In a turn of events that could cause Meta headaches, a decentralized alternative to Instagram is developing in leaps and bounds. Pixelfed is a free and open-source photo-sharing site originally created in 2018 and, for the past few years, mostly accessed through web or through third-party apps. This week, however, it’s Pixelfed Office has partnered the launch of its own mobile apps for iOS and Android, marking a huge expansion for a site with about 330,000 users and a growing support base.

Pixelfed aims to portray itself as everything Instagram isn’t. Unlike the Meta site, Pixelfed is ad-free, and offers users a charter which respects their “fundamental rights” to “participate in online spaces that respect their privacy, dignity, and well-being.” The charter promises limited but consensual data collection, transparent algorithms, and a surveillance-free experience without web tracking. “Pixelfed is many things, but one thing is not an opportunity for VC or others to destroy the vibe. I refuse VC funding and I will not inject advertising in any form of the project,” the creator of Pixelfed, Daniel Supernault, just wrote of Mastodon. “Pixelfed is for people, period.”

This respect for user autonomy may be the reason why the app seems to be growing in popularity. In fact, the development of Pixelfed exploded last week, with the platform announcing an influx of users who occasionally tested the current resources of the small team. “We’ve seen unprecedented levels of traffic on pixelfed.social, and we’re working to maintain the service and provide more resources!” Mastodon page on the site wrote on Sunday.

You can understand how Meta makes this more than a little worrying. Earlier this week, suspicions were raised when 404 Media reported that the tech giant was caught censoring and removing links to Pixelfed on its own sites. Meta used the violation of its spam policy as justification. When reached for comment by Engadget, however, Meta admitted that the removal of the Pixelfed links was a “mistake” and that they would later be reinstated.

Gizmodo has reached out to Meta for comment.

The social media industry is in a state of change like never before, and the competition between mainstream platforms and low-fi alternatives has reached new heights. While Mastodon and other Fediverse sites have it’s been yearsElon Musk’s takeover of Twitter pushed such alt-sites into the mainstream. Now, while users are looking for X alternatives on sites like Bluesky and Hive, it makes sense that web users may also be interested in finding an alternative to Meta’s offerings. As TikTok threatens to disappear forever, web users are still flocking to another Chinese app, RedNotealthough they may be smarter to migrate instead of Loops, another Fediverse alternative which was launched by Supernault last year.