Recently I’ve created a Pixelfed account to share my everyday and casual photographs online. I had deleted my Instagram account a couple of years ago and I’ve been trying various replacements since. While Instagram inarguably has the largest user base, it also has serious privacy issues, as it (or actually Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook) collects tremendous amount of data about its users, their devices, location, habits, interests and multitude of other things. All this for a single purpose: to serve users the most effective ads possible.

I abhor Meta’s dubious ethics, therefore I was looking for Instagram alternative. I’ve tried various services, of which VSCO briefly captured my attention. Ultimately I was discouraged by the recurring subscription cost and the fact that it felt very hermetic and monotonous. With the increased popularity of federated social media I started to publish photographs on my Mastodon first1, but it didn’t feel like an optimal solution. I considered creating a separated account in federated social media specialised in sharing photographs, namely Pixelfed. That thought stayed with me for a couple of months, but only at the end of July I finally took the step to create an account and upload my first photographs.

The whole experience has been positive so far and I intend to keep my Pixelfed profile. As for its content, it will be similar to VSCO and, previously, Instagram: casual, everyday photographs, occasionally mixed with some travel shots. If you are looking for some thematically consistent series of fine art photographs, feel free to check out the Photography gallery on my deviantART profile. DeviantART is still the main place where I publish more sophisticated works.

  1. I had an account since 2018, but I hardly posted anything until I started seriously considering leaving Twitter in 2022) ↩