You can see it if you check https://fedidb.org/. Monthly active users have gone from just a hair under one million to somewhere around 1.4 million and still growing. How do we think this will go? How do we feel about this influx of new users? Has PixelFed done something different that Mastodon hasn’t?
I feel like I didn’t really recognize having different “platforms” like Mastodon, PixelFed, etc would give multiple opportunities for the fediverse to make a “first” impression with people.
Great
It’s barely news worthy. Small mostly unknown service gains 400,000 new accounts. Ok. 400k.
Instagram apperently has 4 BILLION accounts, with 143 MILLION monthly users.
400K sounds great, until you compare it to the pie. It went from less then 1% to less than 1%.
Growth is great and all, but since it’s January, I’d rather see a retrospective of where they stood on Jan 1st 2024, and where they stood on Jan 1st 2025. With a detailed analysis on all the fluctuations (which at this point I would assume to be nothing but upwards) but also, what caused each event.
But hearing a single month, with an influx of 400k seems like a non-story, and won’t be interesting until Jan 2026 when we get the 2025 retrospective. And we put into context that this was when meta decided to go all political, and ban searches for “democrats”, and the whole drama with tiktok.
Agreed, tho if they grew too fast the pixelfed infrastructure would just die…
Would the infrastructure die? Or would it just cap at a certain limit and lose potential sign ups?
Great question. Ideally someone trying to sign up for pixelfed.social say would be automatically shunted over to another instance…
I’m excited. I’m one of those users, but I haven’t used it much because I can’t find followers. To be fair, I never used Instagram. I like the fediverse, I usually see the same articles get sent through other centralized communities other than reddit (tildes, hacker news, etc), but I enjoy the community discussion the best around here.
Yeah, I never used Instagram or Twitter so getting started on Pixelfed or Mastodon seems a bit daughnting for me. But I assume it you like platforms like that, you just search out a few people you enjoy and then add more from their content and others do the same and eventually it’ll all click into what people had in those corporate owned and controlled products.
I had kind of the opposite. Never used instagram but for some reason pixelfed just felt right and I started posting there when I joined the fediverse.
Awesome, glad to have you here future friend. If you know of people that may be of interest to add for mastodon/loops/Pixelfed please let me know and don’t be shy, I am always open but haven’t found time to search
Me too. I can’t find you on pixelfed?
I’ll have to figure out how to link you, I don’t have anything much there yet. Just a few pictures. My name was lifeinmultiplec there as it chopped the name. I assume I need to give you an instance to find me though .
Edit: maybe this will help: https://breeze.pictures/p/lifeinmultiplec/786636194842492930
Thanks, cool! I was able to start following you by searching for [email protected] in my instance. For some reason your pictures aren’t showing up for me yet but maybe it will populate soon.
P.s I’m [email protected]
Go back to the absolute fundamentals of social media. Identify a few hashtags that have things you care about, for instance I browse a lot of #filmphotography posts.
IG was always much bigger than Reddit.
Good to see people moving to Pixelfed though.
So far so good! Some very unscientific observations from spending an absurd amount of time scrolling local on pixelfed.social:
The people coming from Instagram and TikTok seem way less grumpy than the microbloggers. People are having a lot of fun and not complaining about much. It’s kind of a trip seeing happy, joyful people on the Fediverse to be honest. Everything in the world suuuuuuuucks right now, so it’s felt like a bit of a refuge. Sometimes I’ll accidentally bounce over to the global feed and oh man is the change in tone jarring.
People don’t seem to have a problem with servers like the Twitter migrants did. Folks are still talking about it a lot on Mastodon though. I’ve literally not seen a single post about Pixelfed being “too complicated” to succeed, whereas it was (and is) pretty common to see “this place is great and all, but…” posts in the microblogging neighbourhood. Not sure why this is but it might be because the people coming to Pixelfed are generally younger than Mastodon users. This is just a guess, but I’d estimate the average age of Mastodon users is maybe mid-40s. Most of the people pouring into Pixelfed appear to be in their mid-to-late-20s. Perhaps those folks are just more accustomed to servers through Discord and gaming? Though people are generally captioning photos and not writing out lists of things they’re unhappy about and they could also just be unaware of servers altogether…
Pixelfed is easily the most diverse “corner” of the Fediverse now. Fedi is very white but a large number coming over now aren’t. Pixelfed.social has probably gone from being 75% men to 75% women in the last few weeks. Diversity is the best possible thing for the social web.
I’ve seen a bunch of people on Instagram promoting Feb 1st as “Global Switch Day” so hopefully it’ll keep blowing up.
Pixelfed is easily the most diverse “corner” of the Fediverse now. Fedi is very white but a large number coming over now aren’t. Pixelfed.social has probably gone from being 75% men to 75% women in the last few weeks. Diversity is the best possible thing for the social web.
This was a huge part of why I now spend more time over on pixelfed as opposed to here – I have a few accounts I’ve used here, and every single time I’m in a thread about a woman who’s been sexually assaulted, or about a woman’s shelter, etc, the ‘not all guys’/‘men suffer too’ bros come flooding in. I’ve logged out of accounts for weeks, switched to another one, just to let them scream into the void of my inbox for awhile, and it happens every time. I befriended a woman here when I responded to one of the most sad-to-read replies in one of those threads, that read like: “Women are often abused by men–not all men, just some, and I want to reiterate that this is about those specific men…” and it just went on and on trying to placate the inevitable furious white men in the comments section. As someone who lived as a white man for over forty years, I know just how whiny, sad, and ridiculous they look, and they they still get their way.
Over on pixelfed I haven’t once had an interaction even close to that. It’s extremely pleasant, people helping each other learn the platform, people asking for help in bad home situations, and it’s a community. People have messaged me when I made mistakes linking things in extremely pleasant ways, and two people debated alt-text (is it helpful to those who use audio captions, or is it training AI?) without once insulting each other. Lemmy was very briefly that, yet there’s a lot of tribalism that is not only unnecessary, and frankly, childish. I’m quite often embarrassed of my fellow men here.
(Well, non-binary now, yet I still feel the experiences of 40+ years of being a man are helpful.)
So anyway, I agree pixelfed is a lot more inviting, and a lot more diverse.
and it just went on and on trying to placate the inevitable furious white men in the comments section.
I think that’s, usually, not necessary. The “going on at length” part, that is. People want to know you’re not literally Andrea Dworkin, trying to actively reinforce the toxic AF “women are always victims, men are always perpetrators” narrative etc, but it takes like five words to make that clear.
Complications might arise when you’re trying to simultaneously assuage hurt men and misandrists. I fear it’s either “‘kill all men’ is toxic” or “‘kill all men’ is a valid expression of your anger, let it all out”, there’s no real space for compromise, there.
That all said your post and this reply probably wouldn’t have happened on pixelfed so your point stands. Disengagement is perfectly valid.
People want to know you’re not literally … trying to actively reinforce the toxic AF “women are always victims, men are always perpetrators” narrative etc, but it takes like five words to make that clear.
…
/face in hands
Okay I took a minute and I have to go through this with you.
People want to know you’re not literally Andrea Dworkin, trying to actively reinforce the toxic AF “women are always victims, men are always perpetrators” narrative etc, but it takes like five words to make that clear.
So just so I’m clear, all women have to make clear they don’t think what Andrea Dworkin does (sigh), because all men aren’t responsible for men as a group being, statistically, the perpetrators of rape, partner violence, etc?
If you start a sentence with “all men” then you should take a step back and say “fucked-up men” or suchlike, is all I’m saying. That was even three words, not five. You can also say something like “men should speak up more often”, that’s a general call to action, and not a blanket verdict on individuals who might be reading it. The “yes all men” of this song (total banger btw).
This is a general norm I apply to everyone regarding every topic: Don’t paint groups with broad, antagonistic, brushes. It never does any good, no matter who does it to whom or whatever the excuses are one might be able to come up with to justify it. The means are vile, the ends at best neutral, there’s no benefit to be had.
Also side note at least according to the statistics over here in Germany partner violence, if psychological violence is taken into account, is almost exactly even among hetero couples and, in the overwhelming number of cases, mutual: Assholes hook up with assholes they just, statistically, express it differently. Things might very well look differently where you’re from, another reason to not generalise.
If you start a sentence with “all men” then you should take a step back and say “fucked-up men” or suchlike, is all I’m saying.
No. Also in no example was that how anything started. I said women can talk about being victims of violence and men always do what you’re doing right now.
Also side note at least according to the statistics over here in Germany partner violence, if psychological violence is taken into account, is almost exactly even among hetero couples and, in the overwhelming number of cases, mutual: Assholes hook up with assholes they just, statistically, express it differently. Things might very well look differently where you’re from, another reason to not generalise.
The current crime statistics analysis on intimate partner violence by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA, 2024) shows that a total of 167.865 people were victims of intimate partner violence in 2023. This is an increase of 9.1% compared to 2022. 132.966 (79,2%) victims were female and 34.899 (20,8%) male.
The statistics recorded the following attempted or completed crimes:
- 59.1% intentional simple assault
- 24.6% threats, stalking, coercion
- 11.4% aggravated assault
- 2.6% rape, sexual coercion, sexual assaults
- 0.2% murder and manslaughter
- 2.1% other offences
The European Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) published the study “Violence against women. An EU-wide survey” in 2014. For this study, around 42,000 women between the ages of 18 and 74 were interviewed about their experiences with violence in the 28 member states. In Germany there were 1,534 women. Around one in three women said they had experienced physical and/or sexual violence at least once since they were 16 years old.
1/3 of German women had experienced physical and/or sexual violence. ONE THIRD.
Stop trying to make this something that’s even between men and women. It isn’t. You’re giving these guys in my inbox furious about exactly the reason for my original fucking comment a green light to do this shit by hand-waving the reality women face.
If this is how Lemmy is going to be, I’m so thankful pixelfed is exploding in size because women deserve the goddamn break.
I said women can talk about being victims of violence and men always do what you’re doing right now.
When men talk about being victims of psychological violence, what happens then? That they have been driven into depression, even into being violent, by an intimate parter, parent, or such?
How do people react? How did you react?
When men talk about being victims of psychological violence, what happens then?
They are reminded that if they wanted to talk about that, they were more than welcome, but a thread about a woman who was talking about her sexual assault isn’t the place to ‘what about us.’
Also cool dodge of having your entire argument torn apart only to abandon it and switch to a different one.
I was a young man who was sexually assaulted, and by a woman, and I still know that doesn’t mean that it’s equal. It’s people like you who de-legitimize what I went through by making it seem like a game of Brinkmanship with women, when in reality it was the women I spoke to who got me through it, and the men who asked if it was possible for me, as a man, to be raped, and then mocked me for it.
Don’t wanna throw cold water on what should be a celebration, but are these all distinct active users? I have separate accounts on Lemmy, PixelFed, Mastodon, and Loops–do I still count as one active user, or am I four? If the latter, I think it’s plenty likely that others like me have simply gotten used to the first fedi platform they chose and are branching out as they learn about more. Maybe doesn’t account for all the growth, but would explain away some of the meteoric rise.
This is a good point. I’m pretty sure that if you’re active on Lemmy, PixelFed, Mastodon, or even have multiple active accounts on multiple instances of each of those (like a lot of people do), each single one of those would count as a separate active user. I really can’t think of any way that this wouldn’t be the case, because how would the statistics servers know that your the same person?
More users isn’t necessarily good.
Every time there’s an influx from whatever shit storm we retain about 20%.
? Why’s that not good?
Well on Lemmy the quality of content dropped. Low effort posts started becoming normalized. Lots of people entered who dont know what the Downvote button is for.
Well, I’m glad you like it some much you want to preserve it. Best of luck.
“when there were 0 users, the site was perfect”
2 separate unrelated statements.
There’s a lot of gatekeepers here who actively sabotage the project to keep it niche.
Some examples of active sabotage?
You can just scroll through the comments here, and see some examples.
How do I feel?
I was following my Lemmy rule and hunting out smaller instances rather than pile into the biggest one.
tried 4 separate smaller instance sign ups and never got a single one of them to work and send me a verification email, so I kinda gave up…Is there a way to peruse pixelfed feeds from Lemmy or Mastodon? Or do I have to make yet another account?
Yes, you can follow a pixelfed account from your mastodon account and see their posts in your feed. Paste the url of their page into your mastodon search to bring up their profile, then you can view their posts and/or follow them.
Yeah, but that’s not browsing; that’s targeting a specific account you want to view more of.
Oh, to browse all the posts rather than just one account’s, go to https://pixelfed.social/web/explore which should show pretty much everything. (that’s the main server with the most users by far, and any other PF servers are federated with it so most of theirs should show up there as well)
That’s one thing that should be upgraded. There has to be a way to link your accounts in Lemmy, PixelFed, Mastodon, … so “follow” becomes “follow with” and choose the service.
There is something like that on most Mastodon pages where if you are viewing it just in your browser rather than from within your mastodon account, you can click Follow and it will ask for the server name you want to follow it from, so you have to enter your server name, then it will auto-open it in your Mastodon account for you.
I don’t know that there’s much more anyone could do than that, since any given server you are viewing has no idea what various fedi accounts you may have. That’s kind of what “decentralized” means–there’s no central database keeping track of all your accounts.
You can sign into Pixelfed with your mastodon account.
Wut. That doesn’t sound secure
Mastodon can view, I think, all fediverse posts if you are inclined to make that happen.
You can just open the Pixelfed links using your Mastodon instance:
Open URL in Mastodon
Excited. Anyone know if/when their gonna add dark mode?
Pixelfed is really easy to engage with and get a feed started. I think that’s let to its popularity growth. I’ve added mastedon and peertube and neither has made it as easy to onboard.
I still remember the curve with Lemmy. Pixelfed is clearly the easiest to get started with, and then it’s just pictures!
Its’ pretty great.
As with the time I joined Mastodon, it takes a couple of weeks to find what you like and build up a good feed, but once you do that, it’s useful and fun. I wish it had more curation tools, but I enjoy it.
I created a mastodon account a few years ago and I log in every once in a while but I really have no idea how to use it haha, it just keeps updating a bunch of posts and I don’t know how to make it stop
That’s probably the global feed, which yes, moves super-fast. I found that annoying at first too.
There’s a checkbox to turn off auto-scroll in settings, and it’s got an appropriate name: Slow Mode.
Lemmy once had a massive influx of new users, a lot left again and monthly active users has remained somewhat constant for a long time now. Let’s wait and see how many people actually stay on PixelFed.
Lemmy can’t federate with pixelfed yet can it? I know we have some integration with mastodon, but I’m guessing we can’t connect to pixelfed directly yet?
It can but you can’t follow users from Lemmy, same issue as mastodon
deleted by creator
Pixelix is on FDroid for free
There’s an official app now.
