Mastodawn

pan 4d ago

@dansup this is not the way, your projects are great but don't shit in other people's projects just because they are not for everyone, it won't bring anything good for you or your community

@pan I'm not shitting on other projects, i'm just stating my opinion.

I love Mastodon, and most millenials love twitter/facebook too, that's just what it is.

pan 4d ago

@dansup
Telling volunteers “Gen Z doesn't want your Twitter clone lol" i don't know, it doesn't seem very friendly to me (i'm not a native English speaker, so maybe it's just me, but we'll see)

Build whatever you want (you've build great stuff), but don't criticize others for not following your path, that only creates discord and doesn't help anyone

@dansup @pan since the fediverse do not collect data how do you know that gen z prefer pixelfed over mastodon?

@pan @dansup not only that but mastodon is still outgrowing pixelfed

pan 4d ago

@hiphopheaven That has nothing to do with this

Arun Shah™4d ago

@dansup Gen Z wants orginal Twitter

Peter Brown 4d ago

@dansup my Pixelfed is still dead

Peter Brown 4d ago

@dansup my Pixelfed is still dead

worldruined 4d ago

@peterbrown

Pixelfed's a clunky afterthought right now (when it's thought of at all). it can't even upload images properly, and it's been 7 months since that basic functionality broke!

we DON'T have Pixelfed, except in the barest sense of "well, it's there, and maybe it sorta works if you're using an iPhone". webUI & Android? forget it.

and janky copycat Stories are somehow THE development priority? WHY.

@worldruined @peterbrown the features that differenciate pixelfed from instagram are the most halfbaked (migration and collections)

@hiphopheaven @peterbrown

worldruined 3d ago

YES.

those are the things that need to be focused on and beefed up. (that, and general usability, fixing major bugs, a modern interface, and...)

plus, Portfolios keeps getting touted as a special Pixelfed-only thing, but as far as I can tell, it's ALSO half-baked and completely divorced from the normal Pixelfed experience right now anyway. unless you KNOW it exists, it's basically invisible. why not focus on getting that fully integrated and hyped up, too? ugh.

@hiphopheaven @peterbrown

worldruined 3d ago

"Why did I start Loops? Because I didn't want to copy IG and bring Reels to Pixelfed, and alienate a lot of our community by integrating video like that.

Keeping them separate is key."

so Reels and video don't belong in Pixelfed. why the laser-focus on Stories, then, which are ultimately just TikTok Lite? why do THOSE belong?

if you want 24-hour disappearing photos, figure out a unique, Pixelfed way to DO that. "fadeaway" or "vanishing" posts that self-archive.

🎃 Kai und das Stadtbild 🎃4d ago

@dansup Did you by any chance look into github lately? Instagram-import into Pixelfed is broken since years now with nothing indicating that will change any time soon. Noone will switch without the possibility to migrate their posts to Pixelfed.

But I'm glad you're happy with your illusions.

@walsonde Instagram keeps changing their export format, and it's difficult to keep up with the changes, but we do welcome PRs if you're willing to help fix this!

Distante 4d ago

@dansup I'm glad you're building different services.

But short videos destroy our brains. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2025/tiktok-addiction-algorithm-scrolling-mental-health/

Have you thought about safeguards against addiction? Although I would focus on accessibility first.

I'm just asking about your plans, not demanding anything

Spending hours on TikTok? Here’s how the app keeps you swiping.

Washington Post reporters analyzed data from over 800 TikTok users to learn how the app turns people into power users, some of whom spend hours per day scrolling.

The Washington Post

CakeMonster 4d ago

@Distante tiktok ≠ short form videos.

It's quite possible that they'll rediscover the joy of old-school social media given enough time, when they'll realize that entertainment is not what social media is for.

@grishka says the ex-VK developer with his rose tinted glasses and his 2010 era VK alternative.

Yes, it is quite possible, but not likely lol

dansup, we'll see how it goes when I finish 1.0 and start promoting it. Thankfully I'm closer than ever — I'm already pretty far into building the client API that I promised everyone for so long. I just don't brag about it before it's ready for everyone to test.

How are Pixelfed Groups coming along btw?

@grishka oh nice work!

Groups? I don't know her 😜

(I think Groups may ship in Q2 2026, busy with Loops, Sup and Pixelfed Stories atm)

@grishka where to follow the project

hiphopheaven, I post updates from my Mastodon account (@grishka@mastodon.social) using hashtag #smithereen

@grishka @dansup anecdotally of the "gen z" people i know and encounter (18-25), there is a surprising amount of interest in neocities. also, everyone hates instagram so much... people only use instagram because everyone else is on instagram. the current cultural bulwark is discord, not instagram. and snapchat growth has been completely stagnant in north america and europe for almost the past decade -- most snapchat growth is from the middle east!

@grishka @dansup i think there's some appeal to familiarity in trying to get people off of toxic centralized corporate platforms by making clones of them, but this is not necessarily addressing people's needs in the best way. people's needs aren't strictly "instagram and tiktok"; people's needs are *what they get out of those apps*, and the apps are simply an *intermediary* that people use to get at their needs. the socialization, community, connection, etc. is what matters, not the format.

@grishka @dansup idk how many 20-somethings or college students y'all talk to, but the other day i was at a concert and i had a nice conversation with the people next to me in line about this stuff. they're not even studying computer-y fields (one of them was studying wildlife), and they are at the point where self-hosting a home server legit came up in convo without me even suggesting it! i showed them my concert photo site https://birdsounds.media and they loved it, they wanted to learn html...

birdsounds.media

you're not awake at all ⴳ -- birdsounds.media is the creative arm of trwnh, dedicated to concert photography that will rock your socks off.

birdsounds.media

@grishka @dansup we ended up exchanging tumblrs because i don't use instagram, and it wasn't seen as weird at all, they were like "oh i totally get that, i wish i could not use instagram". the problem is the network effect.

infinite love ⴳ, do they all use Instagram for messaging as well?

@grishka @dansup yeah, that's the primary use of instagram -- to dm other people. they might post some pics or stories but a large proportion iiuc uses private accounts and don't actually use it typical ways. having a public account is actually a separate thing that people do

infinite love ⴳ, that's kinda mindblowing to me. 99% of my Instagram messages are story replies or someone sending me a reel and us discussing it. The majority of my actual messaging happens in Telegram. It's the most popular IM service for all ages — including gen-z or even younger (the second most popular one is WhatsApp, but I don't have an account any more). So I suppose it depends on the country/language a lot.

@grishka @dansup instagram dms, discord, and sms are probably the most popular things in the usa. emea region uses whatsapp almost exclusively from everything i've seen.

infinite love ⴳ, oh, SMS? The service for 2fa codes and notifications about online orders or dangerous weather? I keep forgetting I can use it to send messages to other people, for just 2.5₽ per 70 characters 😅

@grishka @dansup it's been free in usa for a long time, and it's still the fallback for imessage (about half of young people use iphones, and it is once again very significantly primarily because everyone else in their peer group uses imessage)

infinite love ⴳ, yeah I know. Just wild to me that messaging, and people's expectations around it, evolved so differently in different parts of the world, despite the world being interconnected like never before.

infinite love ⴳ, oh and Telegram has channels. Some people use them as a social media replacement of sorts. They're all kinds of awkward, both technically and UX-wise, but still surprisingly popular. Recently-ish Telegram even added the ability to display your personal channel on your profile.

Then there are chats with topics as an attempt to replicate Discord. I don't use these much but I can totally see how a group of people like a school class could totally make a VK group replacement out of one of these.

infinite love ⴳ, oh btw Snapchat is so weird around me. Most people I know have an account, but no one actually uses it. Like, ever. Granted, most of those people are millennials, but still.

The problem is that the kinds of social networks like Facebook or VK just don't exist any more. They all got enshittified into an interactive personalized equivalent of television. That's the thing I'm trying to fix with Smithereen, that's my long-term goal with this project, to build a platform that offers this kind of lost yet high-demand social online experience. I bet many of the gen-z people don't even know they want something like this, because they've never seen anything like it.

top.ofthe.top 3d ago

> It's quite possible that they'll rediscover the joy of old-school social media given enough time, when they'll realize that entertainment is not what social media is for.

But can Twitter be considered old-school? I don't see much difference between Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok, etc. For me, old-school social media are web forums. Most of them died, but there is also Reddit, and Gen Z are aware of it and probably some of them use it.

Григорий Клюшников 3d ago

top.ofthe.top, the problem with "Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok, etc" is the existence of an algorithmic feed there. Even if you personally don't use it, it still uses you, so its very existence ruins the experience for everyone.

Main

top.ofthe.top 3d ago

I don't think automated feeds are a bad idea. Maybe Twitter's feeds suck, but I'd like to have something where threads are automatically put into categories by main topic, like 'music,' 'tech,' 'IT,' 'psychology,' etc., instead of forcing users to manually tag their posts. Also, automatically building feeds with the help of ML based on a users' actual interests and how they interact is a good idea, too. Current social media just don't do it well yet or they actually don't want to.

Till Kleisli 4d ago

@dansup the cool thing is: on the fediverse there are different apps, but no silos that restrict the exchange. Millennials using mastodon can follow and communicate with GenZ using shiny image thingys like loops and GenAlpha whatever they will use...

HubertManne 4d ago

yeah that is why the terminal is dead. /s

Jörgi 4d ago

@dansup I hope that will work
But I see the main problem in getting them over.
As all the content creators are on the big ones (because they can easily earn money) the people will stay there.
I hope I'm wrong, but that will be the biggest challenge, to let content creator earn money on the Fediverse so they are joining