Instagram or Pixelfed?

 When I first started to get back into film photography c.2019, putting photos up on Instagram seemed a logical idea. I had found a load of other photography accounts, and my daily feed was mostly their output. But then things started to change...

Fast forward a few years, and my Instagram feed is full of videos of dodgy football decisions, cars being driven badly, pickpockets in action, plus adverts for all sorts of gadgets I never knew I needed. Where have all the photos gone? Then there was the matter of Instagram's owner being rather close to the political turmoil going on in the USA. I had already left Twitter/X - maybe it was time to move on from here too.

So I was interested to hear about the world of Pixelfed, which at first glance looks a bit like Instagram used to - mostly photos and artwork, but without the adverts, videos, and everything else you have to scroll through. It is actually a decentralised product - in effect anybody can set up a Pixelfed server, and link it to all of the others. But underneath it all, there is no algorithm determining what you see. You just see the posts from the people you follow, with another tab allowing you to see things posted by other accounts which you don't follow. Simple.

I set up an account on one of the bigger servers, loaded a dozen or so photos, which were very quickly liked by other users, and my "followed by" count went up over the next few days. But then a problem. When I tried to load some more photos I got an error message about an account size limit. A search on Google suggested that no such limit existed, but several messages to the support people running the server went unanswered, so it was time to start again. 

This time I chose a smaller server, Photofed.world, and went through the same steps as before. No problems so far, and once again the responses trickle in each time I add a photo or two.

I still look at Instagram, to keep up with friends, musicians and other people I have followed on there. But for now my own posts will be going on Pixelfed, hoping that it continues to grow.

You can see it here - https://photofed.world/StevePhillips

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