Meta admits it deleted links to decentralized Instagram competitor Pixelfed

Meta appeared to be blocking links to Pixelfed, a decentralized photo-sharing platform, on Facebook, according to both users on Bluesky and 404 Media. A small group of posts that linked to “pixelfed.social” was deleted, with Facebook’s “Community Standards on spam” used as a justification.

When asked to comment, a Meta spokesperson said removing the posts was a mistake and that they’d be reinstated.

Pixelfed runs on the ActivityPub protocol and is part of the wider “fediverse” of decentralized posting platforms. It functions a lot like Instagram in its ability to let you share, like, and comment on images, but because its on ActivityPub, your posts could show up in other apps or be ported to entirely different takes on photo sharing if you want. Meta is slowly adopting parts of ActivityPub into Threads, which makes it possible to post to Threads and Mastodon at the same time, for example.

The timing of these deletions is enough to make anyone suspicious. Meta just announced pretty dramatic changes to how it plans to moderate speech on its platforms. The company decided to end …read more