If you're wanting to join Pixelfed, you don't have to join pixelfed.social. There are other Pixelfed servers you can join instead, which will help spread the load and keep the network safe from being taken over.
For example here are three Pixelfed servers that have reliable people running them:
https://pixelfed.de
https://pixey.org
https://gram.social
There are even more listed on the official Pixelfed website at https://pixelfed.org/servers