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.

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!

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.

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.

I'll wait longer for the pseudo IG/TicToc to mature

The issue isn't what platform you're watching addictive brainrot content on. The issue is that you're watching addictive brainrot content.

loops ?

Im on both loops and pixelfed but would like something like this as well.

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.

I have pixelfed account but tho not an actuve user. Shit like short videos would make me leave the platform and look for alternatives if I was.