Meta admits it deleted links to decentralized Instagram competitor Pixelfed

Meta seems to be blocking links to pixelvida decentralized photo-sharing platform, on Facebook, according to both Users on Bluesky and 404 media. A small collection of posts related to “com.pixelfed.social“, using Facebook’s “Community Standards on Spam” as justification.

When asked for comment, a Meta spokesperson said the removal of the posts was an error and that they would be reinstated.

Pixelfed runs on the ActivityPub protocol and is part of the broader “consortium” of decentralized publishing platforms. It works a lot like Instagram in that it’s able to let you share, like, and comment on photos, but because it’s on ActivityPub, your posts can appear in other apps or be moved to completely different photo-sharing snapshots if you want. The Meta is slowly adopting parts of ActivityPub into Threads, making it possible to publish to Threads and Mastodon At the same timeFor example.

The timing of these deletions is enough to make anyone suspicious. Just declared dead Very exciting changes To how it plans to moderate speech on its platforms. The company decided to end its third-party verification program and change its hateful behavior policy last week. Relaxed company standards now allow for speech that would be defined as hateful under any normal circumstance, Based on what Wired He was able to dig.

It’s not unreasonable to imagine that users might consider jumping to an alternative like Pixelfed in response, and the platform has done just that. Saturday class It was “experiencing unprecedented levels of traffic to the Pixelfed.social site.” It’s also not unreasonable to imagine that the new, right-leaning Meta might preemptively block its competitors, Just like X did With links to Mastodon and Substack.