Rebel Tech AllianceInstagram alternatives
Since being bought by Meta Instagram has become full of ads and super creepy. Since it's unencrypted, and owned by one of the most data-hungry companies on the planet, it is terrible for leaking your personal information to Big Tech.
The main reason to get away from big tech (billionaire owned) social media is that the content you are served is decided by an algorithm. And how that algorithm works (e.g. skewed towards more shocking, more extreme, less true, more outrageous) is at the whim of the owner of the platform. You are open to manipulation.
The solution is decentralised
To avoid algorithmic lock-in, move to a decentralised, open source alternative from the list below. Decentralised means that there is no central control point that dictates what content you see (unlike X).
Decentralised social networks run on a set of shared format rules called a 'protocol'. The two main decentralised protocols are ActivityPub and ATproto. Apps built on ActivityPub are sometimes referred to as the 'fediverse' because all those apps are 'federated'. This means you can see posts in one app that are posted in another app.
All the following are decentralised and open source:
| App name | Protocol | Best Features | # users start of 2025 approx | Year started | Country of Origin | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pixelfed | ActivityPub | Ad free, privacy friendly, chronological feeds; Stories, Albums, Filters | 720,000 | 2018 | Canada | Pixelfed.org |
RTA's choice
There's only really one choice and that's Pixelfed. It is a fully featured app and we recommend it. Being on the ActivityPub protocol it has the advantage of being federated with all the other AP apps like Mastodon, Lemmy, Peertube and Friendica.
How decentralised social media networks work
They are made up of lots of separate 'instances'. These could be though of like hosting servers (like for websites). There is always the original and biggest instance set up by the founders, and then lots of smaller onces set up by various other people. To start with you usually join the 'original' instance, and usually this has a name ending in '.social'.
In Pixelfed's case it is pixelfed.social.