Meta admits it deleted links to decentralized Instagram alternative Pixelfed
Meta has reportedly been blocking links to Pixelfed, a decentralized photo-sharing platform and alternative to Instagram, on Facebook. This action was noted by users on Bluesky and 404 Media. A number of posts containing links to pixelfed.social were removed, with Facebook citing its Community Standards on spam as the reason.
Pixelfed is an open-source, community-funded platform operating on ActivityPub, the same protocol that powers Mastodon and other federated services. Pixelfed.social, the largest server in the network, has seen increased interest recently, particularly following Meta's announcement to relax its moderation policies.
Meta responded to inquiries by stating that the removal of posts linking to Pixelfed was an error and that they would be restored. However, the timing of these deletions has raised suspicion among users.
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Related news
External links
- Facebook has banned anyone from linking to Pixelfed.Bluesky
- Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor Pixelfed404 Media
- Meta admits it deleted links to decentralized Instagram competitor PixelfedEngadget
- Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor PixelfedDaring Fireball
Comments
Meta "accidentally" deletes links to a decentralized platform? They just want to protect us from the chaos of choice and freedom. Who needs alternatives when you can have the comforting embrace of a corporate giant deciding what we should see? Maybe one day this will be over...
If anything, this only made awareness for the app more prevalent. I've never heard of this before, but now I think I'm going to go check it out
Honestly, wouldn't it really make much difference to the traffic going to Pixelfed? I think it has peaked, I don't use Instagram or Pixelfed but have previously had accounts with both, Instagram is and always will be the go to photo sharing network for people while Pixelfed will always be a super niche network for photo sharing that no matter how much exposure they get will never come close to being the number 2 photo sharing network.
An accident, I'm okay with. But if Meta is gonna continue deleting links to federated and decentralized platforms (including Pixelfed), then this is a full-blown problem; may as well show that this is simply Meta trying to be the top dog when it comes to the Fediverse.
This is otherwise a poor excuse for censorship; maybe a bit like what Twitter/X did with Mastodon links over a year ago.
"However, the timing of these deletions has raised suspicion among users.", and thankfully, suspicion is a not a proof of any kind. Now, Meta has around 3B active users along all their services, Pixelfed seems to have less than a million account ever created on all instances. So a drop in the ocean, or more metaphorically, Meta is the ocean and Pixelfed a rowboat. But you can be perfectly fine without using both.
It's funny that federated social media is even worse when it comes to censorship. There were cases of instances shutting down because people were harassing the admins to ban people playing Hogwarts Legacy (lol). Big social media companies need to automate a lot of the spam detection and blocking links, especially from not well known domains, is a simple way to prevent spam. YouTube comment section is notable for blocking pretty much every link, which sucks, but it kinda understandable as they had a big bot problem a while back.
I think Nostr is more promising because the servers are just simple relays and admins have less incentive and power to censor speech they don't like. Also the protocol has better scalability.
You can literally host your own server with zero censorship. There is no less censorship.
There is a problem with scaling. Hosting a single node with millions of users poses a big problem with moderation, which can be solved in many controversial ways. Decentralized instances are easy to deploy in such a way that the burden of moderation is spread among lots of different administrators, that have to deal with a smaller number of users in each community; so they can apply the rules which everyone in the smaller community agreed upon, otherwise users can just subscribe to another server that is more aligned with their feeling.
I think I need to specify that the problem I'm talking about is not technological, and cannot be solved with a more advanced algorithm. It is systemic to the human interaction. That means Meta can't solve this. We have to find another way.
You should think fediverse instance like Discord server or Facebook group.
Each community have its own rules and "target audience." If you're not comfortable on that instance, just find one that suits your needs.
@cel It's more complicated than a simple group chat because instance admins can de-federate from other instances. On Facebook (or any other centralized social media) you are globally reachable and a ban from a group doesn't ban you from the platform itself, while on the fediverse there are no such guarantees. You don't know who can reach you or who are reachable by you because admins can block other instances.
@kendo friendo I can host my own website too and have everybody access it if they choose to. With federated social media, admins can ban access to my profile/instance for a whole group of people. Individually blocking somebody you don't like is a good feature, having somebody else decide who should be blocked is censorship.
@inshilon I agree, this is fundamentally a human interaction problem. The main issue I have with federation is that the architecture allows whole groups of people to be unreachable. Smaller communities, each with their own rules sounds nice, the problem is that these rules are often enforced network wide and infringements are solved through de-federation. Nowadays, pretty much every single instance has block lists.
When instances can isolate into islands of agreeableness, I have to question the ability of the federated model to thrive as global social media and not just as a mere group forum.
PixelFed is distributed and federated but not really decentralized but I'm pissed to see the big social plateform acting like Garden Wall faced to superior protocols such as ActivityPub and Nostr