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.”

  • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    58
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • mrvictory1@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      Fediverse and decentralism confused me initially but then I learned I can just sign up at lemmy.world and use it normally without having to know the backend.

    • cm0002@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      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…

    • Rooty@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      A site goes to shit when everyone and their grandma hops on it. At the risk of sounding elitist, I would prefer to a part of the userbase that hasn’t been Eternal Septembered into the lowest common denominator.

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        All right then, keep your secrets. But then let’s promote a normie instance to Grandma so she doesn’t get brainwashed.

    • Demdaru@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Lemmy’s Rookgaard. After 30 comments, you’re forced to register somewhere else.

    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • mesamunefire@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

        • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

  • marcos@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    59
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Lemmy doesn’t have the censorship and speech-control from those platforms, but it pretty much distributes your data widely to anybody that asks for it.

    • sbv@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      AFAIU Lemmy sends your username, a user ID, and URI along with your message. That’s pretty innocuous.

      • marcos@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s way less innocuous than you think.

        But yeah, it’s only the stuff that you’d expect it to send. And only the stuff it needs to send. But the thing is, the valuable data those social networks gather is almost exactly that. They will invade your privacy and get everything they can, but the real value is on that and what you read. (What you read isn’t shared here.)

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      On that note, I’d be shocked if one or more of the alphabet agencies haven’t developed a half-duplex version of the fediverse platforms purely for surveillance purposes. The openness of the ecosystem is really nice, but the default promiscuity of the protocols in question does have some specific and notable drawbacks.

    • Dearth@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not everyone who is willing to use redbook is interested in the authoritarian gatekeeping done in the outrage farm known as lemmy.ml

      You might be surprised to learn that there are plenty of leftists who aren’t interested in marxist-lenninism at all

  • hector@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Burninator05@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    TikTok doesn’t want the data of the average person becaue they aren’t valuable in any way.

    TikTok is being blocked because they can manipulate their algorithm to feed influencers to them that push pro-Chinese stances.

    Imagine a hypothetical hot war between the US and China where China is telling a significant number of the US population what to think. I specifically say it that way becaue I don’t believe any US company has a significant user base is China.

      • Burninator05@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I feel like I already answered that in the last paragraph.

        It’s litterally anything that whitewashes anything the CCP does. Maybe it’s justification for island building in the South China Sea, framing international right of way passages through the same body of water as border incursions, trying to reduce support for weapon sales to Taiwain, or trying to reduce allied responses to an invasion of Taiwan. It could also just be spreading general unrest.

        • nieminen@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Literally never seen any of that on TikTok. Just Americans doing their thing. In fact, you can actually look up content on TikTok that shows, describes and condemns the atrocities at tiananmen square, and their awful behavior towards Taiwan. And any number of things that shows the chinese government as a bad player. If they were in control, you’d think that sort of thing wouldn’t even be available.

  • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.”

    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      “They love to virtue signal apparently, not sure how that helps us takeover their country though.”

  • Avieshek@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    The fediverse and the decentralised web has a long way to go and need to learn a thing or two about UX unless it wants to join the plight of Linux distros.

  • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I do find it kinda funny that that the US gov. Was using “CCP propaganda” as an excuse to ban a platform of expression, and now many of those users have begun using an app that actually has a history of defending the CCP

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    Its OK, I dont mind lower numbers on fedi. Feels more like The Good Old Days™ of forums. More people, more shit.

  • Letme@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    Americans are populist trend followers, get what they deserve. Even China banned TikTok 😂

    • cm0002@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Even China banned TikTok

      Not quite, TT is available in China, BUT the CCP mandates they use a special algorithm for the Chinese audience that promotes positivity, education and other quality content rather than just whatever is popular

      • Letme@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        K, sounds better than a platform strewn with lies and disinformation used to fabricate political influence

    • cm0002@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yea, but it’s very early. Backend seems pretty solid, but the client app…leaves a lot to be desired lol