It’s chuckthewriter@pixelfed.social and don’t you forget it.

I’m still on the fence with Instagram. At one point I had an Instagram account, and somehow it got hacked. I cleaned up all the hacking, and a year or so later, the account was shut down for some unspecified claim of nebulous origin (I suspect some MAGA chud had a problem with me and decided to use some “keyboard courage” to do something about it). I reignited my Instagram account a year or so later, and it’s just – there. I’ve got it, I post to it, but it’s just – there.

But I think what’s really pushed me over the fence with Instagram has been the recent removal of fact-checking and protection by its parent company Meta (who also owns Facebook). And if that’s the case, I need to consider my options.

And by “consider my options,” I need to find a new platform for my images.

And I think I’ve found one.

Background.

When Elon Musk took the vibrant online platform Twitter and crapped all over it, I exited that social media network and moved to Mastodon (chuckthewriter@mstdn.social). My blog populates to Mastodon instead of to the former Twitter, and I’m happy with that.

Yesterday, I joined a similar “federated” web platform for my images. That would be the site Pixelfed.

Yesterday, after cleaning and neatening my Manhattanhenge photo Soaring on a Manhattan Morning, I used it as the test photo for my new Pixelfed account (which is accessible at chuckthewriter@pixelfed.social if you want to see it).

Here’s a screen shot.

By the way … the photo looks so much better. You can clearly see the bird in the sky, and the Manhattan skyline looks incredible in shadow and silhouette, with the only true powerful color coming from the sun and its reflection in the Hudson River.

Yeah, I’m liking this new Pixelfed thing. So far.

So here’s the plan. Until I decide otherwise, any of my new photographs, whether digital or film, will appear first on Pixelfed and Mastodon, and then later on I’ll post them to Facebook and Instagram (and Flickr, because somehow I still hav a Flickr account after all these years).

And we’ll see how this all pans out. I’m hoping at least for the best.