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- cross-posted to:
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Pixelfed, an alternative to Instagram, has matured over the years. One of its biggest, most powerful features is about to touch down - federated groups. And it will be compatible with Lemmy and Kbin.
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I don’t use Pixelfed and this blog post doesn’t do a great job describing it, so can someone tell me what the significance of this new feature is?
Pixelfed is basically a federated alternative to Instagram that’s been picking up a massive amount of momentum. The Groups feature is more or less federated Facebook Groups, with a bunch of robust tools built in, and will be compatible with Lemmy communities and Kbin magazines.
The reason this is significant is that it may prove to be the final push that makes groups a standard part of the Fediverse experience. Some of the biggest platforms in the space have lacked it, for years and years. This implementation could prove to be a really good blueprint of what the standard experience ought to provide, at a bare minimum.
Basically, Lemmy communities and Kbin magazines are federated as groups to the micro and macroblogging fediverse. People in friendica, mastodon or Firefish can interact with Lemmy and kbin by mentioning a community/magazine in their posts and following them the way they do with other types of federated groups (like guppe, chirp, friendica forums, etc)
Pixelfed didn’t have federates group support, meaning that its federation with the threadiverse was bad, not to say practically non-existent. Supporting federated groups and even having its own type of group will allow people on pixelfed to interact with Lemmy and Kbin the way other fediverse software do: following them and tagging the community/magazine handle in posts.
short summary: It means better federation between Pixelfed, and Lemmy and Kbin.
The biggest, most significant reveal at this stage of development is that Pixelfed’s groups feature will be launching with compatibility for both Lemmy and Kbin, officially connecting Pixelfed to the rest of the “threadiverse” that the other two platforms occupy.
From my understanding, we’ll be able to see Pixelfed groups on Lemmy just like any other community and follow them. There could be a group/community, where people publish photos of cats, their art, urban photography, etc.
Will all images be federated from Pixelfed to Lemmy and vice versa? Between Lemmy and Mastodon Pleroma etc., only one image is currently federated in the initial post, and not at all in the replies.
All depends on how well they implement it, but I believe nothing is stoping them from doing it right
If you’re interested in Facebook style groups, I recommend Mobilizon from Framasoft
I was under the impression that Mobilizon was primarily just for events? That was their original premise when they launched a few years ago.
If you look at it they have “posts” and announcements as well as an area to submit group resources
I wonder if Pixelfed groups might find a niche as a kind of Facebook marketplace or Craigslist alternative. Building up a brand or showcasing products seems more natural on a picture centric social media app like Pixelfed.
I’m thinking it could be more as an alternative to picture-microblogs, like Pinterest or Tumblr.
I’m very interested in potentially seeing an art focused pixelfed instance
I wanted to pursue Pixelfed as an artist and post my work there but every instance I found seemed to have a 1GB storage limit which just isn’t super viable long term. Maybe if they have a way where individuals can link their own cloud storage service or something? If the instance owners don’t want to host all that media? That’s the main thing holding me back from investing more energy into that platform for now though. I’d love to be able to get away from Instagram but for artists it’s still pretty much required for anybody who wants to find clients (especially now with Twitter what it is).
Edit: some great suggestions in the replies, I’ll follow up with instance admins and see what solutions I can find that way. As well as looking into the request on GitHub mentioned by Gabe. Thank you everyone ☺️
Running my own instance unfortunately isn’t a feasible option for me at this moment in my life. I’ll be looking into that in the future when I’m in a better spot but it’s not an option for a lot of creatives. I may have the technical knowledge to run and upkeep an instance but most artists aren’t that tech savvy. So this will remain a problem for Pixelfed attracting artists even if I run my own instance.
@Dee Can you estimate your current and/or longterm storage requirements? The quota can be adjusted, so getting in contact with the admin might solve the problem.
Yeah, somebody else suggested that in another reply too. I’ll give that a go and hopefully that can address my issues with the platform. Thanks!
I am relatively sure that admins can configure exemptions to that storage limit on request. Server admins need to protect their servers from being abused as personal photo backups, but if you are contributing real artworks (and maybe also donate to the service) I am sure most admins would be happy to allow higher storage limits on request.
That’s a good point, I’ll reach out to instance admins about that and see if that’s doable. Thanks for the suggestion!
Make a request on github or see if there is one already. I could if need be. It’s open source and it seems like as a feature, it would be important to do so. I think a good option would be at least allowing the ability to increase storage limits on a user basis as an admin, that way people can donate to help cover that excess cost involved with hosting images.
Yeah, I’ll give that a try and see if they can increase storage per user and what I’d need to do to help with the load. I didn’t think to make the request on GitHub though, I’ll definitely check to see if anybody else made that suggestion/request and put it in if not.
