In February 2023, in a detailed review of whether to leave Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for the metaverse, Andrew C. Oliver, Columnist for InfoWorld wrote, "Mastodon and Pixelfed feel safer than their non-federated counterparts" and said Pixelfed is the fediverse answer to Instagram. Oliver also said it is early days "in the Pixelfediverse", content is more sparse, but is either more interesting or at least not manipulative. Charlie Sorrel of Lifewire said Pixelfed shows the flexibility of Mastodon, and has the potential to be much better than Twitter because of ActivityPub.
