Pixelfed's first plateau in progress

<Tantacrul>

Okay, are you ready for the pain?

First, we go to pixelfed.org, and click on "Servers." We are treated to a page that says "Find the perfect community server. Signing up on an existing server is the easiest way to get started, let us help you find the ideal server to join!" This alludes to creating your own pixelfed server, which the vast majority of users are not going to want to do. We're talking about a public who has been accustomed to downloading an app, opening an account on the app, and having access to all the content in that app. The idea of hosting their own server at this point shouldn't really be an idea we're bringing up here.

We tehn get filters for "sign-up process", because you have to apply for and be approved to some servers, filter by country, and filter by language. I mean, okay. Then we get Server Catagories: All (87) Art (1) General (8) Regional (13) Adult (4) and Uncategorized, (61). I suppose this is more honest than defaulting everyone to "General" but it's also lazier than a dead house cat. When the vast majority of them are categorized as "Uncategorized" it gives me the feeling that the people running this shitmound don't care about it, so I absolutely shouldn't.

Then we get a section called Network Health, which has data that is not pertinent to choosing a server, including total photos shared, total users, active servers, and average users per server. Neat stats I guess, not relevant to choosing a server to sign up on.

The choices of server are a grid of choices that look like this:

The name/URL of the instance is at the top, with an $8 checkmark next to it which is a different glyph from the check marks in the left column talking about all the evil stuff they don't do, so I think we're just used to seeing check marks after names on social media, so we put them there. I can't find one that doesn't have that check mark so it's completely meaningless.

Then we get a cover photo, which 9 times out of 10 is a variant on the Pixelfed logo so here's yet another opportunity to distinguish severs squandered.

Just below that is the name/URL of the server again in a different color, just in case you didn't read it the first time. This is just 100% wasted space.

Below this is the first 80 characters of a description that was almost certainly written to go somewhere else and has been echoed here. Several of them read "Pixelfed is an image sharing platform, an ethical alternative to centr..." Which must be some kind of default text. Many also use an identical cover image to Pixelfed.social, the instance run by the creators, so I'm assuming this is also a placeholder default. The dead cat is at it again. Those that don't use the default boilerplate often have a description that starts with their instance name, for example "Pixelfed.art is a community driven platfrorm designed to showcase and c..." So including the cover image, pixelfed.art's entry contains the string "pixelfed.art" a total of four times, and nearly no other information is conveyed.

Below this is a button that either says "Create Account" in white on bright lilac, or "Apply to Join" in subdued purple on dark purple, which makes the option look greyed out. People will already be unlikely to click there, and the change in shade further discourages people from trying to sign up. I suppose telling you this here in the main directory will prevent "Oh dammit you have to apply to join" but there's just something wrong with making it look greyed out or unselectable.

There's another button that says "More Details," which leads to another very sparse page which shows a large version of the useless and uninformative cover image, information you probably don't care about like the server location and establishment date, and a link that frustratingly says "More Details." We just clicked on that, why do you want me to click it again? When you click it, you don't get more details about the server, it scrolls down to a list of general features of the Pixelfed platform. Marketing cockshit that people's eyes just glance off of because this is where marketing departments put all the lies.

Oh, did I mention when you click on the uppermost of the many copies of the server name, the top one in white, it takes you to the same place that the More Details button does?

This page promises to help you find the perfect server, and then offers virtually no information that would help a newcomer choose gram.social over pixey.org.

</Tantacrul>

I would suggest removing a lot of the redundant details such as the More Details button and the second copy of the instance's name below the cover image. That would free up room for a couple more lines of description for each here on the index page.

Eliminate the Uncategorized category, maybe add a few more like "Arts, Crafts and Photography" "Lifestyles and Activities" "Fashion and beauty" "Casual, Food and Pets". "I want to upload pictures of my cat, which category do I choose?" "I want to promote my paintings. Which category?" "I want to show off my travel pictures."

Add a text search bar so that people could search by keyword.

As this is a list that instance admins have to apply to be on, I would suggest some requirements and/or heavy suggestions for that process:

• Do not allow default boilerplate cover images or descriptions. Make them post something. You're an image hosting platform, you should be able to find an image the defines your community. [email protected] runs contests with their members to pick theirs, I won it once. Do that.

• Strongly suggest against using a variant of the Pixelfed logo unless that variant describes what your instance is about. Like if you have a sports-oriented instance, the Pixelfed speech bubble P logo appearing inside a sports ball is more acceptable than a P with "pixelfed.sports" next to it. Better yet, an action shot of a sportsball player making an exciting sportsball play with maybe a logo in the corner.

• Require admins to choose a category, to eliminate "Uncategorized."

• For descriptions, provide a style guide that warns against things like mentioning the name of the instance again in the description, and steer away from all the bleeding heart hyphenated marketing wank.

BAD: Example.lol is a community-driven, open-source, cage-free, low-gluten, carbon-offset, high-estrogen, no-pressure, fuel-injected, tax-free, non-mandatory place to share photos.

GOOD: Share photos of your arts and crafts projects with our avid community of painters, woodworkers, blacksmiths, seamstresses and more!

The aim here is to present INFORMATION that can help someone new understand why they should - or should not - sign up for your instance. We're almost perfectly failing to achieve that.

Honestly just pick one and use it for a bit. Pick the most popular and learn more about the platform from there. That's exactly what I did with Lemmy.

I joined lemmy.world first then I liked sh.itjust.works and now I'm on SDF. It took a little bit longer to find the instance I really liked but never stopped me from using Lemmy. Just pick one and use it

Pixelix is great too

I'll have to check it out. When I made a post from the pixelfed app it cropped some of it for some reason

Plus all the newer redditors repeat the jokes not just at the optimal times, but just constantly, forever

Yes. JPEG is limited to 8-bit (which works well with rec.709/sRGB) and modern displays and cameras capture much more than that (typically 14).

sRGB has a very limited color gamut, and using a wider/HDR color profile (eg rec.2020) with only 8-bit per subpixel would result in colour banding.

I don't want to limit my photo development with poor color definition.

Thanks for the links (I'm already subscribed).

Not for me but I can see how it would be for some people joining a platform focusing on image content.

Sadly yes. It's included by default in Apple devices and there are talks to bring it back with a Rust implementations. I think Google walked back a bit from their standard setting bullying practice with the antitrust lawsuits / threats of getting broken up. No idea if that will continue with the Musk administration.

I think you're on to something.

I also think there's a difference in where the network effect kicks in for different types of social media. IMHO, Lemmy has just enough activity to not feel empty, and even then I wish there was more comments to interact with and more niche communities. With Pixelfed, I feel like as long as there's enough interesting posts it makes sense for people to visit regularly.

The Pixelfed app isn’t very good right now compared to instagram was when it wasn’t terrible. Hope that Dan hires an actual UX designer to update the app with his kickstarter money. And that he can integrate loops with it as well.

I couldn't find anything :( oddly, fediverse.observer actually was logging data before that time but it's only accessible to me via wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20241010192709/https://pixelfed.fediverse.observer/dailystats

@[email protected] any reason fediverse.observer is limited to only a few months? (no clue if this cross-platform ping will work but giving it a shot)

I've only used insta for it's reels so idk how it's really an alternative for me

Do you think saying women can't think for themselves is "hate speech"?

This is usually where these apps stop for me.

I genuinely don't care about what other people have to share.

The old Instagram before they added the video stuff. Pretty much a 1:1 clone of that I was told (I was never on Instagram so 🤷).

Insta

That’s exactly me as well. Tried it, looked at random people’s cats and dogs. Not for me.

I think that's kind of the challange we've got with regards to making social media from a nerds perspective. We're a bunch of nerds that don't understand the appeal of the things we want to make alternatives to, and wouldn't be interested in using them even if they weren't run by horrible evil tech corporations.

That's how Reddit was in the beginning.

Back then, you used to show someone "the front page of the internet" and it would literally be jailbait and tech news.

Lemmy and mastodon have been very usable for me.

Peertube and friendica on the other hand...

I can get about one user at a time, if I sit with them and explain it. The Fediverse is essentially the scene in Silicon Valley when Richard sits down with the focus group to explain to them for 3 hours how his software works. It's really cool. It should be the way forward, but the masses have no idea how this works and don't care to. They want a button to install. They want to search for their friend and find them immediately. I haven't found any fediverse software that can just do that much, let alone everything else that's expected.

the more popular places on the Fediverse seem to be stagnating right now

Dunno, from Fediverse Observer, it looks like lemmy and mastodon are growing slowly over the last couple weeks. (the mastodon stats look a little weird tho -- there's a plummet on Jan 30th that looks like a data collection artifact.)