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Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

Ok, so this appears to be over the fact that Pixelfed copied the names of the Instagram filters 1:1. They are not generic names like "blur" or "enhance" -- they are very specific names that Instagram has associated with their filters for years, like "Clarendon" and "Ludwig".

I'm sort of reading this thread and the Mastodon thread in disbelief at the defenders. Just change the names of the darn filters! (and not "iClarendon" and "iLudwig" for heaven's sake -- that is so childish.)

There are fights worth fighting out there -- abusive patent trolls, etc. -- this is not one of them. If this escalates they will lose 100% and waste tons of time and money, both of which could be better spent on actually building Pixelfed.

Sorry -- not the world's biggest Meta/FB/IG fan here but I am 100% with them on this one and if I were in charge I'd make the exact same threats. /rant over.

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It's not just the filter names. Their UI also looks identical to Instagram.

Why are they copying Instagram 1:1 when the Instagram UX sucks so much?

Instagram's UX sucks because of all the ads they stuffed it with in the last few years, not because of interface troubles.

I dunno. It’s kinda crummy in some ways. Maybe because I’m not a streets ahead kid with friends to teach me all the ways of the Instagram? Off the top of my head:

- you’re supposed to know that various edge swipes get you things

- I have two feeds apparently? There’s the home page and the middle bottom button

- you can’t do most things to an existing video, you must record it live, in Instagram, for most of the effects (eg. my kids did a hilarious Christmas morning dance and I realized it would be a good Boomerang)

- I’ve had multiple comedians DM me and then say “sorry I meant to reply to the comment!”

- beware that adding comments to those videos at the top are actually DMs

- almost every video cuts off 1 second early

- almost every video has been cropped to fit the aesthetics of my tall screen so I can’t even read the

All of your complaints are about the Reels offering, which isn't what Pixelfed cloned.

I don't think it does. You may be looking at some old screenshots I guess.

the same reason that chrome and firefox look like each other way more than they did originally

the same reason GNU/Linux distributions like Xandros used to mimic Windows XP

the same reason Microsoft Windows originally looked a lot like MacOS

the same reason MacOS looked a lot like what was going on in PARC before them

because users come to your platform with expectations and perceived affordances, and if you can get them to switch others will too

if your UI isn't defined by lawyers, it will adapt to the psychological models that actually live in the heads of your users if you're developing it properly

Yeah, I heard it was about the filter names, but previously had no idea what those filter names actually were. If they're common, obvious names like "blur" and "enhance", then I doubt Instagram would have a case, but if they're really the same as Instagram's, and Instagram's filters are indeed those on https://picturepan2.github.io/instagram.css/ , and those names originated with Instagram, then Pixelfed needs to come up with some good names of their own, and fast.

I'm a big fan of all the open source Fediverse platforms, but copying these sort of unique names is rather obviously a bad idea.

Shouldn't they need to trademark the filter names? Would copyright cover names?

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