the end of pitha social.
As disheartening as that might sound, the above is true.
It’s been occurring to me for the past two months that running Pitha isn’t something that is realistic given my routine or even that I should be pursuing in the life stages that I am in right now.
After 3 whole months, Pitha is scheduled to sunset on 8 August, 2026 – exactly two weeks ƒrom today. The users of Pitha Social (at the time of closing) was around 20, including myself. To all of those that were a part of, I thank all of you for believing in this project and showing up when it was most necessary – at the start.
To the existing users, you all have one month of a grace period to shift your accounts to another instance, and not lose who you follow and who your followers are (which is the beauty of Pitha).
edit: to those who were part of pitha, there has been a mistake from my side. there apparently was no grace period from my provider, and they deleted all of the data present there within 24 hours of 8 august ending. a late notice, but apologies nonetheless. the ssl certificates have been revoked and all the data has been effectively removed – the data cannot be recovered and unfortunately that applies for my own account too. starting fresh.
You can look for and join any instance that you want, but if you want to be where I am, then I’m more than happy to drop a invite link here – it’s called Tilde Zone.
Use the link above, and you’ll be able to join the same hangout spot as me! And yes, you can join even if you didn’t have an account in Pitha :)
In case you were wondering, yes, you will have to first create a new account with this link, and only then you will be able to move your following list and your followers over to the new account. Note that the posts and reposts that you made won’t be shifted over.
Directly go to this video guide here if you want to know how to shift your followers to your new account. And if you’re not really into video guides, you can check out the article guide over here too.
All this will take about 15-30 minutes max, and it’s one of the simplest things you can do.
what pitha meant to me
Pitha Social was the first curated instance from Bangladesh, and specifically from Chittagong, which I initiated April 14, 2026 as an invite-only community, focusing on quality discourse for intellectuals and sometimes weirdos like me.
pitha.social was a beautiful project for me, but it was also an identity anchor that was costing me, both financially and cognitively. The burden of moderating the server with hundreds of other users and instances, and especially the friction that I was having with being someone who was maintaining that.
Staying somewhere because it’s “right” on paper, even though it’s not working for me functionally, just isn’t going to cut it. I’m not letting my ideology become another form of procrastination, not for this project at the very least. I’m trying to change as a person too, so gotta act in order to actually formulate it.
This blog, too is a manifestation of where I think I should be divesting my energy towards. Another community can be built. Another instance can be setup. But an irreplacable presence and content that is meant for benefitting as many people as possible? That isn’t something you can build in one night. Neither is it something that I’m willing to delay.
The idea for Pitha came to me mid-Ramadan. I can only attempt to put these into words here, but I cannot really explain how I felt when I had the idea. It felt like an amazing idea to me, and honestly speaking? It was indeed an amazing idea.
There’s a dearth of ambitious projects like this from my city, from my generation at the very least. I’m trying to be one of the change makers here in my own way, and it was honestly never going to be easy. I’m happy that I brought my idea to fruition instead of staying in my planning phase the whole time. I have some amazing friends who are also doing their own thing, and they too are trying to bring change, which brings joy to my soul whenever I see them just killing it out there.
The idea of creating a community where professionals and curious people, especially those with ties to Bangla or even just a simple love for the language, inspired me harder than any project that I’ve worked upon prior to this. I was determined to create this, and for good reason. I was aware that it wasn’t going to be an easy endeavour to actually run and make a social network prosper over the years.
Most social networks, as a matter of fact, need years of traction to actually become mainstream, or even relevant in the main market. There are most definitely some outliers like Bluesky, who garnered traction much faster than Twitter did or even Instagram. All of these social networks are at least 10 years or older, including Mastodon, which Pitha was a part of.
It’s a pity that it’s come to an end, but this decision had to be taken sooner or later.
what’s next for pitha
This comes as a surprise to both my moderators, and the users of the platform because it’s a sudden announcement, and for good reason. I’ve been harboring a quiet dissonance on the project, what is to become of it, and why it might not be a good fit to the person that I am trying to become.
I’m planning on contributing to existing, possibly thriving, communities and rather put the money there instead of here. This might sound like not believing in my own project, but it is much more beneficial to be doing this rather than building up a community from scratch for years on end.
You might have the thought about a monopoly being formed in this case too. You might say, “But you’re just incentivizing for a monopoly to be created by joining another instance that already has a large userbase!!!”
Hold your horses.
Firstly, joining mastodon.social (the largest Fediverse instance) was never on my to-do list. And I would suggest so that you too don’t join it.
Second, I believe in the actual spirit of the Fediverse, which is, supporting decentralized communities thrive – which leads to the whole ecosystem to being actually cohesive and not marginalized, regardless of where you might come from.
Finally, Pitha was never going to be an “easy” project to work on for me. It definitely had it’s fair share of tedious and sometimes dangerous work too, and there was definitely more to come since it wasn’t a one-off task.
It was a continuing maintenance, iteration and almost reinventing the wheel in some cases, especially where my perfectionism got the best of me. As I was responsible for 90% of most of the tasks, you could blame me for not delegating the tasks properly to the people that were also involved in the project.
My main account alongside my Pitha account was my ieji.de account, the handle being @kq. I’ve gotten out from that too. The exit from this one was the hardest, but justified.
Pitha was hosted on European infrastructure, and so was this. Their German jurisdiction was a principle, but it was also a proxy for “I want to be in a place I believe in.” If the feed doesn’t motivate me to write, then the principle isn’t delivering for me personally. It’s a useless value that I’m holding on to if my actions or presence don’t align with it either. And I’m just sitting there ideologically correct and unproductive. tilde.zone solves the actual problem (a feed that doesn’t move me) while keeping the jurisdiction requirement – it’s also based in Germany!
I might be losing an instance where I had already built up a generous amount of presence, but I’m gaining something more valuable: actual participation. And tilde.zone keeps the EU jurisdiction anyway for me, so I’m not compromising the principle but rather no longer paying for it with invisibility.
My goals have changed slightly from the last time I checked. I find it making much more sense to be more visible on social media than staying someone as completely lowkey. But here’s the trick that your brain might be playing on you.
You can be both lowkey and also have an influence on the world.
I was just focusing on the “being lowkey” part, not the “having an influence” part.
Having an influence on any field makes you likely to be not lowkey anymore.
That’s exposure you might hate if you have built up expectations about staying lowkey all the time.
You might want to be famous without really having anything of value to provide for the people too.
It’s dishonorable to be in either part while resenting being in that state.
Hence I have decided that I will in the intersection of both worlds.
Running Pitha might have helped me achieve this goal too, but the overhead in running it was becoming overwhelming for me, especially given that I’m amidst a transitory period of my life right now. More on that later.
Whatever I’m doing might not be impactful now, but I’m looking forward to connect the dots.
Without further ado, let’s move on to a new chapter.
It’s been a pleasure to have you all with me.
Time to close this chapter. It has been quite a journey.
Be on the lookout.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Steve Jobs
video version of this blogpost(https://youtu.be/J52lCB-3164)
Note: I wanted to create a separate post for all the posts and archives I previously made of Pitha Social and everything related to it, but I want to keep all of that together. This is a closed chapter and there’s no point in making a separate post of just that in that regard. Here lay the archives, in a reverse chronological manner.
Our first curated social network is live.
April 14, 2026.
Here’s why it costs money to keep it that way.
On July 5, 2024, I watched Bangladesh burn on platforms that couldn’t care less about us.
They saw everything. They did nothing.
That was the day I decided to build something different.
Pitha Social launched today – the first social space rooted in Bengali culture, and open for the world to witness.
It’s currently invite-only, hosted in the European Union, and ad-free. There’s no algorithm, no data sold, and no shareholders to please.
But here’s the thing about independence: it costs money to maintain.
The Math:
Servers hosted in the EU: $10/month
Domain: ~$2/month
Total: ~$12/month, $144/year
That’s it. No office. No employees. No “growth team.”
Just server costs and my time.
“Why should I support this?”
Every month you contribute covers real infrastructure.
$5 = half the hosting bill.
$10 = hosting + domain.
$20 = funding the platform’s growth without ads.
You’re not donating to a charity. You’re making a space possible that doesn’t extract value from its users to please advertisers.
Who this is for:
If you believe we need a digital space that actually belongs to us – not platforms where our discourse is a product sold to the highest bidder, this is how you make that real.
If you’re tired of algorithms that show you outrage because it’s profitable, not because it’s true – this is the alternative.
If you also want Gen Z (both here and abroad) to have a place that treats them like thinking people, not engagement metrics, this is your sign to support this.
Current status:
- 10 founding members (April 14, 2026)
- Invite-only for the first few months
- Zero ads, zero investors, 100% community-funded
Every contribution keeps the lights on.
Every supporter makes this sustainable.
How to support us:
Patreon (international): https://www.patreon.com/cw/kaifisahil/membership
bKash (Bangladesh): 01711-930444
Be on the lookout.
— Kaifi, Founder of Pitha Social
2 days from launch
April 12, 2024.
i’m kind of having to act like a mature adult and not throw my feet up in the air about this upcoming project that i am working on right now.
we launch on april 14, which is about 36 hours from now.
it’s a social media network, and i’ve got much big hopes about it.
P.S. i literally forgot about completing this post and wanted to essentially do a preview of what i was doing and feeling at the time of doing this, but here we are. we are no longer 2 days from launch. we have already launched.
posting about it right now. visit pitha.social