
Pixelfed – Federated Image Sharing - octosphere
https://pixelfed.org/
======
rohan1024
This is how we probably should proceed with decentralization.

The problem that I see currently with this approach is not many are willing to
host there own servers. Even people who are fairly tech savy won't host any
server because of the costs involved. I am not going to host a server unless I
get benefit out of it or its dirt cheap to host them.

The solution I think is instead of hosting it on cloud we host it at home.
This way we have control over the cost. Again, if I can choose the kind of
content that I am hosting then that would be great. I like to save images on
certain topics. I don't mind serving them from my home since I already have
unlimited data connection. Running a server on Raspberry PI would be ideal.
There are already millions of PIs out there and they can be used for
decentralization of apps. In the end, we might even be able to convince
general population to host there own content. We will have to provide them
tools and utilities to make hosting as easy as possible.

The major problem I think is NAT which is preventing direct hosting of content
from home. Solve that and you most probably have solved decentralization.

~~~
MadWombat
> The major problem I think is NAT

NAT is not a problem. All you have to do is configure port forwarding on your
router correctly. Dynamic IP assignment is a bit more of a problem, but it can
be overcome by using dynamic DNS services. All of this is fairly trivial.

> I don't mind serving them from my home

I do. And I think it goes for a lot of people. My connection is residential,
so somewhere in the ToS it says that I cannot run public servers off of it.
Besides, there is no guaranteed uptime, I would need to deal with things like
backups, hardware replacements and whatever other maintenance myself. Whereas
with a service like Instagram, I just take pictures on my phone and upload.
There is no overhead, my stuff is always available and I don't have to worry
about backups.

~~~
kitotik
> All you have to do is configure port forwarding on your router correctly.
> Dynamic IP assignment is a bit more of a problem, but it can be overcome by
> using dynamic DNS services.

But most people don’t even know what a ‘port’ is, let alone do they know that
their router may let them change some settings.

> there is no guaranteed uptime, I would need to deal with things like backups

Are these important criteria for a federated system?

> my stuff is always available

Until it’s not because the centralized provider went out of business/censored
you/was acquired/killed the product for strategic reasons

EDIT: typo

~~~
MadWombat
> Are these important criteria for a federated system?

As long as I am storing data on my node and/or use my node to access the
system, yes, it is. Also, the comment I was replying to just said "The
solution I think is instead of hosting it on cloud we host it at home" and
suggested running a server on a Raspberry Pi. Nothing about federation.

> Until it’s not because the centralized provider went out of
> business/censored you/was acquired...

What do you think is more likely, that Instagram goes out of business or that
a Raspberry Pi sitting under my bed dies and takes my photos with it?

~~~
kitotik
You are correct, I was assuming federation in a decentralized system. If it’s
an isolated node in your home, it looks a lot different, and I agree with your
administration pain points.

> What do you think is more likely, that Instagram goes out of business or
> that a Raspberry Pi sitting under my bed dies and takes my photos with it?

Of course your RPI is more likely to die than Instagram going out of business.
But with Instagram, the risk is more around them booting/censoring/sharing
your stuff.

Does Google Picassa still exist?

~~~
MadWombat
No. Picasa doesn't exist. But all my photos are now in Google Photos, very
much intact, even though I have had multiple device failures over the years
and if I was hosting these photos myself chances are I would not have them by
now.

------
yogthos
I definitely agree that federation is the right approach for moving forward.
This is how the internet was meant to work in the first place.

One huge advantage of ActivityPub based federation is that every service that
uses it can talk to any other service. So, you can share data between
Mastodon, PeerTube, PixelFed, Plume, and any other federated platforms. This
also allows different competing services in the same space such as Mastodon
and Pleroma to work with each other. Meanwhile, traditional commercial
platforms like Fb, Twitter, and Youtube have zero incentive to allow users to
move data between them.

While I agree that it would be great if people could just host via their ISP,
VPS hosting has gotten both a lot easier and cheaper nowadays. You can get a
Digital Ocean server for 5 bucks a month, and thanks to containers it's much
easier to package and distribute the services. VPS providers will also often
have cheap backup options. This dramatically lowers the barrier for managing a
service.

~~~
rohan1024
I understand VPS are cheap now but they are not free like in case of
centralized services. Hosting costs are same everywhere. I think developers
from developing nations would still prefer a home based solution over a VPS
because its consuming (INR 3600/year in India) out of there pockets. General
population won't even think of self hosting because centralized services are
"free" both in affordability and setup. Very few give a damn about privacy.
Cost is a factor that definitely affects self hosting when you think about
developing nations.

Another thing is data, in case of self hosting at home, you are always in
control of your data. Your data never leaves your home. Unless you explicitly
want it to. In case of VPS, data is out there on someone else's infra. Backups
are most probably not free. So yes both sides have their own pros and cons.

~~~
yogthos
For sure, I think it would be fantastic if people could just host their own
sites from home. I'm just noting that the barrier to hosting is dramatically
lower today than even a decade ago. So, self hosted sites are becoming viable
option again, and hopefully that will lead to more decentralization.

------
goda90
Instead of at home(well, it can be at someones house still), I feel like this
could be the domain of local clubs. Groups of interested people can pool money
to pay for server hardware(or space in a local datacenter), and a business
internet connection. This also adds the effect that at least a core set of
users know each other in real life, which can help reduce problems like
trolling, illegal content, and spam. Also, their server is local. If they
setup a mesh network, then they could still have services if the city somehow
becomes disconnected from the larger internet.

~~~
cameronbrown
What's going to convince them to do that, rather than "join the Facebook
group"?

~~~
goda90
My thought would be that there are probably multiple people interested in the
idea of federation or decentralization in most moderately sized cities. If
they find each other, then can start from there and spread the word.

------
cedricbonhomme
Pixelfed is evolving quite fast. I am using it since soon one year. The
community just needs more users and more instances.

ActivityPub is really on the raise. I saw recently that
[https://people.kernel.org](https://people.kernel.org) is using WriteFreely.

~~~
eitland
WriteFreely is also fantastic. Have been a paying user (edit: of write.as)
since sometimes earlier this year and I have finally starting to write stupid
blog posts again, including two who got some traffic from both HN and
lobste.rs.

------
olah_1
Part of the issue with federation is the very nebulous concept of servers
themselves.

What should my domain name be? This question alone is enough to stop someone
in their tracks. There's only so many non-stupid sounding names. And should
the name focus on a location, a hobby, myself?

If I allow people to sign up, should it only be for people I know IRL? What if
I mix online friends and IRL friends on the same server, is that weird?

I'm looking forward to trying full decentralization tbh. Federation feels like
a strange halfway house.

~~~
antpls
I believe "federation" isn't supposed to be a federation of individuals, but a
federation of small communities. You still have to be organized and grouped
with some people around some goals or topics if you want to create a community
and add it to the federation.

As an individual, you can then join several of those communities in the
federation.

------
eitland
Let me mention that the developer is extremely productive and - in my opinion
- talented.

As far as I know he is mostly working alone one his spare time and works in
another field during the day.

~~~
rolleTx
In what field does he work during the day?

~~~
r3bl
Full stack development. His work hours have recently been cut, so if you know
of a freelance project or a full-time position that needs to be fulfilled, get
in touch with him:
[https://mastodon.social/@dansup/102409415828557030](https://mastodon.social/@dansup/102409415828557030)

------
Lunatic666
Is there a docker(-compose) setup I can use to give it a try? I think this
would lower the barrier to entry a lot. I have a blog running on ghost I
wouldn't have without a maintained docker container. I miss Instagram,
pixelfed looks like a great alternative!

------
akuji1993
There is a massive drop in nodes at [https://the-
federation.info/pixelfed](https://the-federation.info/pixelfed). Seems like a
SPOF host deactivated their 50 something nodes?

Other than that I'm skeptical about this. If it doesn't host ads or any other
money making scheme, how do you pay for servers to host some many pictures?
Being image focused, I imagine the server gets expansive fast when your node
becomes big. This might also explain the SPOF deactivating their node.

~~~
duiker101
Seems like the drop is everywhere according to that website. [https://the-
federation.info/mastodon](https://the-federation.info/mastodon)

I would say either the chart is wrong, the data is still being collected or
something is very wrong with the federation system.

~~~
yreg
The chart on the main page is already bouncing back.

------
MadWombat
I am confused and the docs site seems to be dead. Who runs the nodes? Where is
the data stored? Is the data encrypted? What are the legal ramifications of
running a node, like am I expected to moderate content people put on my node?
What if someone uploads child porn?

~~~
masukomi
there are moderation tool's and avoiding things like that has been a major
concern of its creator lately. He's definitely aware of and working to help
mitigate problems like that. HOWEVER no tool is perfect and if you have ANY
site that allows people to upload things that is going to be a concern. On the
other hand, that's why their are laws to protect owners of servers that can't
reasonably be expected to look at everything that's uploaded. Without those
laws youtube, dropbox, and other similar services could not exist. They'd be
litigated into oblivion.

~~~
MadWombat
A centralized, commercial service, like Facebook or Instagram or Medium has
ways to mitigate this. At the very least a staff of moderators and a legal
department. But in this case, considering the distributed nature of this
project, if I am running a node, I might not be aware that there is illegal
content being stored on my system. And yet under the current legal system, I
am pretty sure I could be liable. I am not sure what the recourse for
something like this would be.

------
Vinnl
And here's its own Mastodon/Fediverse account:
[https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed](https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed)

------
akeck
Since people are constantly putting "Bad Stuff" on Instagram, Ello, etc., how
does one deal with it on a federated platform? Is it up to each node operator
to manage the liability?

~~~
agentdrtran
It looks like there is a community policy, which seems good, but I wonder how
it's enforced? [https://pixelfed.social/site/kb/community-
guidelines](https://pixelfed.social/site/kb/community-guidelines)

edit: I was mistaken, this is only for the official instance. There is 0 anti
abuse tooling for other instances.

~~~
Tepix
Just like on large centralized instances.

Someone complains. Someone checks the complaint and acts accordingly.

Chances are if you have a small instance with users you know personally, you
will have less issues.

------
dewey
I wish some of these new federated services would have nice, native (Like in
natively designed, speaking the interface language of iOS / Android) apps. I
think this would be critical for anyone to use it seriously.

~~~
mxuribe
I've had very good luck with Tusky
[[https://tusky.app/](https://tusky.app/)]...which i think was designed
originally for mastodon...And i've been using it for my pleroma instance to
great success.

~~~
jklinger410
I haven't been able to use any activity pub apps with pixelfed.

~~~
mxuribe
Ah, ok, sorry i thought the comment was more in the general sense of apps for
federated services/platforms. While I have had positive experiences with apps
interacting with platforms such as gnu social, mastodon, pleroma...but, I do
not have experience with pixlefed. (Thanks for clarifying this.)

~~~
jklinger410
No problem. I see Instagram as a mobile-first platform, so the lack of an app
is what is preventing me from using Pixelfed.

------
alias_neo
Does anybody know if there's something that looks (simple) like this that I
can host myself to share family photos with my family?

Preferably something I can just spin up in a Docker container and point at an
NFS share.

~~~
mxuribe
"Simple" is a relative thing, so I'll simply point you to some options that
exist, and you can judge for yourself:
[https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/](https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/)

Also, Nextcloud has been used for the use-case you described...its less about
sharing in the social media sense, and more about exposing a bunch of
media/photos/videos that live on your local/home server or your VPS (that is
running nextcloud). [https://nextcloud.com/](https://nextcloud.com/)

~~~
alias_neo
Thks, by simple I meant to use, I'm not concerned about the setup
requirements. Also I'm looking for something more along the lines of the
social tour sharing of photos where we can tag and label them as we share
them. I've used next cloud briefly, is not quite what I'm after.

I'll look into the other. Thanks

------
monkeynotes
The idea servers being up and down, potentially losing all your images to a
dead server, and upload limits isn't ideal. I like the idea but Facebook is
far more motivated and capable to fulfill my non-tech friend's needs. And
without my friends sharing I don't think I'd adopt a sharing platform.

------
Tepix
This looks interesting.

With Mastodon there's a gateway that will automatically post your messages to
twitter.

Is there a gateway to Instagram for Pixelfed?

PS if you have a large following it could be interesting to publish to Twitter
and Instagram only after a delay, encouraging users to go to the source (i.e.
your mastodon/pixelfed instance).

~~~
StavrosK
No, Instagram doesn't automatically let you post stuff to it in any way.

~~~
Tepix
Indeed, content publishing appears to be "in private beta" at the moment
(since when?): [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-
api/guides/co...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-
api/guides/content-publishing)

There's also a github project to explore the private API at
[https://github.com/mgp25/Instagram-API](https://github.com/mgp25/Instagram-
API)

------
pmlnr
Yet another federated system. Yay.

Every single time I see another one of them popping up all I keep thinking is
how some of us had their website for 20+ years.

Interactions were first guestbooks, then pingbacks, then webmentions. And it
works, it always had.

~~~
gerikson
Pingbacks quickly became a vehicle for spam - I haven’t seen one in years.

------
masukomi
For those interested in hosting this project you should _absolutely_ follow
them on Mastodon. The guy behind it is posting constant updates.

------
justRafi
where/what are the images actually stored on?

------
johnmarcus
the landing page seems dope, but then clicking through to joining is very
confusing. What exactly is a user supposed to do? Do I need to run one of
these nodes?

any plan to improve the onboarding experience, or do we plan on just letting
this die?

~~~
r3bl
Your user experience will be the same regardless of which node you choose,
since you can follow people regardless of what node they're using. Every user
account is constructed as @user@pixelfed.tld.

But, yeah, onboarding is a rough problem to solve when your goal isn't for one
server to contain all the data. It requires learning some new stuff that I
couldn't be bothered to learn for far too long. If privacy-conscious people
aren't willing to learn them, nobody will and these projects will just die.

~~~
cynix
> Your user experience will be the same regardless of which node you choose

How do I know or find out who owns/runs the node I choose? Surely some nodes
are more stable than others, and the user experience wouldn't be the same if
the node I chose decides to shut down tomorrow.

~~~
r3bl
Here's how Mastodon does it: the owner's account is visible from the homepage
of the node, the owner of every node that Mastodon includes on its homepage
has agreed to give at least a three-month warning before shutting down, as
well as to decentralize the control of the server to at least two individuals:
[https://joinmastodon.org/covenant](https://joinmastodon.org/covenant)

I assume that Pixelfed wants to do something similar, but a little bit further
down the line. As far as I'm aware, Pixelfed's current goal is to encourage
people to start their own servers instead of relying on the main one. Whenever
they feel like the main servers are gaining too much control of the network,
they close the registration in order to pivot people to other nodes. Once
other nodes start to stand out, Pixelfed will probably have more strict
guidelines on which ones to link to.

------
ivanhoe
Is there a way to limit who can join the server that I choose to host?

------
really3452
A large issue with federated social networks is that they are complicated to
set up. It believe would be a lot easier to gain adoption if devs stuck to
php5 instead of using 5 to 10 different hot and new languages.

~~~
yogthos
Docker exists precisely to solve this problem.

~~~
really3452
Docker is a great solution for people that like docker. However, there is
still a large barrier of entry to using the docker image as compared to a php5
implementation.

My point is that a php5 solution would make one of these federated social
network implementations accessible to a much larger audience.

~~~
rglullis
It would also make it accessible to all of the hackers that are more than
using to exploit shitty apps implemented in PHP5.

(I am half-trolling. I know that it is possible to write insecure code in any
language, but the mix of PHP + popular codebases + "you can run anywhere you
want" is a recipe for disaster)

~~~
mxuribe
So, I'll go out on a limb and assume that the original comments were related
to php in general (say, the latter 7 versions - which are faster and receiving
more updates/patches, etc.)...which tends to be a platform that is more easily
accessible for most.

~~~
rglullis
Yeah, I know. I am making no distinction though. I've been burned by Wordpress
already, even with installations without any sort of plugins whatsoever.

It will take many more years before I ever get to trust any code that is PHP
(no matter the version) and that is open source. Its "easiness to get
deployed" still translates in my head to "it is easy to be vulnerable without
developers knowing" and I think the language is in an evolutionary dead-end
anyway.

~~~
mxuribe
Yeah, as much as i like and use php myself, I have to admit that you're not
wrong. My hope is that present and future languages and associated
environments get as easy to setup/deploy as php, BUT are more secure, prevent
practitioners from shooting themselves in the foot, etc.

------
Fnoord
How will it deal with steganography?

------
instakill
Please ELI5 federated services like these?

~~~
anchpop
Instead of making an account with e.g. Twitter, there are multiple sites such
as BobsTwitter.social, Witter.com, whatever. No matter which site you make an
account on, you can follow anyone on any of the different services, interact
with their tweets, etc. seamlessly. Your information is only hosted on the
site you made the account on. If you get banned from BobsTwitter.social, you
can move to Witter.com and people using BobsTwitter would still be able to
follow you without having to do anything special

------
baidoct
So, this is the new Instagram?

~~~
skocznymroczny
Unlikely, outside of tech circles no one is interested or cares about
federation.

~~~
onion2k
You might be right about people not being interested in federation on a
conceptual level (or not, I don't know), but people certainly are interested
in the benefits of federation can bring. People want more robust hosting,
lower costs, and less dependence on centralized services. I think it's
unlikely anyone would sign up to a 'new Instagram' built on this specifically
because it's based on federatation but if it was marketed as more robust,
cheaper and not dependent on Facebook then I can see non-tech people being
curious about it.

~~~
Goronmon
_People want more robust hosting, lower costs, and less dependence on
centralized services._

The people outside of tech circles that I know just want images to show up and
they don't want to pay for them. I guess that those would fall under the
"robust hosting, lower costs" section in a roundabout way, but "less
dependence on centralized services" is pretty much the opposite of what people
want from my experience.

~~~
onion2k
Meet more people.

~~~
Goronmon
Right back at you.

~~~
onion2k
If you meet more people then you'll meet people who are interested in the
benefits of federated content.

If I meet more people then I will too, but I already know some so it won't
make much difference. Maybe it'd reinforce what I already know.

The problem is your admission that it's "pretty much the opposite of what
people want from my experience". You don't have enough experience. Ergo...
meet more people.

------
dinghy
What about licenses?

~~~
masukomi
"Pixelfed is open-sourced software licensed under the AGPL license."

or did you mean some other definition of "licenses"

------
rolltiide
Incentivize.the.nodes

Just add a token cmon

Consumers are exempt, tokens are scarce, nodes compete

