The issue isn't what platform you're watching addictive brainrot content on. The issue is that you're watching addictive brainrot content.
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2026
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Didn't Instagram add those stupid things because it was desperately trying to compete with TikTok?
I love having a platform that isn't trying to do short form portrait video. Everywhere wants to do it and I detest the medium. It's so boring!
There's Loops.video for people that want a federated TikTok
boring
but somehow still feels like crack when you scroll it.
Uhhh, no? I get that I'm apparently alone in that, but I find both the format and the cadence of content it results in horrible.
That's the thing, if you stay on it longer, it will start to serve you content more interesting to you to make it more crack like.
As I said, the format and the cadence that results from what people optimise for is what turns me off. I don't want portrait video on my phone, at all. I don't want min maxing for short run time.
It could be about my favourite topics and I still wouldn't want to watch it, anymore than I want to watch films on VHS or listen to music on HitClips.
I wouldn’t mind one doing true short form, Vine-style, but watching somebody talk into their phone for 2-3 minutes? Hell no.
It's designed to be an Instagram alternative as it was when all you did there was look at pretty pictures. They've added stories (so the snapchattisation feature, which you can just turn off) but did the tiktokisation separately. I'm glad they did it this way because I liked Instagram around the time Facebook bought it. Instagram today is a bloated, algorithmic mess that doesn't know what it wants to be. And I don't need more short form videos in my life.
Instagram today is a bloated, algorithmic mess that doesn’t know what it wants to be
It knows what it wants to be. It just doesn't care what you want it to be. Its' main goal at this point is to exploit the massive userbase to push more and new shit. Trying to start a new platform for it would undoubtedly be unsuccessful. Just look at Threads. Frankly I'm shocked they didn't just shove microblogs into IG as well. You see the same thing with every successful platform with sufficient userbase, they just abandon their identity in favor of shoving new and more shit down your throat until it becomes said bloated mess and the experience in general is awful, but they know you won't leave because there's no viable alternative that isn't also doing the same thing.
I think having separate websites/apps for different types of content is the simpler and more elegant choice. Also probably a better user experience than a mega app trying to do everything. This way users also get to choose what form of content they want to interact with.
having separate websites/apps for different types of content is the simpler and more elegant choice.
It is also the UNIX philosophy. :-) Each tool should do one job, and do it well. But make the tools able to speak to each other, so you can combine them. In best case they implement using Activity Pub, https://activitypub.rocks/ ; it's open, decentralized, and a W3C standard, and can federate with other such implementations. And I sound like an advertisement apparently.
IMHO they are trying to replicate pre-enshitified version of instagram when there were actually great photographers and artists.
They did, several times. Reels were only added to IG because Meta wanted to exploit its' success to push it on their massive userbase to compete with TikTok. Creating a separate platform for it would have made far more sense in a user-focused world.
Pixelfed already allows video posts. That's enough for me.
If you want a client that automatically filters pics from vids, that's completely possible within the open source environment. I think it would be a nice feature.
Im on both loops and pixelfed but would like something like this as well.
I'll wait longer for the pseudo IG/TicToc to mature