"Unprecedented" growth: Facebook blocks links to Instagram alternative Pixelfed
Pixelfed is growing rapidly after Meta changed content moderation. It's now noted that Facebook is blocking links to Pixelfed.
(Image: Screenshot)
On Facebook, links to instances of the Instagram alternative Pixelfed are being marked as spam. Several users have noticed this, heise online was able to track the behavior. Posts with a link to the instances pixelfed.social and pixelfed.de were deleted immediately, while a post with a link to the project page of the photo network remained. The action was noticed a few days after the announcements that less content would be moderated and more controversial statements would be allowed on the platforms. People on social networks criticized this. An inquiry by heise online to Meta as to why the links were blocked has so far remained unanswered.
Facebook sperrt Links zu Pixelfed (5 Bilder)
Facebook's handling of the links to Pixelfed is reminiscent of similar incidents following the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk. After many users left the platform at the time, it was temporarily forbidden to link to the competitor Mastodon and social networks such as Facebook and Instagram on the short messaging service. A short time later, the platform took action against the short messaging service Threads. However, while it was generally assumed at the time that this was intentional, it is now conceivable that the action on Facebook was a mistake – also because not all links relating to Pixelfed are affected equally.
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As a social network for photos, Pixelfed is part of the so-called Fediverse. This means that accounts on Pixelfed can interact directly with accounts on Mastodon, for example. While the focus – is still very much on private photos, unlike Instagram, it is not a real Instagram alternative in terms of usage figures. While Meta's service has around two billion users, there are only around 250,000 Pixelfed accounts. According to the chief developer, however, the number of registrations has recently increased so much that some functions have had to be temporarily restricted. For example, it is currently not possible to import your own content from Instagram on pixelfed.social, which would otherwise be possible.
(mho)
