No, it’s not decentralized. It has the “communities” feature, but that’s much closer to reddit’s subreddits than Mastodon’s instances
Now’s a good time to mention that you can never trust centralized social media. Pillowfort is currently ad-free, run by an attentive and cool set of devs, and has a lot of cool features, which is great. There’s no guarantee it’ll stay that way though. They might decide to sell, they might decide to include ads to get a little more money, they might just decide to fire the whole staff and go in a completely different direction. Remember, we thought tumblr was different too
Pillowfort’s source code is closed-source, meaning we have nothing but their word to go on that it’s not harvesting and selling your data, and that there’s no vulnerability for hackers to harvest that data instead. And since it’s all hosted on one server, if there’s an attack, or a disastrous bug in an update, or just an update that sucks balls, the entire pillowfort community will have to suffer through it
Plus, pillowfort doesn’t use ActivityPub, the standard that allows the entire fediverse (from Mastodon to WriteFreely to PixelFed to PeerTube to FunkWhale) to interact, share, follow, and get notified from any federated site. Federation is a really cool concept that is still in its infancy, but is actively getting cooler
If you really want a tumblr-like experience, and refuse to adapt even a little bit to a similar but slightly lesser network, there are some federated tumblr clones currently being worked on. Until then, don’t expect finding a new master to solve your problem, and don’t give your money to pillowfort please
Difference between AO3 and pillowfort, is that AO3 is open source
software developed and hosted by a non-profit organization. Pillowfort
is closed source software by for-profit company.
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Edit:
Oooooooo this is very important stuff to consider.
From Pillowfort’s TOS:
“When you register, Pillowfort may collect information such as your name, e-mail address, birth date,
gender, mailing address, occupation, industry and personal interests. You can edit your account
information at any time. Once you register with Pillowfort and sign in to our Services, you are no
longer anonymous to us.
Furthermore, the registering party hereby acknowledges, understands and agrees to:
1) furnish factual, correct, current and complete information with regards to yourself as may
be requested by the data registration process, and
2) maintain and promptly update your registration and profile information in an effort to
maintain accuracy and completeness at all times.
If anyone knowingly provides any information of a false, untrue, inaccurate or incomplete nature,
Pillowfort Blogging LLC will have sufficient grounds and rights to suspend or terminate the member
in violation of this aspect of the Agreement, and as such refuse any and all current or future use of
Pillowfort Blogging LLC Services, or any portion thereof”
Am I correct in understanding this measure as similar to Facebook’s requirement that you provide your real name, date of birth, and so forth? If so, couldn’t this be harmful to trans folks or other people who want to be anonymous for whatever reason, safety or otherwise?
All of these are good arguments. I totally understand the need for decentralized social media. It would be nice if someone actually builds one that most people want to use.
The problem I keep running into is that these sites are designed by coders who think that no one would possibly want to say something longer than 500 characters. It’s okay if the pictures are tiny and shitty. It’s okay if the interface is confusing as fuck.
It’s completely Orwellian. It is designed to limit information, limit conversation, and prevent art from being presented in a format that actually conveys meaning. You keep talking about how it’s unregulated and decentralized, but you fail to mention that the very format controls how we choose to communicate. It’s so much more insidious, because it’s not direct control, instead it makes your thoughts conform to its limits. Of course, every medium does that to extent, but not with the same choke-hold that twitter clones have.
You have to take into account that a blog is an artistic endeavor. None of what you have suggested replaces tumblr in that regard. Nothing else out there lets you make an individual blog yet still easily share and follow actual content. ‘Cause buddy, what’s on Mastodon is not content. It’s random bits just flung against the wall.
You have mentioned Plume several times. Would be nice if I could find an actual website for them. From what I can tell it’s mobile only, which is a total deal breaker.
These people moving to Pillowfort have good reasons. They’re not ignorant of the circumstances, and they don’t trust any platform. We all have to make decisions based on what works best for what we are trying to do. If how Pillowfort is running their operation is a deal breaker for you, I get it. But it IS the closest thing to a tumblr replacement right now.
