pixelfed. I have found that Pixelfed posts look about as good in Mastodon as they do on Pixelfed, and Pixelfed formats Mastodon photo posts effectively. Also on the ActivityPub bandwagon is Meta’s own Threads, which can be followed from Pixelfed – albeit anyone interested in being able to interact with Threads accounts should check whether the Pixelfed server they are signing up with allows Threads federation. There are many more niche ActivityPub social media projects out there, some of which probably work well with ActivityPub.
(I will add that both The New Leaf Journal and it sister site, The Emu Café Social, support ActivityPub as of the publication date of the instant article.)
I have read some people complain in the context of Mastodon, which still has significantly more account-holders among all of its servers than does Pixelfed, that federation is a barrier to entry. For one, asking someone who is familiar with simpler, centralized social media silos to choose a server creates some degree of friction, and that is before even trying grapple with how different servers can interact with one another and the possible limitations to said interaction. Moreover, servers come with different rules, cultures, and stability – it is far more likely that a Pixelfed server that is not Pixelfed Social may suddenly disappear for one reason or another than will Instagram. But federation is also powerful. For example, being able to choose a server with specific rules and culture may be a strong appeal for some people (much less the appeal of being able to start one’s own server). Moreover, as the Pixelfed project website recommends: “Imagine being able to follow Twitter accounts from your Instagram account.” To be sure, that would be impossible – but it is possible to follow Mastodon accounts from a Pixelfed account and vice versa.
Joining servers does come with some potential qualifications that the current Pixelfed website does not fully grapple with. For example, Pixelfed says that servers are “[f]ree to join,” have “[n]o ads,” are “privacy focused,” and do not sell data to third parties. This is true in the case of the servers listed on the official Pixelfed website, which, according to the website, are vetted to ensure that they do not use analytics or third-party trackers, do not sell user data, uphold certain security practices, and pledge to give at least six months’ warning before shutting down. However, do note as I explained before that anyone can run a Pixelfed server. For example, I use server administration software called Cloudron to run the server this website is hosted on (as of the publication date of this article). Cloudron has a one-click installer for Pixelfed, so I could very easily install it right now and suddenly have a Pixelfed instance. I could invite you to join while not following any of the policies that I would need to follow to be included on the official Pixelfed website. This is to say that while Pixelfed is privacy-respecting by design, there is nothing stopping someone in practice from setting up a Pixelfed server that is not privacy respecting, or anyone could even run a slightly different Pixelfed code on their server (with or without complying with the open source license requirements). This is not in any way a critique of Pixelfed the software – but I think the official website should be clearer about the caveats for joining servers that Pixelfed has not vetted – but simply a note that one should do their due diligence before signing up for a Pixelfed server or anything else for that matter.
Using Pixelfed
With the technical points out of the way, I will briefly describe what it is like to use Pixelfed on the desktop. To do this, I will take you through a tour of my account. First let us hit my home page.
Here we see recent posts. Take a look at the left side of the screen below the “Create New Post” button (we will get to that shortly). You will see three options: Home Feed, Local Feed, and Global Feed. The “Home Feed” shows posts from accounts you follow (and, I believe, posts boosted by accounts you follow – but do not hold me to that). The “Local Feed” shows posts from your server, regardless of whether those posts are from accounts you follow. In my case, that would be posts from Pixelfed Social. The “Global Feed” shows posts from servers your server federates with and is something of a firehose.
(Aside: There are also “stories.” I do not understand the story feature and have made no effort to figure it out.)
The servers are one key point which distinguish Pixelfed from Instagram. Another, arguably more significant point point of distinction, is that Pixelfed’s feeds, at least by design, are non-algorithmic. For example, my Home Feed shows posts from accounts I follow in chronological order, starting with the most recent. The same is true of the other feeds. There is no third-party algorithm or machine learning to figure out what I like. For better or for worse (I personally vote better, but views may differ), you the account-holder are responsible for curating your Pixelfed experience.
On the right side of the screen, you will see a list of notifications. These include account follows and post likes and comments. Pixelfed also has Direct Message functionality (see left), but my last direct message was from what was clearly a spam account one year ago (that is to say I have not tested Pixelfed as a chat client).
Back in 2020, I wrote of the quality of posting I was seeing on Pixelfed Social:
In general, I have been impressed with some of the content on pixelfed.social. For the most part, users are more interested in taking pictures of interesting things rather than of their own faces or social activities. Pixelfed hosts some people who are clearly serious about their photography, and others like me who are amateurs. It has a significant number of users from Europe, making the site interesting for those who like pictures of European scenes.
Other than the fact I am less inclined to use the word content to describe good posts now than I was in 2020, my view has not changed since 2020. Pixelfed Social continues to have nice photos (and some professional-quality photos) of things, animals, and places with little focus on the sort of life-style content I have heard through the grapevine is popular on Instagram (granted this may change if more people migrate from Instagram). Moreover, one issue I noted in 2020, the “number of advertisements in the public timeline, generally from what seem to be Indian companies,” appears to have been dealt with, at least on Pixelfed Social. Now let us look at my profile page.
Here we see all my posts. There are three ways of displaying posts. You are seeing posts with text, which emphasize the stories I write to accompany my photos. But there are also grid and masonry options. Below you can see grid.
Now masonry.
For my account, I prefer text, but most people will probably prefer one of the two more photo-centric views.
To the left you see my profile information. You have a field for one link and 250 characters to describe yourself. I assume this may vary from instance to instance (e.g., I know some Mastodon instances have different profile limits).
Above my photos, you can see Archives (I never archived my posts), Bookmarks (for saved posts), Collections (you can organize your posts into collections), and Likes. Only Collections are visible to others.
As I discussed in a 2021 post, every Pixelfed account comes with a built-in ATOM feed. This means that anyone can subscribe to follow publicly available posts via ATOM feed using the feed reader of his or her choosing. See my introduction to feeds if you need a general introduction to the concept.
On the left you will see a Portfolio button.
The Portfolio is a new and very promising addition to Pixelfed. It is optional, meaning it can be disabled. As you can see, it presents your posts in a more aesthetic way than in your main profile and it comes with its own RSS feed, which is separate from the main account feed. It has two modes: Most recent posts and curated. Here we run into a problem. Most people will obviously prefer the curated option to highlight their “best” photos, Moreover, the chronological option is somewhat redundant. But as of this writing, the order of the posts in curator mode is the order you select them in the menu – it can be configured to have your last-added post show up first or last. There should be a more intuitive, perhaps drag-and-drop, way of ordering posts in curator mode. Moreover, not all of my posts are available in the curator – only a relatively small number. The portfolio is a great idea, especially for the more serious photographers on Pixelfed, but it needs some work.
Now let us actually create a post on Pixelfed.
Pixelfed allows you to upload more than one photo or media item to a post. I have only posted one thing a time, but I have seen some posts with many images.
I decided to upload my image of a branded Cybertruck seen in Brooklyn Bridge Park (definitely the sort of thing that will be popular on a decentralized social media platform, but I am in it for the art).
We can write a description for our post:
We can also add links and tags. I believe that up to two URLs will be shown as live links (it used to be 0, so count this as an improvement). There is no limit on hashtags insofar as I can tell.
Next I add alt text, which helps people who use screen readers understand the image. Alt text is optional, but there is a setting which you can toggle to require alt text, meaning with that toggle on, you must include alt text for the post to go up. I toggled on the alt text requirement. I do not think I am very good at writing alt text, but it is better than nothing.
There are other options such as an NSFW toggle (never had to use it), tagging people, adding to collections (I should look into collections), adding licenses (I default to copyrighted), location (it was hard to add the right location last I checked, so I just ignore that), and audience (can set images to private or similar – defaults to public but this can be changed in profile settings). I left all those alone and published my post.
Very nice (see it on Pixelfed).
User Options
Pixelfed’s user menu has not changed much since 2020, but there are a few additions worth highlighting.
- There is a new “Media” section for managing licenses on photos and requiring media descriptions. As I noted above, I enabled “require media descriptions” so I do not forget to add ALT text to images. Both of these features can be managed on a per-post basis.
- There is a new “Applications” menu which I assume is for authorizing different apps to access your Pixelfed account.
- Pixelfed has added a “Labs” section for enabling experimental features. The only feature on offer as of this writing is Dark Mode, which I can confirm is still in the “experimental” phase as of the publication of this article.
- I noticed a “Parental Controls” menu for managing accounts for minors, but I have not explored its functionality.
(Regarding parental controls: I will note that I have seen occasional instances where a photo that should be marked as NSFW is not on the main Pixelfed Social instance and different instances that any given Pixelfed instance may federate with may have different moderation policies and practices. That is all to say that there is nothing about a Pixelfed instance that is inherently minor-friendly unless you run the instance yourself.)
Pixelfed Tips
As a threshold matter, one should consider whether he or she should try Pixelfed. My decisive take is it depends. As a threshold matter, despite the fact that Pixelfed is obviously ActivityPub’s answer to Instagram, I would not, contrary to the title of my 2020 review, view it as a full Instagram alternative. Pixelfed has a much smaller community of account holders than Instagram, and these accounts are spread out across many instances. Even if we factor in other ActivityPub clients such as Mastodon that can federate with Pixelfed, the number of people who can potentially see Pixelfed posts, and by extension the number of posts you can see, is much smaller. Moreover, Pixelfed does not come with an algorithm. There is no magic recipe or secret trick to make a post go viral (by quaint Pixelfed standards). Having people see posts on Pixelfed requires some combination of good photos which appeal to the sensibilities of a given instance or community and your engaging – meaning at a minimum, liking or commenting on other posts. As an additional matter, Mastodon and similar text-focused ActivityPub clients can also work decently well for sharing photos – so I will submit that Pixelfed is only clearly preferable over Instagram if (1) you have a significant number of photos to share; and (2) you are only interested in sharing those photos. With that being said, you can have more than one account – I personally have both Mastodon and Pixelfed accounts.
As the Pixelfed website shows, there are many free-to-join Pixelfed instances for anyone who is interested in giving it a try. I recommend carefully reviewing information about a candidate instance before signing up. This includes reviewing its privacy and moderation policies, the types of photos that tend to be posted on it, and whether it appears to be stable and in it for the long-haul. It goes without saying that the flagship pixelfed.social instance, which is where I have an account, is the most stable instance since it is backed by the main developers, but I would recommend that people who are interested in trying Pixelfed also take a look at the smaller instances as well (not least to support Pixelfed as a decentralized project).
If you join a Pixelfed server, I recommend going through the local feed and discover pages to find accounts to follow to start. You can then move on to checking the global feed periodically to continue finding more people to follow. It is worth reiterating that you can also follow Pixelfed accounts via ATOM feed (without an account of your own) or from certain other ActivityPub clients such as Mastodon.
Broader Pixelfed Thoughts
I did not have a comprehensive view of open source decentralized alternatives to proprietary social media platforms when I wrote about my early impressions of Pixelfed back in 2020. Over time, I developed some critiques of the open source alternatives to the big tech big boys, best explained in my Fediverse Clone Wars and Decentralized Social Media essay. In that essay, I noted that almost every well-known open source alternative social media is closely modeled after a big platform, but usually removing the centralization, advertising, and algorithmic feeds from its inspiration. I suggested that this makes sense if the only problem with the big platforms are those issues, but as I opined not long after publishing my original Pixelfed assessment in Murakami on Bad Social Media Content, I think that the current players in social media have structural flaws which incentivize insipid posting, and attempts to imitate their structure inherit those same flaws. With that being said, I singled out Pixelfed as something of an exception in my clone wars essay despite the fact that it draws obvious inspiration from Instagram:
This is not to say that all clones are equal. While Instagram encourages bad posting behavior, I had found that the quality of content on the main instance of Pixelfed, which very much replicates Instagram’s look and feel, is high. The Pixelfed developer and the team behind it are cognizant of trying to introduce features that encourage good content and healthy interactions, but Pixelfed has an advantage over networks trying to replicate Twitter in that it is easier to post good, pleasant, or otherwise interesting photos than interesting rapid-fire musings.
I stand by this assessment. Pixelfed is one of the better Fediverse projects because it is in fact easier to post good or at least interesting photos, and to inspire such posting with a good culture, than it is to master short-form microposting or manage a forum.
Having noted my general praise for Pixelfed, I still recommend that people who have photos to share consider Pixelfed to run their own websites and use Pixelfed as an additional forum for sharing photos and stories with at least one link back to the source website. This usage will be in line with the principles I articulated in my Applying Coolidge’s Remarks on the Home to the Digital Home essay, or in less florid terms, the Indieweb’s POSSE principle.
