Imagine a new client, TextFed, that will never display posts with pictures.

Sign me up!

The thought behind the post is worthwhile to ponder and discuss.

Personally, I don't think it's as dire as the text makes it seem. The speculation that a steadfast refusal of showing text only on PF might lead the AP protocol guardians to include a dummy pic in every post seems to me to be in the "possible but outlandish" category.

If the premise of AP was that every user should be able to see everything everywhere then defederating from certain instances shouldn't be possible. But that's a feature, not a bug.

The tree of the fediverse is big and nobody needs to saw off any branches. A picture only branch can sit next to a hypothetical text only one. I can see an argument that newbies to those particular branches could be more explicitly made aware of the filtering they will experience. While I was reading the text about the users who thought they saw everything from Mastodon on PF, my first thought was: this strains credulity. But then again, users are dumb. I hadn't realized for a while that shared posts don't show up in my PF feed on the app either.

I don't think anybody could become too big for their breeches on the fediverse because the fediverse is in no position to challenge the incumbent corporate platforms. Don't get me wrong, I love it here and on Mastodon (and on PF). But if you come from those polished centrally organized platforms and you're not willing to invest at least a little bit of time into learning how federating works (also refer to users are dumb above), you'll already be disappointed and put off before you realize you now need to also become your own algorithm. The threat scenario that PF could become so big that it can dictate protocol also presupposes that AP is the protocol that will endure forever. And with AT it already has a competitor waiting in the wings. As I said up top, the thought about how one dominating branch could damage the whole tree is worthwhile. But in a dramatic shift from this metaphor: we are in no position to have to cross this bridge any time soon.

Another reason why PF won't be getting out the chainsaw is its usability. It's only great for looking at pictures. It's terrible for having discussions about them unless you only use the website. I'm using the Android app and it's not great. Features came and went. The UI leaves a lot to be desired for me. It currently feels a bit abandoned because Dansup is more preoccupied with challenging TikTok. I still like PF because I go there just to look at pictures. I go to Mastodon for memes and dry remarks. And I don't feel like I'm breaking the protocol.

This image may be a bit wonky but convenience stores don't go out of business just because 24h supercenters exist. They both exchange ice cream for money but one of them has a bigger selection of flavors. PF is 7/11, Mastodon is Walmart.

Does this person not understand how media specific sites work? If you want a mixed media website, there are plenty out there on the fediverse. Saying every site should host every media type gives users less options, not more.

The Fediverse has plenty of problems but...this ain't it.

A bigger problem would be the inevitable outcome of what happened with Instagram; people just post pictures of text to get more reach (and probably also to circumvent Mastodon's stupid character limits).

It's a stupid and arbitrary limitation, but I digress.

Would you settle for a mail provider which silently drop all emails you receive if they contain the letter "P"?

Yes, if the mail provider is advertising the fact that they are dropping everything containing "P" AND if I'm currently not in the mood to read anything containing "P" AND if there are enough good alternative mail providers that do show me things containing "P".

What a weird take.

PixelFed never claimed to be selling pizzas (images) and salads (text). Just pizzas right?

And if it didn't tell you and you had to find out via an article?

Expecting an photo centric app to display text only post is really ridculous. What's thr point of making pixelfed just another mastodon type app. With the same logic , why not complaining about mastodon only allowing micro blogging short text?

Seems like the article was written first maybe?

It's totally a problem: If I take a look at my Mastodon account from Pixelfed, there are a lot of screenshots shown and some other random images. Which totally does make sense as I do post stuff like that on Mastodon and screenshots totally make sense there. But if you take them to the center of the stage into a photocentric app, that really does look like shit

No, you as a poster in the Fediverse are selling pizzas and salads. PixelFed is "misrepresenting" you, for lack of a better word, by telling people you only sell pizzas. The thing is, it wasn't doing that before. It was purposefully made to hide useful information that was there before. IMO there should be a sticky "this user has other content which is not images" headbar or something. Only removable as an opt-in per account followed, so that it is not possible for people to say that PF purposefully hid information.

No it doesn't. Just like someone don't expect to see images on tiktok or long form text on x. Nobody would expect to see text only posts on Pixelfed

If that guy was right there wouldn't be defederation and many defederation are not announced

But pixelfed is only selling pizza and the cudtomer complains that he didn't find a salad option

Well, Mastodon will show everything in the feed, no matter if it's a video, a short blog, a long blog, a picture, a podcast, whatever. Mastodon is (primarily) microblogging in terms of output, but an everything platform with a chronological feed in terms of input.

This is where this user seems to get confused - they expect everything on the fediverse to display every type of content, just like Mastodon strives to do. Which is, as you said, ridiculous. If PixelFed was to display audio content and Funkwhale was to display pictures, what would be the point of these services in the first place? If they want everything to be Mastodon, why don't they just stick to Mastodon? Maybe Pixelfed users have no interest in reading their dumb blog posts?

Then you probably should have double checked before signing up to an e-mail server dedicated to "Explore + Share beautiful e-mails without the letter P in them". Pixelfed is extremely open about being a picture platform.

The consideration you should pay to other software should depend on your power and influence in the network.

If PixelFed was dominant in the fediverse, and other apps did feel the need for a dummy pic workaround, that would clearly be a problem. No client feels the need to do that because PixelFed is not dominant, but if it was, it would be fine to criticise them for not "playing nice" and helping the rest of the ecosystem.

I think there's much more scope to criticise Mastodon for the workarounds other software have to use to be interoperable, than PixelFed, purely because of its power in the network.

We need different apps to experiment and work out what users want. It's totally fine to experiment with different models and ways to view content. Only when you have a lot of influence over the ecosystem should you have extra responsibility.

I guess the consequence of this is that you won't have many followers on Pixelfed.

Occasionally photographers on Mastodon I follow from Pixelfed will post things I don't care much about, but at least I get to see their pictures without having to see their text posts in which I have little to no interest.

That sounds great. It's like people on the internet don't know how to start a conversation anymore. Can't just say "man I'm struggling with my ADHD lately," they gotta post every decade-old meme from their personality meme folder so people can reply with "haha same"

A new social media site doesn't mean new content, it's just a new bucket to fill up with the same shit from every other platform.

(I feel obligated to point out that PugJesus is generally an exception for my meme hatred because he includes descriptions/context for the history memes he posts and I actually get something out of it. Shout out to PJ)

Then this would be pretty shitty.

However, pixelfed is very straightforward about the fact that the focus is on image posts and even if they would not advertise that fact you should realize in less than five minutes of using it that all the posts you see are image posts.

Additionally there are enough apps out there that show all content (I use the default mastodon app to see image posts as well as text posts, etc.). If this is what you want just choose that app.

And if somebody makes an app that only shows text posts then this would be great for people who only want to see text posts. I really don't get the authors problem.