- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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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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.
I dunno this kinda cracks me up a little because like…if you dig deep enough, were people flame-warring on usenet or BBS (wait lemme finish! Lol) over:
“Email needs way better UX and an insta-one-click-sign-up zero-thinking on-ramp so even a single-celled organism can figure it out!”?
That’s the easiest descriptor nowadays that explains the Fediverse. Email. “What if Twitter but as a generalized service that anybody could run, like email. Yahoo? Gmail? RobertLovesSurfing.net? They can all email each other but your account lives on one.”
A better way of seeking out an instance could be handy perhaps. I found Mastodon pretty smooth with “Hey you might like these if…!” Sort of suggestions. The openness of the platform should make this a much easier task than it might be otherwise, I think.
I also think better explaining the portability of your account data would help people see the benefit there.
I’d like more kinds of nerds to have an easier time getting on the Fediverse with us, so let’s improve that, but I also think we’re less popular BECAUSE the Fediverse is more about human communication much like “The Old Internet”, and less about desperate vapid fame-seeking and self-marketing and identity-as-brand, like Web2/3.0.
A lot of me thinks we’re here because corpo-net “disrupted” our forums and blogs away.
IMHO, the commercial-verse can keep its skibidis and hauk-tuas and *“Oh suddenly I’m famous! thanks for the gold kind stranger!”*s
I don’t think it’s cruel elitist “gatekeeping” to say the Fediverse is for anybody! But maybe not for Everybody. (Imagine if major brands discovered everybody moved to the Fediverse, for instance. Yikes.)
BTW it’s 2025 and plenty of people I’ve observed, here in the U.S, still complain that email is “too complicated.” (And no, they weren’t formerly from an uncontacted tribe or rescued from a sealed 1950’s fallout shelter.)
We could make things a bit easier to understand and smoother to experience, but trying to UX-away the requirement for a modicum of intelligence required is not a great end goal, I think.
Fediverse fanboys when they realise that their obscure and socially complex software isn’t know by many people specially outside of the tech bubble, and that it’s not the same experiences that they will get with their known platforms:
As someone who isn’t tech savvy I only joined the fediverse when I had no other choice when Apollo shutdown (except of course going back to Reddit)
Heck when I heard talks of lemmy hearing the word servers was enough to spook me out of joining until last minute
I had a point in here somewhere but I’m so tired i lost it so feel free use your imagination
I know. I’m here and I don’t even know what they’re talking about, much less my friends. I suppose it’s Loop? But a quick search in app store brings up nothing
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.
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
I don’t want TikTokers on the Fediverse, thankyouverymuch.
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.
We aren’t smarter for being here, we just are loners who didnt care who would be here. I think its important for everyone to open up more to strangers especially in multinational spaces. We saw a lot of interesting conversation for the brief time people moved from tiktok to rednote, and that type of stuff dispels misinformation better than anything. You are treating it as a personal thing but it is a social tool for a community.
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.
Hear me out: if you post stuff publicly, it is out there. The issue is data that shouldn’t be public getting public
deleted by creator
“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.”
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.
Removed by mod
The fediverse as a whole has missed a huge opportunity here. I never see anyone talking about it as alternatives to twitter or tiktok, only bluesky and rednote. AFAIK we have no alternative to tik-tok that is viable right now, so I don’t know why anyone thought we could manage that one.
Loops would be the fedi alternative for tiktok, no? I think. And I agree…but fediverse has only a little word of mouth (reading your comment I feel guilty not pushing it to my friends a little), no money for these viral campaigns/swarms of new users.
the fediverse needs a simple onboarding process like “signal”, to overtly simplify it for casual users. Also, I only heard about loops today and it appears so far it only has a specialized iOS app that requires a special “alpha” mode to be enabled, and no android app. Not exactly ready for primetime.
EasyPeezy for you to say! :D but yeah if it’s not even in the appstore…Pixelfed has seen a boost at least
every little bit helps, hopefully the steady “drip” of user growth can take over, in the long run. As long as people stay on these platforms.
FWIW Pixelfed’s been growing like crazy the last couple days
Source: https://pixelfed.fediverse.observer/dailystats
edit: loops has a much smaller userbase but has also gained active users in the last couple days: https://loops.fediverse.observer/dailystats
They’d be right at home at .ml
The weird obsessions you and some users have for certain instances that you can block is truly mind boggling
Edit: lmao considering OP went to trouble of making a whole gif to celebrate being banned from .ml, I’d say they also fall into the category of “user being obsessed with another instance”. A very mature and normal thing to do!
Blocking is just shoving your head in the sand, what about new users who don’t know any better? Not very fair to them to be instantly subjected to that fire hose and is a bad look as a whole.
Blocking is just shoving your head in the sand
I already wrote my thoughts here about this, so I’m not going to re write everything.
I am very much aware about those instances.
What it actually shows, is that neither of you have taken the time to understand why those instances are hated. You’re just following the trend without knowing why
what about new users who don’t know any better?
What about them? They can find out just like any other users have. Hopefully, those new users might do more research on them than you
Not very fair to them to be instantly subjected to that fire hose and is a bad look as a whole.
It’s exactly as bad of a look as any other instance in here. There are trolls everywhere, and you pretending that they’re only there is an outstanding simplification.
You think there aren’t any bigots on .world? What would those poor new users think of .world when they see a racist bigot?
Sorry, but I did have an open mind with them. You’re the one that has a fundamental misunderstanding on the tankies of .ml
Most of their positions isn’t “The ideals of communism is good and should be pursued” which is something I have no issues with
Their positions deny basic facts in support of their beliefs, like China being an authoritarian dictatorship masquerading as a communist country. Or China has in fact led its own genocides or that Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked. Hell they’ve even been known to be on favor of NK.
And when you bring up these basic facts, your comment is removed and you’re probably going to be at minimum banned from the community. They do not engage in good faith. Period.
That is why they are so hated
Edit:
Look at this, not even 20 minutes ago, “JiveTurkey” banned for “bigotry”
Sorry, but I did have an open mind with them. You’re the one that has a fundamental misunderstanding on the tankies of .ml
Riiight. I have an alt account on .ml (like you would know if you bothered to read linked my comment, instead of replying to only a chunk of my comment) but I am the one who don’t understand that instance…suuure.
Also, trying to use tankies as an offensive term, immediately shows your true colors and how much you “really had an open mind”. You didn’t and you don’t have an open mind.
Most of their positions isn’t “The ideals of communism is good and should be pursued” which is something I have no issues with
It actually is.
Their positions deny basic facts in support of their beliefs, like China being an authoritarian dictatorship masquerading as a communist country. Or China has in fact led its own genocides or that Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked. Hell they’ve even been known to be on favor of NK.
All of this is false. Just because there are SOME extreme users, it doesn’t mean the whole instance is like that. By the same standard, when I see a Trump meme or with Confederate flags or with transphobic content, I should generalize for the whole instance too, yes?
The examples you provided further show that you didn’t really went to .ml with an open mind. I am not denying those facts, but the way you described them indicate you learned nothing. There are SO many posts already there that address all those examples and how historical revisionism and propaganda helped to muddy the waters. A lot of the things we know about those historical facts (and let’s be honest - we’re not historians. The things we know about those events, are mostly what was told to us and what we quickly scanned on a summary) are somewhat painted in a light that makes them appear more favorable to whoever has interests in the race.
And when you bring up these basic facts, your comment is removed and you’re probably going to be at minimum banned from the community. They do not engage in good faith. Period.
I’ve never had any issues with the mods over there. Whenever I asked questions about ANY of those facts, I’ve always received very calm and detailed answers to those questions. Sometimes I was happy with their replies, sometimes I was not and my mind wasn’t changed.
But certainly I didn’t go in calling everyone a tankie and telling them they’re all just a bunch of insane users who don’t understand as much as you do.
That is why they are so hated
It’s not. It’s because it’s easier and more appealing for users to get on the hate train without actually engaging with different ideas.
Just like so many users do when they go in that community to ask a “gotcha” question that has been addressed thousands of times before and then cry “see? Authoritarian tankies!!” When they get banned for it.
Full honesty here: I too cried like that at first. But it’s precisely because I behaved in a similar way to what I just described. And that is not open mindedness
Edit: to reply to your screenshot: That comment is using a lot of common stereotypes. You think “western” platforms are not censored? Try making a positive post about Palestine on Reddit or on Instagram. I dare you.
Riiight. I have an alt account on .ml (like you would know if you bothered to read linked my comment, instead of replying to only a chunk of my comment) but I am the one who don’t understand that instance…suuure.
Oh I did, you mostly just regurgitated the same points. Also, I don’t know why you keep going on and on about having a .ml alt. .ml is in fact federated with .world and .ee (unfortunately) so you don’t need an alt to engage with them. If you’re saying that you have a .ml alt so you get “treated better” over there then that’s a whole problem on its own.
All of this is false. Just because there are SOME extreme users, it doesn’t mean the whole instance is like that. By the same standard, when I see a Trump meme or with Confederate flags or with transphobic content, I should generalize for the whole instance too, yes?
The examples you provided further show that you didn’t really went to .ml with an open mind. I am not denying those facts, but the way you described them indicate you learned nothing. There are SO many posts already there that address all those examples and how historical revisionism and propaganda helped to muddy the waters. A lot of the things we know about those historical facts (and let’s be honest - we’re not historians. The things we know about those events, are mostly what was told to us and what we quickly scanned on a summary) are somewhat painted in a light that makes them appear more favorable to whoever has interests in the race.
“Some” like the fact that the admins and mods are the ones who are on the more extreme end? I don’t deny that .ml has “normal” users, however, it’s quite clear what kind of culture the admins and mods are trying to cultivate.
Nutomic btw is the head dev and main admin of .ml. but there’s no transphobia over there huh?
I’ve never had any issues with the mods over there. Whenever I asked questions about ANY of those facts, I’ve always received very calm and detailed answers to those questions. Sometimes I was happy with their replies, sometimes I was not and my mind wasn’t changed.
But certainly I didn’t go in calling everyone a tankie and telling them they’re all just a bunch of insane users who don’t understand as much as you do.
Ofc not, you’re fitting in quite nicely with the “culture”
I’m waisting my time. You keep ignoring my replies and bringing up new unrelated topics to avoid giving actual answers.
Have it your way. Goodbye
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.
It could be that sorta thing, but I think it was the same aim as the “salt typhoon” attack on U.S telecomms corpos.
A majority of the vulnerabilities and data dumps are, yes, worthless, but somewhere there’s dumb U.S officials or people with clearances doom-scrolling TikTok , and their data or meta-data is giving valuable insight into how they can be manipulated, blackmailed, who they’re connected to, whatever.
What pro Chinese stances?
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.
You realize people in USA are constantly bombarded with this kind of propaganda from their local state. Even if what you’re saying was true (it’s not), I don’t think one app from a different state is going to make any difference.
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.
Yeah, it’s seems kinda obvious that the most extreme TikTokphobes have never actually used the app. They think it looks like this:
Imagine a hypothetical hot war between the US and China where China is telling a significant number of the US population what to think.
This sounds like an imaginary situation where it might be ok to ban TikTok, but definitely not like actual reality.
