I realized that I haven’t spent time on Pixelfed in a while, and that it would be great to find more content to add to my feed! So I logged in to my instance (social.photo) and then… hit a wall.

With Lemmy and Mastadon, it is super easy to peek at what is going on at other instances and find communities to subscribe to, but it looks like Pixelfed does not make this easy. The biggest issue I have run into is that many of the largest servers do not seem to let you explore what is on them unless you first create an account, and the main Pixelfed Server Directory at https://pixelfed.org/servers does not indicate which servers can be explored or not, so you have to click a few times (since the link takes you to the registration page) to even find this out for a given server. It also does not help that navigating to an instance does not show you the content for that instance, like it does for Lemmy or Mastadon, but for a login page that may or may not have an “Explore” tab at the top.

Am I missing something here? I just logged into Tumblr for the first time in years and my immediate next thought was, “Gee, I should be using Pixelfed instead!” But if in practice it is simply not possible to find content I am interested in without a great deal of hassle then it is not a realistic replacement. In particular, it seems like the way Pixelfed is set up requires me to register on particular instances to get a better view of what content is available (not just locally, but pulled in from other instances). This seems contrary to me to one of the biggest advantages of the Fediverse, which is that you are able and encouraged to pick an instance that best suits you rather than the one where all of the content lives; in particular I could not imagine self-hosting a Pixelfed instance without being left out of most of the content available.

And just to be clear, I am willing to put up with some degree of hassle resulting from the inherently decentralized model of the Fediverse, since I switched completely over to Lemmy from Reddit about a year and a half ago after the API fiasco (and the only reason why I do not use Mastadon more is because I was never that into Twitter-style content to begin with). But having to go out of my way to get through artificially constructed walls to even find content to subscribe is a bit much.

However, again, maybe I am missing here. If someone is willing to point me to a resource that solves this problem problem and makes this entire rant sound completely ignorant then that would be great! 😀

Edit: Fixed silly typo.

  • Churbleyimyam@lemm.eeEnglish
    10·
    3 days ago

    I use Pixelfed by subscribing to hashtags that I’m interested in and artists/photographers who I come across via hashtags or my instance feed.

    I’m guessing that this is how Pixelfed is designed to be used as users and hashtags are what makes up your home feed.

    I’ve never felt the need to browse by instance but I can see that this could be a cool feature to add if there are any which are dedicated to a particular subject or style. Of course the same functionality can be accomplished simply by users adding unique and specific hashtags to their posts e.g #celticsculptures or #seeninplymouth.

    • bitcrafter@programming.devOPEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      But if a hashtag has not made its way over to my instance, then it effectively does not exist to me. Even if I do see it show up and decide I want to see more content related to it, if said content has not ever made its way over to my instance then I am still left out. The great thing about being able about able to check out what is on other instances is that I am no longer restricted to whatever the people on my instance are interested in.

      This a completely different experience from Lemmy, where I was immediately able to go to a bunch of different instances, look through their communities, and go: “I want to subscribe to this one, this one, and this one!”

      • Churbleyimyam@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Would you be able to subscribe to those things via your account if they hadn’t made it across to your instance though? I’m no expert but perhaps this is side-effect of controls for moderating federation i.e blocking or allowing content from other instances.

        I do agree that it should be easier to browse any instance though. Some Pixelfed instances browser home pages seem to allow it and some don’t - I’m guessing it’s an admin option somewhere.

      • groet@feddit.orgEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        Off topic, but how do you do that on Lemmy? In jerboa there is no option (that I know off) to browse another instance. Do you open your home instance in one browser tab and the one you want to explore in another and once you find a community you like you switch to the other tab and subscribe to it there?

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
      31·
      2 days ago

      Hashtags aren’t discoverable though, server A still needs to subscribe to at least one user from server B before hash tags will start