Fediverse photo platform Pixelfed releases apps for iOS and Android

The decentralized photo sharing platform Pixelfed has released its own apps for iOS and Android. The Instagram alternative developed by Daniel Supernault in 2018 got off to a successful start: the Android version alone was downloaded 10,000 times in the first two days and reached first place in the "Social Media" category in the Google Play Store in several countries, including the USA, Supernault wrote on Mastodon.

Since the announcement by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that moderation on the company's platforms is to be significantly changed, Pixelfed has seen an increased influx of users. Apparently, however, similar phenomena are repeating themselves as after the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk, when a large number of users switched to Mastodon. Supernault wrote that there is apparently criticism from Pixelfed users that the switchers do not provide alternative texts for images, for example.

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Like Mastodon, Pixelfed is based on the ActivityPub protocol and is part of the federated social network "Fediverse". The platform allows users to share and explore photos and videos as well as exchange direct messages. Unlike Instagram, Pixelfed does not use advertising, is open source and displays posts in chronological order by default. The service advertises that it does not use tracking.

Before the official apps were released, users could use the service via the web browser or third-party apps such as Impressia. As with other Fediverse services, interested parties can join one of the existing community servers or set up their own Pixelfed instance. The largest instance, pixelfed.social, recorded an increase of 11,000 new users within 24 hours of the app launch and more than 78,000 posts in a single day.

The apps are available free of charge and, according to the developers, do not collect any data. Supernault is also the developer of Loops, a recently launched decentralized alternative to TikTok.

(mki)