Crossposted over to reddit. Posting here worked really well last time so:
If you’re on reddit and don’t mind being a fediverse evangelist, please go hit this thread:
https://reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1i7kbvt/fed_up_with_instagram_how_to_move_your_photos_to/
We should probably have a dedicated community for that
Eh I’m not sure this is something we should be doing normally, but I’m thinking of this moment as more or less an emergency. That said, I certainly wouldn’t mind a place to share resources and graphics for getting people switched over.
Here’s an idea: Save your photos on your phone or computer. Back them up periodically. Send them over SMS or email to your friends and family if you think they’re worth sharing. Stop relying on social media to give the the dopamine rush that you could be getting by actually doing something useful.
After seeing that the creator of Pixelfed is also the single Deb dev of two other big projects and is trying to crowdsourse money for it, in a bit hesitant until they allow other people to work on the project and make sure it’s not just a pump and dump.
They’ve gained several maintainers since it took off! Hopefully Dansup can transition to a more sustainable model soon though.
What I notice is that people really like the ‘my story’ functionality of instagram. It’s a nice way to share some random stuff, without it being on the internet ‘exposed forever and for everybody’. And you can share also something with only close friends, or just followers, etc
I really hate zuck, but I don’t think pixelfed has such a functionality yet, right? I feel that, or just something similar, is sort of a main key to getting people make a transition from instagram.
Bluesky/mastodon transition is going pretty well though
What I notice is that people really like the ‘my story’ functionality of instagram. It’s a nice way to share some random stuff, without it being on the internet ‘exposed forever and for everybody’. And you can share also something with only close friends, or just followers, etc
It does have stories just not supported in the official app yet.
Part of the problem is that pixelfed feeds are public, and in order for private posts/feeds to work you’d need the other user to be on the same instance as you
Signal has stories, although I don’t see many people using them. If more people were on signal, it might get more use?
Well, whatsapp has stories also, but I don’t see people using them. I don’t like to give my phone number to everybody. And it is very easy if someone has a profile, to look them up and send a follow request. That stuff you won’t find with signal stories.
Though, pixelfed lacking stories should be possible to overcome right, given the protocol. If two users can handshake, and the instances accept the handshake, then they should in theory be allowed to send each other stuff. Like, in other fediverse platforms you can also send private messages
Well, whatsapp has stories also, but I don’t see people using them. I don’t like to give my phone number to everybody. And it is very easy if someone has a profile, to look them up and send a follow request. That stuff you won’t find with signal stories.
That’s a good reason yea
Though, pixelfed lacking stories should be possible to overcome right, given the protocol. If two users can handshake, and the instances accept the handshake, then they should in theory be allowed to send each other stuff. Like, in other fediverse platforms you can also send private messages
The problem I think is that we can’t guarantee that the other federated instances will respect the private setting, or the risk that other instance admins might be snooping on the posts.
A proper E2E solution would be ideal
I’m confused about signal stories. I tried to use it while I was on vacation, but it looked like I had to push it to people? You definitely have to whitelist who can see it.
It does have stories but they aren’t supported on the apps yet and don’t have the editing function that IG does. It doesn’t have the “close friends” thing though.
Does that mean that every instance is populated with my photos? Meaning, if I change instances or mine goes down, will I still have my pics?
I don’t think so, at least when I scroll my pixelfed feed it loads images from various domains.
There is a procedure for migrating profiles and posts to new instances, if the old instance is still up.
And on the admin side, there’s established time frames and grace periods for server closures. Barring a big disaster, you’ll have time to move your stuff.
The only reason I even have an instagram account is because my apartment did virtual tours with it during COVID. No big deal for me to archive all my non-existent posts :)
sadly the main thing that keeps me from switching to most decentralised things is the lack of a private account.
Oh neat, the Fediverse is on a CNET article lmao, now we just need to make it to the NYT or something lolol
