Find Me on the Fediverse

A few days ago, I signed up for a Pixelfed account. Pixelfed is the Instagram of the Fediverse. You probably have never heard of these two terms before. So, let’s dive a little bit deeper and get things sorted.

What is the Fediverse?

The Fediverse is a decentralized social media ecosystem. Individually run social media platforms can communicate which each other through a shared protocol. You can even run your own social media platform and interact with others. The Fediverse is a Federation of Social Networks. Here are a few of the big platforms on the Fediverse

• Mastodon – Similar to X (formerly Twitter)
• Pixelfed – Similar to the original Instagram (the one all about pictures)
• PeerTube – Similar to YouTube
• and many more

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon is what Twitter used to be and can be very useful for photographers. You can share your images just like you did in the past with a tweet. It is easy and simple and there are even plugins for WordPress, which allow me to share new posts automatically to Mastodon. So, if you follow me on Mastodon, you can stay up to date about what’s going on here. I decided to sign up for my Mastodon account on a customer server for aviation geeks. More about servers later… 

What is Pixelfed?

As mentioned, Pixelfed is the Instagram of the Fediverse. Well, it is what Instagram used to be. It is a platform to share images and photos unlike Instagram which has now transitioned to short videos. Compared to Instagram, Pixelfed has no algorithym to push paid posts or ads. It is here to show you the feed of people you follow. 

Pixelfed Sign Up Process 

I signed up for an account on the official Pixelfed.social Server. There are a bunch of others but depending who is running it, updates might take longer and some features might never migrate there like I had to find out when I signed up for a Mastodon account, which was not on Mastodon.social.

By the way, you can also sign up for a Pixelfed account with Mastodon, but you have to have a Mastodon.social account. It will still create a new account with PIxelfed but all your followers and people you follow will be migrated over as far as they are on there. 

The sign up process was a little bit intense. Besides confirming a bunch of details and confirming your email, you have to wait until you get manually approved. According to the website it should be within 24-48 hours. It took seven days for me to get my account activated. 

Sign up Warning

Don’t sign up for a Pixelfed account on your mobile device. If you navigate away from the signup window of the website, it closes and you have to start from scratch. It is so bad that you can’t even use a password manager to copy/paste your password during the sign up process. This forced me to use a weak password and had to change it later. I don’t know why they made signing up so complicated.

What is the Advantage of the Fediverse?

The Fediverse has an awesome community, and it is open to everyone and there is no need to figure out weird algorythms to stay relevant. No need to post at a specific time to get more views and likes. Also, the Fediverse is less about getting views and likes as you know it from X or Instagram. It is a community to showcase your work and interact with others. It is all about connection. Be unique and be you. No need to fake anything to get ahead of the game.

Enjoy your time in the Fediverse and interact with others. Build the connection and make new friends. 

Since there are no algorithmys, your timeline shows the people you follow and that’s it. If the people you follow post on Mastodon or Pixelfed, you will see it in your timeline, also everyone following you, will see your posts. 

You mentioned Servers?

Yes, the Fediverse is a little bit more complicated than their counterparts X and Instagram for example. While with these two you just sign up and everyone is on the same server, it is different in the Fediverse. When signing up you have to also pick a server. This sounds harder than it is.

Different servers have different rules. Some servers maybe have a rule that you can’t post anything about politics, others allow you to post photos but no self-promotion. Check the server rules before you join a server. Most servers have the rules laid out very straight forward and simple. No fineprint to comb through. 

Besides seeing everything the people you follow post; there is also a server tab where you can see what everyone on that server is posting. That’s why it makes sense to join maybe a specific server which shares your interest. Don’t worry, even if your friends are on a different server, you still can follow each other. That’s the beauty of the Fediverse. You don’t need to be on the same server.

If you are new to the Fediverse I would recommend you to sign up with the main instances, for example Mastodon.social or Pixelfed.social.

At the time of writing this post, Mastodon lets you migrate to a different server. Your followers will be migrated over, but you have to re-import your follows and lists. All your posts until then will stay on the old server and you have to start fresh on the new one. Pixelfed doesn’t currently offer anything like that.

Conclusion

I have explored the Fediverse for quite some time now and I would call myself very tech-savvy but the doubts people have about the complexity is well founded. As I am stuck now with accounts and can’t use them to sign in on a different platform as I have already created an account there. Only because on mobile the sign-in with Mastodon option doesn’t appear but it does on Desktop. So, yes, it is a very messy place to be. I contacted the admin of the server and even a week after that message no response. Same as with sign-up for Pixelfed, I had to wait forever to get approved for a public platform not a closed Beta. I can see why people stay away from it.

Now I am trying to straighten the mess out, but it seems impossible as you can’t do it yourself and no response from server admins. 

The idea of the Fediverse to have one account for everything is great but we are just not there yet. The Fediverse needs to evolve and make things more streamlined to be ready to be adopted by the masses.