I imagine that @PixelFed's servers are getting overwhelmed by traffic these days.
I'm lucky to already have a pixelfed.social account. Still, in order not to add to @dansup's server load, I am taking the plunge:
this morning I'll try to set up my own #Pixelfed instance, thanks to the magic of #YunoHost (Pixelfed is in their list of apps).
I'll keep you posted on how it goes!