FOSSDLE PieFedIs Pixelfed sawing off the branch that the Fediverse is sitting on?
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JensSpahnpastaploum.net/2025-12-04-pixelfed-against-fediverse…
ploum.net/2025-12-04-pixelfed-against-fediverse…
Come on, the whole purpose of pixelfed is to be an image federated platform.
If you want something different, use something different.
You ordered a pizza and are complaining it isn't a salad.
The problem is not "you ordered a pizza yet are complaining it isn't a salad". The problem is you are selling pizzas and salads, but the middleman is undercutting you on the delivery of the pizzas, leaving your clients with the fake impression you sell only salads and/or provide a bad service.
All that said, from an interface design perspective the current mode is exactly how it should happen. Pixelfed and pretty much everything else are purposefully subset-specific apps. All that's needed is the reminder (as visible as possible) that content you are looking at is incomplete and you can find the more complete version on this or that URL or app. Same principle as if I wanted to eg.: design a "hashtag explorer" for the Fediverse. I'd focus on that instead of the posts (and pictures); but what I can't ethically do is prevent my users from discovering their existence.
But pixelfed is only selling pizza and the cudtomer complains that he didn't find a salad option
Because PixelFed is purposefully hiding the salad option from them. Which is what we are complaining about: it's lying to our potential customers about us. Note that it didn't do that before.
Pixelfed never claimed to want to sell or promote salads , it's a business choice you may say. There's billions people in the word with different interests you can't simply please anybody. Mastodon is already able to fetch from pixeled so why would you want everything to be mastodon? Do you have the same complains about peertube not fetching text only content too or instance defederating from each other without notices so basically hiding content from thousands of peoples?
More along the lines of a "pizza finder" service that scours different menus and shows the pizza options at a bunch of places, whether those places exclusively offer pizza, specialize in pizza with some other options, or just offer pizza as one of several options. It would be perfectly reasonable for such a service to only return results related to pizza, without any implicit suggestion that each place it returns only has pizza available.
That's what Mbin does, it displays a banner on federated user profiles explaining that they may be incomplete, with a link to the same profile on the originating instance.
This is great yes and IMO how it should be done. It's not necessary fr eg.: PixelFed to implement themself all the functionality to process forums, videos, cooking recipes, Pokémon boxes, microblogging, macroblogging, nanoblogging, femtoblogging, nanopicturing, macroboosting, etc. Just one: linking (and, well, properly announcing the link is there).
PixelFed never claimed to be selling pizzas (images) and salads (text). Just pizzas right?
They [partially] did, https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/106617110297151132
No, you as a poster in the Fediverse are selling pizzas and salads. PixelFed is "misrepresenting" you, for lack of a better word, by telling people you only sell pizzas. The thing is, it wasn't doing that before*. It was purposefully made to hide useful information that was there before. IMO there should be a sticky "this user has other content which is not images" headbar or something. Only removable as an opt-in *per account followed*, so that it is not possible for people to say that PF *purposefully hid information.
Oh, so the poster is upset that the person who is running a pizza-only app isn't also getting their salad offers.
Exactly! And that's why the choice in the UI is important. My understanding is previous versions of PF at least let your viewers know you offer salads. There's no (good) reason why the very minimum useful version of that can't be maintained. Comaps and OSMand for example are map applications, but they let me know when a given location has an associated Wikipedia article for example. They don't even need to implement something like a Wikipedia Viewer itself; just offer the links. Links are cheap, and are the foundation and backbone of both the internet and of any useful concept of a "fediverse".
To me, this is a very strange take. As a Pixelfed user I absolutely don’t expect to see text posts on there. It’s very clearly a platform for sharing images.
It make sense for PixelFed to only display pictures, the same way it makes sense for Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed to only show posts made on a community.
Using ActivityPub doesn't mean you can't have different formats and platforms.
To be fair, that's not how Mbin works. Its communities also capture microblog posts that weren't originally posted to a community, based on the community's configured hashtags.
That's nice of Mbin, I usually recommend it to people looking to have the two formats in one, but the majority of the Threadiverse users seem to prefer Lemmy or Piefed
Can't wait for the follow up post decrying PeerTube for only allowing videos, or Bookwrym for only allowing book reviews. Just because it's ActivityPub doesn't mean it has to be a Twitter timeline.
You mean like Mastodon? Where's the angry diatribe about Mastodon not allowing posts to have more than 4 pictures despite other platforms allowing more (Pixelfed allows up to 20 for example)?
Oh, the drama. I think this is a wrong take. The point of ActivityPub is not that we all see everything. Is so the servers can exchange activities. But whether it makes sense to put it in our inboxes or not, depends on what particular application is supposed to do. If using AP would require the application to show everything, what would be the differences between the apps?
I use Threadiverse because I prefer a bit more structured content than what's happening on Mastodon. While I would love to be able to follow the few accounts and tags on Mastodon that interest me, the fact that I don't see all that traffic is not an abuse of the protocol
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, since
Then what Pixelfed does is also correct, Instagram also does not show the whole wall from Facebook. Only the pictures, right?
This article's core argument seems to be that Pixelfed is violating the ActivityPub protocol by not displaying posts that do not contain images. That's just not true at all. I'm interested to know where the protocol ever has such a requirement.
And they have been transmitted. They've been filtered out after transmission, but the protocol did its job.
Perhaps. But that's not in the spec. There's no obligation to notify iirc that a post got filtered out on the target instance.
Even if Pixelfed sent Reject(Note) back for every post without an image, would Mastodon even display that to the user anywhere? Would most users want to see that for every post not containing an image multiplied by every Pixelfed instance it got federated to? I'd personally interpret that as spam.
If that guy was right there wouldn't be defederation and many defederation are not announced
this is a dumbest opinion out of all the dumb fediverse opinions i've read.
I go to pixelfed to post my art and view other peoples art. that's it. I don't go there to read posts or what's going on in peoples lives. For that I have Akkoma/Mastodon. If I want further interaction and discussion I have Piefed/Lemmy.
this blog post just reeks of "I need my voice to be heard on all the various platforms at the same time and I don't want to go to each individual platform to do it" well I'm sorry cupcake that's now how things work. Why isn't this person complaining about Piefeed posts not showing up on Mastodon or vice versa?
If I sign up to Instagram I don't expect to see facebook posts. Most people understand this concept. People aren't going to go to Pixelfeed and then assume they instantly have access to view Mastodon and Lemmy at the same time.
wait, Piefed posts don't show up on Mastodon?
All posts won't, a user from the Mastodon instance needs to follow the Piefed user for their posts to show up on the Mastodon instance
AFAIK that's the same way all ActivtyPub servers work.
Actually posts on one can be available on the other. And you can see Instagram posts on Threads, too.
Similarly, I can follow Pixelfed users from Mastodon and see their posts, and they can follow me back and see my Mastodon posts with photo attachments.
Yes but being able to do that is a design goal of the fediverse
Is it?
Because that seems really dumb.
Why would any specific niche service want to duplicate the features and functions of every single other niche service? The whole point is to have different experiences and uses, that might be able to (however works for them) interoperate as they see fit.
It's a terrible idea that they should all try to eventually do all the same everything.
I don't want them all to do the same thing, but I don't want to have to have a separate identity on each one and have to redundantly follow people on the multiple platforms.
Why would you follow the same accounts on multiple platforms?
Or do you mean one person who has accounts on multiple platforms?
If I have a mutual who is on multiple platforms, and I also have accounts on those same multiple platforms, we would generally be following each other mutually on those same platforms.
You can't follow people on Lemmy or Piefed, and everybody here seems fine with that
I can from a number of other Fediverse platforms. I may not be able to follow you on Lemmy like I can follow a community, but I can still find your account to see your posts and comments, and that limitation doesn't really impact me having to have per-instance accounts versus having a fediverse-wide account. I have probably a dozen fediverse accounts across multiple platforms. I want to have my fediverse identity able to access all fediverse platforms and that other people using that platform can find me as.
which is one of the great advantages of the Fedi verse, because you can if you want to. Mbin lets you, Frienidca lets you, and Mastodon lets you. I don't like how Mastodon handles lemmy communities or Friendica Forums by making it look as though the group user re-toots every post and comment, but others do! We can all have what we want thanks to the magic of Free Software!
Of course people can, but do they? In terms of monthly active users:
- https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats: 35.000
- https://piefed.fediverse.observer/dailystats: 1600
- https://mbin.fediverse.observer/dailystats: 736
Everybody can interpret those numbers differently, to me they show that people on the Threadiverse don't care about the microblogging format that much.
It might not be what you want, but it is what I want, which is why my primary social media is Friendica because IMHO it does a really good job of working well with all. They have dedicated photo albums, lemmy communities show as Friendica Forums, etc.
And that's great! Everyone gets what they want. But suggesting Lemmy, Pixelfed, and Peertube, etc. should all try to do it the way Friendica does, is a bad idea.
agreed 100% I apologize if it sounded like I was saying something different.
Here's a radical idea: sometimes, web services are built with features you don't use. Sometimes you don't even *value *those features. But, in cases where your preference isn't in the majority, the decision to include those features won't match your personal preference.
Sometimes, the ability to share and see content between different sites is even a core value.
Weird.
For more information, search "false consensus".
You may want to learn how you can configure your own accounts on various services to manage what you see on each one. Because, to some extent, that's a configuration option.
But your saying Peertube should have all the forum functionality of Lemmy, and the endless short video scroll of Loops.
rgluilis suggested a generic server idea, where the media and experience differentiating is done at the client app level. That could work well. But that's an entirely different concept and structure.
I read the post and understood the problem. Then I read Dan's reply. And he's fixing it. In fact, he's fixing it in the exact way the blog post says it should be fixed, "... but those filters should be manually triggered and always removable."
Here's Dan's reply:
"... I hear the community: you want text-only posts. We are going to build this as an opt-in feature. If you want microblogging, turn it on. If you prefer the classic media-only experience, nothing changes."
Why was this blog post even written then? Now it's seeming to be personal.
Seems like the article was written first maybe?
I think that the the problem is that it's opt-in, when it should be the default.
I don't think every Fediverse platform needs to support every type of post, and I especially don't think it's an impending catastrophe if they don't. In fact I think it's better to specialize. Even though Mbin supports microblogging, I prefer using this account solely for threads and a separate Pleroma account for microblogging.
I remember reading that Loops (? - may be wrong about which one) does the same thing, only displaying statuses with videos in them. I have not, so far, seen anyone claim that that is a bad thing, and frankly don't agree that it is. If we can't do that, then we can never have specialized platforms built on ActivityPub, e.g. platforms only for videos or for photos, etc., and that would severely limit what we can do with it.
Sign me up!
That sounds great. It's like people on the internet don't know how to start a conversation anymore. Can't just say "man I'm struggling with my ADHD lately," they gotta post every decade-old meme from their
personalitymeme folder so people can reply with "haha same"A new social media site doesn't mean new content, it's just a new bucket to fill up with the same shit from every other platform.
(I feel obligated to point out that PugJesus is generally an exception for my meme hatred because he includes descriptions/context for the history memes he posts and I actually get something out of it. Shout out to PJ)
You jest, but I'm pretty sure someone out there made a cli interface for AP.
I am very much not jesting.
so, an old style BBS?
I'd be all in.
I sure do like this picture:
You sly dog you made me open my network tab to see if there actually was an image there! (there is, it was just being blocked because of my uBO setting for fetching remotes).
So many Fediverse mascots I don't recognize! Glad to see there are so many more clients than I knew of
the fediverse is just a collection of content across multiple sites; activitypub items can be one of many types. how is limiting the display of fediverse content on an app to just image types "being against the fediverse"?
why would i want to see text posts when i join a photo sharing app?
I can understand the reservation against an AP-Platform not making clear that they display only a subset of messages, but not against the practice by itself. After all, it's a platform specifically for showing images. A notification when following a non-pixelfed account that only image posts will be shown would do the trick too, but implementing the option to view text posts gives the user more agency, which is normally the best path as long as it doesn't mess with usability.
Expecting an photo centric app to display text only post is really ridculous. What's thr point of making pixelfed just another mastodon type app. With the same logic , why not complaining about mastodon only allowing micro blogging short text?
The problem is the Fediverse could be a lot more than just "decentralized versions of existing apps". Most people now have this app-centric mentality because it was beneficial for Big Tech sharecropping, not because it was better for us.
We shouldn't need different types of apps to see different types of feeds and to sort our data in ways that we want.
We don't need all fediverse platforms to be a Mastodon clone, we can instead have certain fediverse clients that have a global feed for displaying from all the fediverse and specific feeds for each type of content (videos, texts, images).
We don't need platforms.
https://www.sap.com/canada/products/technology-platform/what-is-a-technology-platform.html
Pixelfed is definitely a platform . You only heard the term in context of centralized big social media so you think the term has bad connotation
Please, don't assume things about the people on the other side of a debate. It's condescending and it robs us all of learning.
I'm not saying that we don't need platforms because of "bad connotation". I'm saying it because I have worked on a "social browser" for the fediverse, an application server for using activitypub as a transport mechanism and I know that we can develop an open social web that does not rely on server-centric applications.
I think you might be conflating two things. Right now the Fediverse largely looks like you just described. It's in it's infancy, trying to copy what it sees around it. Eventually it'll become a rebellious teen and forge it's on seperate identity. That's inevitable. I wouldn't worry about it.
It's a very different thing though, saying all the apps need to integrate all the features and experience of every other app, so they're all largely the same and there's never a need to use more than one. That sounds like a terrible idea.
No, far from me saying that the clients (apps?) need to look the same. What I am saying is that the differentiation should be happening at the client, not the server.
It's the thing with Communick. I wish I didn't have to offer separate instances for each of the services (Mastodon, Lemmy, Funkwhale) but that every member could get one account which then could use as their main fediverse actor, regardless of "frontend" suited them best. The shell should adapt to the user, instead of the user being forced to adapt to the application.
So like a single ActivityPub instance that hosts all the data, but users can have a Pixelfed app, Lemmy app, etc. all connect to that one server and use it to give the experience they specifically provide.
That's a cool idea. I can see how that would work.
Yeah, the frustrating thing is that https://activitypods.org/ already does the hard part, but we need more developers interested in creating these clients that can work well with it.
Well, Mastodon will show everything in the feed, no matter if it's a video, a short blog, a long blog, a picture, a podcast, whatever. Mastodon is (primarily) microblogging in terms of output, but an everything platform with a chronological feed in terms of input.
This is where this user seems to get confused - they expect everything on the fediverse to display every type of content, just like Mastodon strives to do. Which is, as you said, ridiculous. If PixelFed was to display audio content and Funkwhale was to display pictures, what would be the point of these services in the first place? If they want everything to be Mastodon, why don't they just stick to Mastodon? Maybe Pixelfed users have no interest in reading their dumb blog posts?
Doesn't the long blog simply got truncated to 500 characters and link you to the original content? Which is very not user friendly
Not necessarily, no - it depends on how it is federated, and I believe the settings of the Mastodon instance. For example @blog@shkspr.mobi federates blog posts in full length, while @feed@404media.co based on Ghost only gives a lead paragraph.
So it is all over the place it's so chaotic and confusing for people
Terence Eden just wants as many people as possible to read what he writes with as much ease as possible, so he federates the full content. 404 Media wants people to visit their site, and some of the content is behind a paywall, so they keep the content on site. Different needs. Not very complicated.
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The writing in this article is absolutely terrible. It needs some serious clean-up before the message isn't impaired by the medium.
I feel it is english as 2nd language or a poor translation. It still gets the point across.
I’ve been on Pixelfed for a long while and never did I ever think “If I follow someone, I want to see their text-only posts.” Why? Because it’s an image sharing platform. It’s specifically designed to show images and that’s fine with me.
I feel like this article is trying to stir up some controversy where there isn’t any.
The Fediverse has plenty of problems but...this ain't it.
A bigger problem would be the inevitable outcome of what happened with Instagram; people just post pictures of text to get more reach (and probably also to circumvent Mastodon's stupid character limits).
It's a stupid and arbitrary limitation, but I digress.
It's totally a problem: If I take a look at my Mastodon account from Pixelfed, there are a lot of screenshots shown and some other random images. Which totally does make sense as I do post stuff like that on Mastodon and screenshots totally make sense there. But if you take them to the center of the stage into a photocentric app, that really does look like shit
I guess the consequence of this is that you won't have many followers on Pixelfed.
Occasionally photographers on Mastodon I follow from Pixelfed will post things I don't care much about, but at least I get to see their pictures without having to see their text posts in which I have little to no interest.
That the fact you can’t see boosts/reposts on Pixelfed.social is way worse than that and yet nobody seems to care
Nice ragebait title for some clicks
Yes, if the mail provider is advertising the fact that they are dropping everything containing "P" AND if I'm currently not in the mood to read anything containing "P" AND if there are enough good alternative mail providers that do show me things containing "P".
What a weird take.
And if it didn't tell you and you had to find out via an article?
Then you probably should have double checked before signing up to an e-mail server dedicated to "Explore + Share beautiful e-mails without the letter P in them". Pixelfed is extremely open about being a picture platform.
Then this would be pretty shitty.
However, pixelfed is very straightforward about the fact that the focus is on image posts and even if they would not advertise that fact you should realize in less than five minutes of using it that all the posts you see are image posts.
Additionally there are enough apps out there that show all content (I use the default mastodon app to see image posts as well as text posts, etc.). If this is what you want just choose that app.
And if somebody makes an app that only shows text posts then this would be great for people who only want to see text posts. I really don't get the authors problem.
Pixelfed doesn't provide the same service as Mastodon. It's stupid to think of them as identical services.
I do not see Pixelfed dominating anything. I have been using the Fediverse for years now, but only recently I applied to a Pixelfed instance. The first instance I applied to - I am still awaiting approval. The second instance I joined did not require approval to join, however, the 1st photo I posted was met with this message; "You (sic) recent post been unlisted. Click here for more info." (link w/ vague instruction) The 2nd pic I posted made it through. All in all, I am not seeing this as a viable option if it is so hard to use/join/post...
Response from Dan
https://mastodon.social/dansup/115678527443322224
Fixed link (at least for Piefed): https://mastodon.social/@dansup/115678527443322224
it makes sense to be honest, the OP article isn't really convincing
Well that is weird, why did the link get confuzzled...
Not sure either
when the picture sharing platform is a picture sharing platform for sharing pictures
I think OP has a valid point - it's not about experienced users, but newcomers to the fediverse, who may think they are following an account, when actually they only see a small part of it - there could be some indication of what's missing.
No it doesn't. Just like someone don't expect to see images on tiktok or long form text on x. Nobody would expect to see text only posts on Pixelfed
It's well known that each person has to have a different account for each of those big-tech services. Whereas in the fediverse, the original idea was that one account can traverse multiple services. The problem as the OP explains, is that it may seem you are following your friend's account, whereas actually you might see just a small fraction of it, and not be aware that there is more.
Then he just have to use mastodon which support fetching all posts from pixelfed. People are joining the fediverse for different reasons some for privacy, some for less censorship etc. This guy want to force text content on everybody which is rediculous.
I don't want to see text only if I want to see images. I don't want to see mastodon posts on lemmy with ton of hashtags when lemmy do not support them.
There is another better solution which is instead of forcing all type of content on people you can have a client that support all the main fediverse platform
Pixelfed grew to begin with because instagram was forced videos on people and now the authornwant to force text on people
What would be really confusing is two friends being on different instance then the two instances defederate
Oh wow, why not just show the users avatar on text only posts?
Then pretty ui and unbroken compat.
The thought behind the post is worthwhile to ponder and discuss.
Personally, I don't think it's as dire as the text makes it seem. The speculation that a steadfast refusal of showing text only on PF might lead the AP protocol guardians to include a dummy pic in every post seems to me to be in the "possible but outlandish" category.
If the premise of AP was that every user should be able to see everything everywhere then defederating from certain instances shouldn't be possible. But that's a feature, not a bug.
The tree of the fediverse is big and nobody needs to saw off any branches. A picture only branch can sit next to a hypothetical text only one. I can see an argument that newbies to those particular branches could be more explicitly made aware of the filtering they will experience. While I was reading the text about the users who thought they saw everything from Mastodon on PF, my first thought was: this strains credulity. But then again, users are dumb. I hadn't realized for a while that shared posts don't show up in my PF feed on the app either.
I don't think anybody could become too big for their breeches on the fediverse because the fediverse is in no position to challenge the incumbent corporate platforms. Don't get me wrong, I love it here and on Mastodon (and on PF). But if you come from those polished centrally organized platforms and you're not willing to invest at least a little bit of time into learning how federating works (also refer to users are dumb above), you'll already be disappointed and put off before you realize you now need to also become your own algorithm. The threat scenario that PF could become so big that it can dictate protocol also presupposes that AP is the protocol that will endure forever. And with AT it already has a competitor waiting in the wings. As I said up top, the thought about how one dominating branch could damage the whole tree is worthwhile. But in a dramatic shift from this metaphor: we are in no position to have to cross this bridge any time soon.
Another reason why PF won't be getting out the chainsaw is its usability. It's only great for looking at pictures. It's terrible for having discussions about them unless you only use the website. I'm using the Android app and it's not great. Features came and went. The UI leaves a lot to be desired for me. It currently feels a bit abandoned because Dansup is more preoccupied with challenging TikTok. I still like PF because I go there just to look at pictures. I go to Mastodon for memes and dry remarks. And I don't feel like I'm breaking the protocol.
This image may be a bit wonky but convenience stores don't go out of business just because 24h supercenters exist. They both exchange ice cream for money but one of them has a bigger selection of flavors. PF is 7/11, Mastodon is Walmart.
The consideration you should pay to other software should depend on your power and influence in the network.
If PixelFed was dominant in the fediverse, and other apps did feel the need for a dummy pic workaround, that would clearly be a problem. No client feels the need to do that because PixelFed is not dominant, but if it was, it would be fine to criticise them for not "playing nice" and helping the rest of the ecosystem.
I think there's much more scope to criticise Mastodon for the workarounds other software have to use to be interoperable, than PixelFed, purely because of its power in the network.
We need different apps to experiment and work out what users want. It's totally fine to experiment with different models and ways to view content. Only when you have a lot of influence over the ecosystem should you have extra responsibility.
It's an interesting concept to discuss, but I don't see a problem in grafting a photo-only community over activitypub.
It beats the alternative of having Instagram remain the dominant player. I mean if you only want to see pictures, you won't sign up for a service like Mastodon that will serve you text instead.
And I don't see any need to add a default picture to every post just to get to these people. Let them see their photos if that's what they want.
It's still more users for the fediverse and I don't really see a better way to implement this. Let people enjoy themselves on the fediverse in the way they see fit.
This article is seriously missing the point of pixelfed.
I use it for sharing art and photography and looking at art and photography. I do not want text posts on it. I have a separate mastodon account for that.