Why Pixelfed Won’t Save Us from Instagram
Why a decentralized photo-sharing app won’t save us from Instagram — but it might help.
PixelFed is a decentralized photo-sharing network based on the ActivityPub protocol, the same one that Mastodon uses. For a lot of people divorced (or wanting to be) from Instagram over mental health concerns and issues like forced consent to post-GDPR terms, a decentralized social network like PixelFed sounds like an exciting and promising alternative.
Personally, I stopped using Instagram once I accepted the fact that its core premise and integral structure of interaction was encouraging me to form habits that were harmful to my life goals. I’m not alone — studies have shown that people are happier after deleting apps like Facebook. The reasons for this don’t differ greatly from why any social network can be bad for you — they’re just found in much greater intensity on photo-sharing sites, and specifically Instagram.
It is still early days for PixelFed. As I write this I have no way to know what kind of network it will become, or even if it will survive at all. I do know, however, that there are many glaring and fundamental problems that a decentralized photo-sharing network like PixelFed won’t solve. To elaborate, I’m going to discuss what makes Instagram so poisonous to…
