Instagram and Facebook were caught red-handed removing links leading to their competitor Pixelfed. An error according to Meta which occurs in a particular context for the group.
Would Instagram be afraid of Pixelfed? The Meta platform was spotted by 404 Media for removing links posted on Instagram and Facebook to Pixelfed, an open source alternative to Instagram, functioning similarly to Mastodon and integrating into the Fediverse.
What is Pixelfed?
Pixelfed is a decentralized alternative that takes over the majority of Instagram’s features, allowing its users to post images without advertising. Pixelfed also places a strong emphasis on data privacywhich are neither sent nor sold to third parties.
When asked about this link removal, a Meta spokesperson said it was an error and the links may be republished, reports Engadget.
It’s hard to see just one simple mistakeespecially in light of Meta’s recent policy changes. Pixelfed, like Bluesky faced with the policy changes of X (formerly Twitter), noted “unprecedented traffic levels on pixelfed.social” after Meta announced that it would relax its moderation rules, allowing, among other things, to qualify LGBTQ+ people as “mentally ill”, or to leave room for more hate speech.
-It remains to be seen whether this exodus will reach the same scale as that which led X users to migrate to Bluesky.
To go further
What is HelloQuitteX? This French initiative to leave
Pixelfed, for its part, shared an open source charter to guarantee “dignity and fairness in online spaces”. Coincidentally, the network also indicated something new for its network with the arrival of an application for iOS, after the release of its Android version. An opportunity to introduce the network to a larger number of people.
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