I used YunoHost to set it up.
My first idea was to have the instance locked behind the YunoHost auth, since Pixelfed supports LDAP.
But I could not manage to make the LDAP work, so I went instead with a public instance that has ActivityPub disabled and all posts set to “Followers Only”.
People could also set each of their accounts to “Private”, but the follow requests were not working when I first set up the instance.
Been running my own instance for a couple months now, just for me and my friends, so that they would stop sharing private pictures on platforms that would process/sell the data. But, as always when it comes to new, privacy-respecting tools, I’m having the hardest time making them move to the platform, despite the fact that the Pixelfed instance itself has been running smoothly.
Money can’t buy happiness; but at least you can live miserably in comfort
My pick has to be The Linux Experiment, especially his Open Source News Podcast that I listen to every week !