0·
1 year agonot to be spicy, but… in all honesty, what’s the difference between posting on Pixelfed or on Mastodon. Post image + caption. Same on both, except on Mastodon I can choose not to post an image. I know Pixelfed is image-first, but if your friends and followers are on Mastodon and see/like/reblog my photos there. why would one need/want a Pixelfed account to manage too?
Know what I mean? I’m just struggling to justify yet-another-social media account, especially as I wind down my time on IG.
Personally, I’m happy with both. Lemmy and Mastodon are far from perfect and both feel sorta beta, though Mastodon is further along.
Search is weak on both platforms, imo, but I expect it will improve eventually.
You mention favorite counts only being your instance, but same is true for community subscribers here.
Also landing on other instances from outside links can be confusing to find the same content in your instance (Mastodon and Lemmy).
Federation does make things more complicated. But it beats centralization.
In the end, it comes down to your personal end use and preferences.
Personally, I like Mastodon for conversations and I like Lemmy for community building - I mod !alternativenation@lemmy.world - and that works for me. 💕
(Though I’d kill for some consistent performance from Lemmy after trying to comment 3 times)