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.”
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:
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
Sure, but people cannot cry about a service disappearing when disappearing resistant technology exists and just needs attention. Like, it’s being worked on, either help or get out of the way and quit complaining
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
it seems daunting to join Lemmy, and without the catalyst forcing you to you never would have joined, right? and that’s probably going to be the default exp for most normies?
I had a point in here somewhere but I’m so tired i lost it so feel free use your imagination
Fuck I feel this, I have to delete comments halfway through writing them sometimes because I meandered too far from the original point and forgot was I was trying to say
Maybe y’all should stop screeching bootlicker schill Nazi with every moderate take and replace the mods with reasonable people trying to mod instead of censoring opposition vote points.
So so so many people talking about confusion and platform design and privacy. It’s the users and moderation pushing regular people away.
Its OK, I dont mind lower numbers on fedi. Feels more like The Good Old Days™ of forums. More people, more shit.
At least we don’t have to worry too much about bots or “karma addicted”.
I mostly agree. I do miss some niche communities, though.
idk, pixelfed is doing great.
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
Platforms that work and are easy to use*
I mean apples to oranges, this isn’t really anything like tiktok, we don’t share shorts here we create and post on each other’s posts
That’s the fediverse in general on the bottom, not Lemmy.
can you browse loops from your lemmy account though? is it really federated if there’s no cross-over? I don’t get it
also ive been using this since reddit api died and apparently I still don’t get it sooo good luck to any of the normies that we want to recruit lol
There’s no federation at all yet but they’re planning on adding it at some point. I’m not sure to what extent it will work with Lemmy though. They go into more detail on the FAQ page: https://loops.video/help-center/federation
And yeah federation is kind of a double edged sword, I like the benefits it brings but it can make signing up a bit confusing, I doubt that’s the main thing stopping people from joining though
I mean still, Do you know of any well established fediverse based shorts sharing platforms out there? So far I think we only have reddit and twitter
I guess but aren’t people saying that’s basically still in alpha?
Yeah it definitely is, sign ups are still limited at the moment, I had to wait several days to get a confirmation email. The iOS app is only in beta at the moment so can only be downloaded from TestFlight. The main for you page currently seems to be just a chronological list of what people have uploaded so it’s hard to discover any content older than a day.
That being said none of those are really complaints, I went in knowing its not feature complete yet and I’m excited to see where it goes. I never used TikTok so I wasn’t looking for a replacement (and I’m in the UK so it’s not getting banned anyway)
Honestly I didn’t use tiktok that much but rednote is surprisingly different, it’s less blast short form videos in users face and more a mix of Facebook with short form video focus, honestly, you should check it out, only for the reason that I think this may actually be one of the biggest unofficial cultural exchanges in history, and it’s amazing to see the love going around between cultural barriers
Is Loops out yet?
Yea, but it’s very early. Backend seems pretty solid, but the client app…leaves a lot to be desired lol
very beta rn, but its no worse than TikTok functionally and doesn’t have any Chinese spyware
That’s…honestly a fair point; a good chunk of why I never bothered with TikTok is it has some of the worst UX I’ve ever experienced in my life.
You clearly haven’t tried Instagram Reels then
How is Loops no worse than TikTok functionally? People love TikTok for its feed algorithm. Loops doesn’t have that and it’s barely functional at all at this point.
and TikTok forced so much uninteresting content and ads that you got to a good video just as fast, and features beyond the videos are irrelevant.
I’m not a TikTok user, but that’s like the opposite of what I’ve heard from my friends who use it.
It is dogshit compared to tiktok in the only functionality that matters - algorithmic matching of content to user.
Yeah ok it can stream a video cool. That’s not worth a can of beans in 2025 - can it give you content that you want to see when you want to see it?
The answer is a resounding no right now. Until it’s consistently serving up top notch pairings of content to user interest it wont stand a chance in the mainstream.
TikTok’s algorithm was terrible, you find good videos just as fast on loops.
Tldr take your stupid smelly nerd code and feed me cats and people getting jump scared.
But what about Canadian spyware? 🤔
We will let them pay 25% tariff, so it is all good.
I have a loops account but I have not been able to upload a video in over a month, it fails on every single attempt.
I found that any video I try to upload longer than about 17 seconds fails while anything shorter works.
Also our developers are too poor to ge oligarchs.
Personally I just like the fuck you energy behind it all.
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.
Be careful what you wish for.
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
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
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