Discussion
If you use Pixelfed's "Sign in with Mastodon" feature, it does not actually sign you in with Mastodon.
What it does do is create a totally new Pixelfed account every time you use this feature, and copies over info from your Mastodon account. You end up with two separate unconnected accounts, your original one on Mastodon and a new one on Pixelfed.
It might be better to call this feature "Create a new Pixelfed account by copying your profile from Mastodon".
@FediTips It doesn't create a new account every time, it just allows you to use Mastodon oAuth to create or sign in to Pixelfed.
This is pretty typical of how oAuth SSO works.
@FediTips one day in a certain version of the world, this could actually be true — I have an unrecorded talk on Alternative Architectures for ActivityPub, and in it I show how that could be possible, but certain folks hate it because it's too "AT Protocol"
@FediTips
Maybe it was a typo?
This could very easily have been "Sign up with Mastodon."
@FediTips mención obligatoria a @andrewblasco xD
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services Every single time? I really do hope someone has filed Issue on the git repo.. 😬
p.s. Just to make clear, I'm not trying to criticise Pixelfed or this feature! 🙂
I'm just trying to inform people because the name of the feature doesn't quite match what it does, and I've regularly had to help people confused by the name.
@FediTips this is interesting. The button does exactly what I would expect it to. I never considered people might expect that other behaviour. I guess it's another lesson, when designing UI, to remember that people can see the world very differently!
@FediTips Just call it "Register with Mastodon" instead of Sign In
@FediTips Part of the problem is how Pixelfed is designed to feel like something completely seperate. it hides posts without images and names the button that way because it wants to appear like Instagram instead of being part of the Fediverse.
There's a post that was written about this before:
https://ploum.net/2025-12-04-pixelfed-against-fediverse.html
@FediTips I know I shouldn’t, but I keep getting surprised by the levels of bad faith in the pixelfed design.
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
