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So far, Americans using RedNote have said they don’t care if China has access to their data. Viral videos on TikTok in recent days have shown Americans jokingly saying they will miss their personal “Chinese spy,” while others say they are purposefully giving RedNote access to their data in a show of protest against the wishes of the U.S. government.
“This also highlights the fact that people are thirsty for platforms that aren’t controlled by the same few oligarchs,” Quintin said. “People will happily jump to another platform even if it presents new, unknown risks.”
What should we expect from people who voted in a rich, old, white guy as their savior.
If you want more people to join the fediverse, you have to improve the user experience. People don’t want to read an article breaking down what the fediverse is, how to join an instance, how to find content, etc.
Streamline the join process so it doesn’t require learning the lore and technical training. Stop promoting the fediverse generally, and instead push people to easy to use frontends and popular instances. Remove the barriers to entry. If they want to dig deeper into different instances and the technical stuff, let them do that later. Stop loading the info dump at the front.
You get it. Well said.
I agree that promoting the fediverse generally kind of doesn’t make sense. People join communities, not web protocols.
I wonder if we shouldn’t talk so much about “the fediverse” as we do about individual instances, because that’s what people actually join. They get the rest of the fediverse for free, but their home server will always be home. Just like with reddit back in the day, how I may not have identified much with the reddit overculture, I did love some of its communities.
Like look at the difference between the slrpnk communities, and the programming.dev communities. That’s something to be celebrated, like, come join this server - look at all the cool things we’re doing!
instead push people to easy to use frontends and popular instances.
I’ve seriously thought about starting up a website to do exactly this. The problem is I already have a mile long project list. Oh and I suck at UX lmao, backend and hosting/infrastructure stuffs that’s my jam. Putting together a nice UX with a good flow and then successfully promoting it…
Pixelfed’s app release seems like a good start.
That would just turn the fediverse into tiktok/facebook/whatever. The whole point is that you have to engage intentionally here, which prevents you from being served things that other people/countries/companies want you to see.
Its not hard to join here, but its not going to serve up the same experience so people leave. People also follow others, so there aren’t many people on those other platforms suggesting people join them in the fediverse.
I dont understand why anyone cares if the next big social media exodus off-ramp is to the fediverse or not. A huge influx of people that dont like this style of content and how its served to them isn’t going to make this better for those who do.
This is ridiculous gatekeeping.
The point of the fediverse is to get decentralized platforms not in the hands of corporate or government interests.
If you want a cliquey, niche space, then stay on an instance focused for that.
I never said they shouldnt come here, I said I dont understand people here wanting them to come. Most of us left those spaces for multiple reasons, one of them being the userbase.
I want those who like what we have here to want to come here, I dont want a bunch of pissed off tiktok refugees who will come in and demand we cater to their increasingly fleeting whims, slowly turning this platform into tiktok or facebook or whatever.
Its okay for communities to not fit every single demographic, and like another person stated, there are many lemmy instances all with their own appeal.
The fediverse allows us to do both. Some instances will go one way, others will go the other. Each can have what they want. And both can communicate if they do wish.
“I’m protesting American oligarchs and the surveillance state by willingly giving my personal data to Chinese oligarchs and the surveillance state. Lol, get rekt. I am very smart.”
Yes, as there is nothing China can do to me.
At least not until they use their influence operations to elect a pro-China president.
…every president until 2016 was pro China, because the owners of the US government were pro China until China improved too much and started competing instead of just being a source of cheap labor.
And who cares if a pro China president is elected? Oh no we’ll have cheap food, universal healthcare and no homelessness. How awful.
Yeah but why would we be more concerned about Chinese competition than say, the EU? Because China showed who they are in Hong Kong, and we want that to be as un-powerful as possible.
Because China has a higher gdp than the entire EU combined?
Also yes, they didn’t allow a state to be independent, just like the US would send the FBI after Texas if they declared independence, what’s your point?
There was a time when the US was as colonialist as China, but in the 20th century it let the Philippines go, and passed on turning Germany and Japan into colonies, and let the Panama Canal go back to Panama. There’s an analogy to Hong Kong in there somewhere, or with North Korea which remains a totalitarian puppet of China to this day.
The US is far from perfect, but they’re not China. Not even close.
…even if you consider Hong Kong, Tibet, and Taipei colonies instead of autonomous religions analogous to states, the US has literally more than a dozen territories. The US is the master of colonialism, to this day it still holds the most extra territorial colonies.
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I know we are all on here because we dislike the kind of algorithms that tik tok, Instagram, and Facebook have, but that is exactly the thing my wife was looking for. When I had her download pixelfed and loops she was like ’ I have to search out content and manually follow people like I did with Facebook back in the day?’ and she uninstalled.
Algorithms can be addictive and evil, but for some people that’s what they’re looking for.
Okay, well I have impulses to go and get drunk, do hard drugs, and attempt to sleep with random women. None of those things are close to a good idea for me.
Just because you feel drawn to something or a type of thing does not make it healthy or a good idea for that person. Taking desires and expressing them in a healthy way is important, desires dont just disappear.
It’s fascinating how Lemmy users view internet consumption habits as a reflection of personal ethics. You can’t always hold other people to the standards you’ve achieved. Using and navigating Lemmy takes effort insight that the majority just don’t have. Being alive also takes effort and can be very painful. Sometimes people just need to be able to turn off and zone out. Try not to place value judgements on the ways that other people do that.
I think you’re hung up on how Big Tech has designed feeds with the express purpose of keeping you there for as long as possible, or even more perversely, as enraged as possible.
But algorithms can be made to serve other purposes, and I think the fediverse could do with a curation algorithm. Or even better, multiple choices for algorithms to suit your preferences and needs. From what I’ve heard, Bluesky offers something along those lines, which has contributed to its adoption rates.
I think if Lemmy devs wanted, they could probably come up with some great starter options. Heck, maybe they make it easier for everyone to customize their own algorithms. Not sure how far you get without knowing how to code that sort of thing directly, but even a little would go a long way, I bet.
Some people’s aversion of algorithms on the fediverse kind of reminds me of people’s aversion of GMO food. Genetically modifying rice to contain more vitamin D is probably good; genetically modifying vegetables to contain more cyanide would probably be bad. Algorithms don’t have to be built to maximize “engagement;” they can be designed to maximize other metrics, or balance multiple metrics, or be user-customizable.
IMO, Mastadon is much worse off for their refusal to implement any kind of algorithm outside their “explore” feed. When I tried using Mastodon, search was unhelpfully in chronological order, and my home feed just got overtaken by the people that post the most. In contrast, Lemmy’s handling of algorithms is pretty good, imo.
As bad as search engines are now, they’d be even worse if they just gave you results in chronological order.
Its not even the algorithm I dont like, I’m sure I could manipulate it to how I want if I put the effort in, its the bite sized videos and even shorter comments, often single words or phrases. I can’t move on from thing to thing that quickly. The fediverse suits the pace at which I like to consume information and allows me time to think on it, and more importantly, interact with opposing views in meaningful ways.
You can’t put videos on pixelfed, right? That unfortunately means it’s not a competitive platform. Video is what people seem to want.
You can. Your instance just needs to up the max size or turn it on.
Example from someone who only has one video as the sample content. https://pixelfed.social/p/Sarahschannel/785335877987047968
Somewhere deep in the CCP…
Senior Operative: “What intelligence have we gleaned from the Americans so far?”
Junior Operative: “I’m beginning to think this well is dry.”
“They love to virtue signal apparently, not sure how that helps us takeover their country though.”
We are using it mainly as a massive middle finger to the US government
I have long since given up on Normies ever coming to the Indie Web, federated or otherwise
Ever since the big Xwitter exodus, when people went to BlueSky when Mastodon was right there.
Xitter* (x pronounced sh style)
yes, we’ve all seen this tired meme
" . . . giving Rednote access to their data as a show of protest . . ."
That’s a special kind of stupid.
Lemmy is great but it does not hit the spot for a large-scale consumer social network because that’s just not the philosophy (It also lacks the unified identity because of its greatest feature: federation)
People are not searching for an aggregator of small forums of friendly tech people, they want to be part of the next big thing.
If you work on apps as a front-end, you probably understand that Lemmy requires too much hassle to get started with UX-wise.
It’s engineered for a niche, and it’s perfect to me but obscure for the majority of people who were trained to use the same UX for years and years.
No algorithm, no feeling of fame, rarely drama, content takes some time to be updated. Those are features to me but hindrance for large-scale adoption I believe.
Reddit got quite successfull over the years.
I think the potential audience for lemmy is huge, just that people havent gotten the same marketing hype/trend like you pointed out.
Reddit userbase absolutely skyrocketed when Obama (then president) did an AMA. The site was never quite the same after that
others say they are purposefully giving RedNote access to their data in a show of protest against the wishes of the U.S. government.
Yes. Why? Because pettiness
idk, pixelfed is doing great.
Apparently some Israeli-Americans went on Red Note to specifically asked Chinese people what they thought of Israel, and users basically said they were “Devil’s on this earth for killing babies” which like…damn. Even through the Great Firewall they aren’t beating the allegations.
So I’m sure the Israeli lobby will get that banned next, we shouldn’t worry.
Where were people’s protests & complaints when the US government were first proposing the ban?
Everyone assumed that they wouldn’t be so stupid as to ban an app used by 170,000,000 Americans.
Now they’ve proven that yes they are that stupid. That corrupt.
So nah. Not going back to any US based alternative. Ever. TT to Red Book. If they ban Red Book we’ll go to VK or Jaco or whatever Vietnam has going on.
Best part? It took all of about 2 hours to completely obliterate 60 years of CIA propaganda. We can see plain how much better they have it than we do. How much better life is there.
Platforms that work and are easy to use*
