cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24394554
Text for readability:
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.”
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I’m going to be honest, I do feel a little baffled but maybe that’s because I didn’t vibe with tik tok.
I think the pros are probably responsiveness and uptime (compared to fediverse things). Even now, hexbear goes down for one reason or another, to say nothing of back when we were the biggest lemmy instance (sorry Des, god that was a while ago), and setting up a new server is something that the vast majority of people don’t want to do (especially compared to just signing up for an account). I think this is especially the case if you mostly consume video. While peertube (and others?) does exist, video is still pretty big per second of content, meaning that sort of continuous scroll video is a big ask for a small private server.
Compared to Facebook or Twitter or whatever, its unlikely that a Chinese spy is going to rat your weed ring out to American feds, unlike Facebook or Twitter (which routinely co-operate with American cops, no warrant).
Lastly, network effect, which is the big one. If the big creators you follow (idk what tiktok is like) go somewhere, you’re going to follow them (well, not you, fellow lemmy person, but you know who I’m talking about). And your preference is that all your big creators go to the same place rather than to a dozen fediverse instances. Not that it would be insurmountable, but it would be a bigger ask.
Specific oligarchs may still be an effect (Zuck or Musk are not necessarily the most popular people).
Was just talking with a friend that downloaded a Mastodon app a while back when Twitter was bought by Elon, encountered the “Choose a server” bit, and bailed after choice paralysis. They’re technical and have a doctorate in Computer Science so it’s not like they couldn’t figure it out, but there’s something in the human psyche where most people don’t want to make choices like that. They’re on Bluesky now and think its great.
IMO sites like https://pixelfed.org/how-to-join and https://join-lemmy.org/ should just have a normal sign up flow, and load balance between all servers that opt in. Looks like that’s going to happen for Pixelfed:
https://mastodon.social/@dansup/113830788279211715
It’ll make some people unhappy, but that’s just how you get “normies” onto the Fediverse.
I got through it but that’s why I’m @lemm.ee instead of something good.
Why isnt there a federated tiktok clone, we have twitter, discord, and reddit, imo a tiktok/vine one has a higher chance of working, prob hella expensive tho
There is! https://loops.video/
.> Mind shuts down when asked to make a choice for himself
.> Is in computer science
Checks out
If there were a good invite system you could have just shared that including a pre-selected instance for your friend. That’s way more effective than trying to explain federation to people not really that interested in the first place.
you can do that on Mastodon.
I imagine it’s difficult to just round robin sign ups like that when each server has a different audience and various instances they federate with. Could be even more confusing if two people sign up from the same link and see different content, or even missing posts from each other.
for lemmy I had to try 3 times before landing on this one. just toxic shit constantly pumped my way where I was blocking pretty much everything and still getting more. I still have tons of stuff blocked though.
I had to leave Lemmy altogether for PieFed to finally be able to block an instance of my choosing, without admin support. Tbf I hear that Sync and Connect can let you do that on Lemmy.
But these Category of Communities yo, they are really worthwhile!:-)
Been debating on spinning up my own Lemmy instance and was looking at piefed instead of lemmy-lemmy lol
Heard it wasn’t on parity with implementing the full Lemmy API, how has it been for you? Any issues?
Yeah tbh it’s not quite ready for anyone who doesn’t have the early adopter mindset, and is still a project showing off what features will come to the Fediverse rather than something to use now. e.g. a good fraction of the time it will show me Notifications to comments that I cannot even see in the web UI, that’s quite frustrating:-(, and its search function is really quite horrible. Also notifications based on name mentioning (like @openstars@piefed.social) aren’t implemented yet. And it was only literally yesterday that inline commenting was added to the flagship instance.
Then again, its Categories of Communities is superb, it has hashtags, YouTube embedding, shows you the “sidebar” area for every single post, and other functionality that Lemmy lacks. One I particularly like is the ability to trigger Notifications on or off for anything - following a user account, posts from a community, etc., or like turning them off if you no longer want to receive them for a particular comment. But most important of all: it is written in Python so development should go forward much more quickly.:-)
I use it as my daily driver, then switch to Lemmy also daily, especially if I ever need the search tool for anything, or for moderation that PieFed lacks a lot of ability for (though tbf Lemmy’s cross-instance moderation abilities aren’t the best either, unless 0.19.20 fixes that). I usually spend the largest majority of my time on PieFed, and have such great hopes for it in the future!:-) Also, there is reportedly a fork of Thunder that can connect with it, so at some point such apps may not care whether someone is using PieFed or Lemmy.
Here is an example post showing off what it can do.:-)
IMO sites like https://pixelfed.org/how-to-join and https://join-lemmy.org/ should just have a normal sign up flow, and load balance between all servers that opt in.
I think the Join Fediverse site should ask a few questions (what service do you want? Where are you? What are your interests?) and spit out a small handful of suggestions. Shouldn’t be too difficult to program.
That’s what join-lemmy.org does, is it not?
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.
Ah yes, the ole Gavin McInnes method of showing the government who’s boss. Got it.
Lol. I’m not actually surprised at all that the country that just elected Junior Hitler again is literally begging to be fucked by the CCP. You REALLY cannot fix stupid and stupid is now the vast majority.
the children yearn for the vines
“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.”
Once again…meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
“This also highlights the fact that people are thirsty for platforms that aren’t controlled by the same few oligarchs,”
So they move (and apparently willingly provide more access to their info than they already need to) to a platform that is controlled by a different few oligarchs, as a treat… 🙄
Also, you say we’re right here, but the number of people already here praising this shit* because they’re either tankies simping for faux communists, or simply too indoctrinated to realise that you don’t have to choose one, and can oppose both oppressive states (which use almost identical tactics), is pretty fucking gross.
*and before they descend on me with their bullshit and excuses and their throwing of marginalised people under the bus for the sake of maintaining their own black and white view of the world - yes Chinese and American people communicating and breaking down barriers is good. However the idea that this can honestly and freely be done on their oppressive state controlled media, any more than it can on ours, or that one is somehow less oppressive than the other, is a joke, and so are the people ignoring the fact that both states have equally terrible mass surveillance and control over our communications.
Oligarch doesn’t mean a rich person, it means a person who controls the country with their wealth. Even the richest people in china are still at the governments behest, not the other way around like in America.
Lmmfao, who do you think runs the Chinese government, the workers?
Anyway, thanks for providing an example of exactly the kind of bullshit and excuses I was referring to.
they execute billionaires from time to time. when’s the last time a western country did that?
most western countries are civilised enough to not allow capital punishment.
Yes unlike the barbaric yellow hordes, their western betters have the civility to only perform executions in the streets, prior to arrest.
With a Vanguard party made up of nearly 10% of the population… uh yeah, kinda. Not in a fully idealised sense, but certainly in enough of one that billionaires actually get prosecuted for their crimes.
Yes, the workers indeed run the country, with over 99 million people in the party
They are just kids saying fuck you to their parents, same as it ever was since before the dawn of humanity.:-) Hopefully after awhile then move to a more sensible platform. This is our opportunity to help build it and make it welcoming enough to want to join…
Yes, it’s an odd one. I was listening to all the breathless coverage and thinking “they must just not like us.” It’s like school all over again!
That said, I wonder how much of it is because it makes good copy. After all, Pixelfed’s usage has taken off like a rocket and it’s app was doing better than quite a few of the larger social media platforms:
didn’t really rocket but yeah, it had a notable increase
“people are thirsty for platforms that aren’t controlled by the same few oligarchs” so they’re willingly submitting to and supporting CCP tyrannical oppression because they personally have never felt it’s raw evil, “Fuck the Chinese” I guess, huh
I mean look at it from their perspective: either there is a war with China, in which case you’re fucked so many more ways than whatever data tiktok has collected. Or you’re one of a billion with compromised data. What are the Chinese going to do? Pick you in your service industry job to blackmail for no reason? Even if they were doing that the chances of it being a you are one in a million. Advertise more directly to you? The fact is no one cares.
The desire for privacy is either necessary to a very small percentage of the population or just an icky feeling with no discernable consequences. (Even if you list me irl consequences for the Chinese taking your data, I can guarantee you it doesn’t end up affecting the majority of people’s lives in a noticeable way.)
Maybe you’re in a service industry job but maybe your cousin works for the DoD. Yeah to the majority of people it will never matter. But same can be said for researching some rare disease. Insuring against car accidents. It’s probably not going to be me, so who cares?
Yeah. That’s my point.
I mean, I’d rather the foreign tyrant get my data than the one that can actually use it. Not that I’m even on anything but Lemmy and youtube anyway.
Honestly the Fediverse needs to realize that decentralizing has consequences for the user experience. The average user is confused by the idea that there are multiple instances of a single community, for example realizing that there is a /c/AskLemmy on multiple instances can be really confusing, especially for lay people who aren’t technically inclined.
Even for those that aren’t intimidated or confused, it can still be frustrating to not have a centralized community, and there can be diminished value from not having all the users in one centralized place, e.g. if you ask your question on one instance and it doesn’t reach a bunch of users because of defederation and fracture between different instances, the truth is your question isn’t really going out to Lemmy but instead some smaller subset of Lemmy users. This dilutes the usefulness of that online community in a lot of cases - there is less content, fewer interactions, etc.
Ultimately people are only going to sacrifice so much, they may be thirsty for a platform that isn’t run by oligarchs, but the Fediverse doesn’t seem to offer feature parity for most people, as we saw with the failed migration of users to Mastodon after Elon Musk acquired Twitter.
they may be thirsty for a platform that isn’t run by oligarchs
Except this isn’t the case at all, evidently.
I doubt they care at all who runs the platform they use (again, evidently), they just want the addictive dopamine hit these apps are designed to constantly provide (the vast majority of people didn’t leave fb or twitter because of zuck or musk, they left because something more addictive and personally tailored thanks to even more intrusive and manipulative algorithms came along). Honestly, the idea that this migration is fuelled by any anti-rich/anti censorship sentiments (neither of which is met by rednote) is completely ridiculous.
Otherwise I agree, the fediverse can be hard for people to pick up, which is a shame, but I think those who genuinely do want to get away from oligarchs, the state, and their censorship, rather than just keep swiping (or whatever you do on tiktok/rednote) for their dopamine, are much more likely to actually make the small effort it requires to figure it out.
That’s also a feature though. If I want to ask “should I risk snuggling myself into another state (in the USA) in order to get an abortion - what if someone finds out?”, then I don’t want the opinions of the Alt-Right (or the Alt-Left either), bc… I am not insane?
Also, isn’t Lemmy far less fractured than Mastodon?
Maybe there should be a library of all the communities that have matching names and goals, so that an app can present them as one group with all the posts and comments merged as if it was just the one community.
The app would need some smarts so as to de-duplicate posts etc.
If someone gets confused about two different places with the same name existing then, frankly, they are not good enough to join lemmy to begin with. They’d just lower the quality of the platform, and i say that as someone who doesn’t contribute all that much myself.
