Feature request: personal posts and collections

[MrNewbie72]

an option to post personal photos/videos and create personal collection, that is only visible to the user, this way the user can use pixelfed to create personal album for his private use.

[MrAn0nym]

Don't think this will be added, and if it will only as opt-in. Adding such an feature could turn Pixelfed somewhat into a cloud storage, which for many instance owners means more used storage with only single users benefiting

[trwnh]

you could probably emulate this when custom audiences/streams are supported -- just create a stream with an audience that only includes you? although we may have to consider allowing an empty audience, since audiences are planned to be a subset of followers

[iamabrom]

This is an interesting request and I personally disagree with it. But, I would love to better understand why anyone would want to do this? Why not just create a private album in something like Google Photos or Flickr. Or if wanting to stick to FOSS/self-host something like piwigo, Lychee, or even Immich.

Otherwise, I think this issue should be closed.

[MrNewbie72]

@MrAn0nym

Don't think this will be added, and if it will only as opt-in. Adding such an feature could turn Pixelfed somewhat into a cloud storage, which for many instance owners means more used storage with only single users benefiting

Your concern is valid and the solution would be just a boolean value in the config file to toggle it on and off. and if at some point it was turned on, and a user created an empty stream as suggested by @trwnh and uploaded some photos to it, then the admin turned it off, the user should still be able to see the photos and delete them but not add more to an empty stream.

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@trwnh

you could probably emulate this when custom audiences/streams are supported -- just create a stream with an audience that only includes you? although we may have to consider allowing an empty audience, since audiences are planned to be a subset of followers

That seems enough to do the trick, i hope to see this in the near future

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@iamabrom

I would love to better understand why anyone would want to do this?

The usage for this would be the ability to upload selected private photos say family photos that you don't want it to be public which you can view later just like an album that we used to store our photos back in the days and open it once every X years :stuck_out_tongue: also you can share the screen of the phone to any TV to show the photos to family members when gathering etc...

Why not just create a private album in something like Google Photos or Flickr.

I would like to stick to FOSS/Self-hosted and not upload photos to a third party.

Or if wanting to stick to FOSS/self-host something like piwigo, Lychee, or even Immich.

All those are nice suggestions, but it would be better to have everything in one place, instead of hosting multiple software

I hope this clarifies the purpose of the request and it changes your view, thank you for finding this interesting :relaxed:

[iamabrom]

@MrNewbie72 Awesome feedback. I definitely understand what you're wanting to do and it's a great idea. Personally with my family, I'm using Nextcloud and the Memories app. All FOSS and it's only one solution (mainly Nextcloud), the Memories app, is more like a module than a stand alone app/component. Also, piwigo, Lychee, & Immich are in fact all single independent solutions- my suggestion was more of an "or" as opposed to an "and". So definitely look to see if any of those meet some of your needs.

Personally, I'm rooting for Immich, this gives that Google Photos look/feel/features, but is all FOSS and self-hosted, so you would fully own all of your photos.

Back to Pixelfed, I think your use case (a good one BTW) is not aligned with the core of Pixelfed. For example, even if you self-host an instance and all accounts were private (say all family members), the underlying photos are still fully 100% public- just simply look at the URL of the photo- their fully public. It's designed this way to support the activitypub/fediverse model. This is how following someone from a different instance is even possible. So, even if a feature like this was brought forward, I don't consider it fully secure to protect your "private" photos, because your photos are never fully private. It's more like "security through obscurity".

edited only to fix typos