Pixelfed is a thing, though images don't have to be openly licensed.
I just found openverse, but it's a fundamentally different thing. It's a crawler and search for openly licensed images, but it doesn't host itself. Depending on your usecase that can be an alternative. It has a link to the original site for downloading the pic, but tools like gallery-dl should be able to download it at that point. That means you should be able to find and download images without ever interacting with a proprietary frontend. (didn't try it)
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basxto@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 2y
Pixelfed is a thing, though images don't have to be openly licensed.
I just found openverse, but it's a fundamentally different thing. It's a crawler and search for openly licensed images, but it doesn't host itself. Depending on your usecase that can be an alternative. It has a link to the original site for downloading the pic, but tools like gallery-dl should be able to download it at that point. That means you should be able to find and download images without ever interacting with a proprietary frontend. (didn't try it)