@Paulatics it's a different platform where people post pictures that's similar to Instagram, but can be seen and interacted with from Mastodon.

You'd have to make a Pixelfed account to take advantage of the photo capabilities.

@Paulatics Hi! Yes you can sign into it using your mstdn.ca account ("Sign-in with Mastodon" button on the login page, eg. https://pixelfed.social/ which is their flagship instance).

You can think of it as a more Instagram-like interface for Mastodon, with a focus on photos and videos. I hope this helps!

Some more info: https://pixelfed.blog/p/2023/feature/introducing-sign-in-with-mastodon-streamlining-sign-up-and-login-on-pixelfed

@Paulatics I think I read that the mobile app can (or will soon be able to) interact with Mastodon instances.

@Paulatics

I can see photos from #Pixelfed by following certain #hashtags.

For example if I follow the hashtag #travel your #Mastodon account will see the posts that have that hashtag on both Mastodon and Pixelfed.

Hope this helps #fediverse

@Paulatics Great question, since that's a hard thing to grasp in this new decentralized world.

Pixelfed is a separate platform, just like how instagram is separate from, say, Flickr. But because it supports ActivityPub, posts to Pixelfed are automatically sent to users on other Pixelfed servers & other Mastodon servers.

Pixelfed is also an app. For now, it only talks to Pixelfed servers, but the posts are visible on Mastodon servers thanks to ActivityPub.

@Paulatics It's another platform that interoperates with Mastodon. The main difference is the user interface. With the Pixelfed app the focus is on photos so I imagine posting photos and seeing other people's photos is easier than on Mastodon.

@Paulatics Pixelfed is an image sharing service. Mastodon is a microblogging service.
They are two separate services where you would have to have separate accounts at two separate websites. (and also, two different apps)

Pixelfed can follow Mastodon accounts but sees them differently and the focus there is on images / videos much like Instagram.

You can post images on Mastodon too, but it's still a microblogging service, that's what it was designed to do.

Let's say you post your pictures to Pixelfed. You follow your own Pixelfed account with you Mastodon account. Well, then you can boost your Pixelfed post to your Mastodon followers. And someone can comment on your Pixelfed photo from their Mastodon account.

ie. That's a sort of thing you could never do with Instagram and Twitter. But here, you can do that.

@Paulatics It's a different platform with its own instances, but since it's federated you can interact with it the same way I'm interacting with you even though you're on a different instance.

Like if you could follow someone on Instagram with your Twitter account. (Which you almost could a decade ago...) IG would need its own account. But pics would show up a Twitter follower.

IDK if there's a bot that could automate boosting those posts to your Masto account. But people could follow both.

@Paulatics Pixelfed, like Mastodon, is software for creating a social network. Just as there are many independent Mastodon host servers (mastodon.social, mstdn.ca), so there are multiple Pixelfed servers.

While Mastodon was designed to be familiar to people from Twitter, Pixelfed looks similar to Instagram. That shows up in different features & different UI in the website & apps.

But, both use ActivityPub to send messages to followers on other servers & posts get adapted to the follower's app.

@Paulatics Pixelfed is a separate service that is compatible with Mastodon because they both use ActivityPub. I like to post photos there because it's easier to do than here (Friendica (also different but compatible)). You can then have both your accounts follow eachother and boost your PixelFed posts from your main account (that's what I do).

@Paulatics you can put more photos in Pixelfed post than Mastodon, so you would only see the Mastodon max from Mastodon. Don't know about videos. Sometimes the Pixelfed posts look truncated to me. I'm not sure what's happening there.

@Paulatics pixelfed is a separate platform from Mastodon but speaks the same protocol underneath, as many have probably explained.

Pixelfed is focused on pictures and being an alternative to Instagram. Short videos are the focus of a subproject called "loops".

Fun fact: @dansup like you and me hails from Alberta, so I guess it would be like the social media equivalent to "shopping local".

For long-form video #PeerTube is probably the best but if something of a more insta vibe is what you're looking for Pixelfed is the closest thing to that.

@Paulatics Its different, and different instances, but it can talk to mastodon instances. fwiw i would not join, the dev is irresponsible about user safety, among other things.

I find posting pictures a bit easier using moshidon, an app i use instead of just browser. it feels a little bit like instagram in how it looks, and is simple enough for me. do you use an app to post here? or over a web browser?

@Paulatics You might be overwhelmed by all the replies but as far as I noticed no one yet posted https://fedi.tips/pixelfed-photo-sharing-on-the-fediverse/ which I found to be the clearest explanation including Mastodon/Pixelfed interoperability.

@Paulatics

Separate but interoperational. For example, my pixelfed is @ssaus and can be seen and followed from Mastodon, but is totally separate from this, my primary Mastodon account.

It is, however, far more suited to images and my feed there is *very* different in feel, which is pretty cool. (Reminds me of early Flickr or EARLY Insta).

Does that help?

@Paulatics Others have answered the main question but I’m curious what you find makes it difficult to post photos on Mastodon?