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.”

  • m_f@discuss.onlineEnglish
    61·
    12 hours ago

    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.

    • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
      31·
      12 hours ago

      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.

    • CaptDust@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      171·
      12 hours ago

      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.

      • jonne@infosec.pubEnglish
        1·
        3 hours ago

        You could have a short questionnaire that works as whittles things down based on interests or other parameters (eg. How strict you want the moderation to be or whatever). That could also be used to suggest some optional first follows.

    • Grass@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      151·
      12 hours ago

      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.

      • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
        71·
        12 hours ago

        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!:-)

        • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
          51·
          11 hours ago

          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?

          • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
            4·
            10 hours ago

            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.:-)

        • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukMEnglish
          7·
          9 hours ago

          It doesn’t ask where you are, just the language. As it’s for Lemmy only, it obviously doesn’t ask what service you are looking for too.

          Join the Fediverse needs something much more like that but with the extra options. As it stands you have to do way too much scrolling, reading and clicking.

          • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.ukEnglish
            3·
            43 minutes ago

            … and when it asks what language, it doesn’t differentiate between English and American Englishes, for example, and you have to scroll down quite a long way to get shown Feddit.uk.

            Sometimes you just want to know everyone’s on the same page when you talk about biscuits, pants and fannies.

    • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.netEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      If account migration is easy, that’s probably ideal. If you use something for a while and find yourself drawn to a specific server, and moving is easy once you’ve got a handle on the service, great. That could also help smaller communities who want to vet new members, allowing them to see post/comment history.

      • Care_anew@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        4 hours ago

        Decision fatigue. It’s a well known concept and can even be used in marketing as a standard manipulation tactic. If you have a job that has you making strategic decisions all day though, then you’ll get decision fatigue. Then the last thing you want to do is mull over a bunch of server details to make the right choice 🤷‍♀️

        • secret300@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          11·
          4 hours ago

          Then don’t. Just pick one at random. Use it for a bit. If you don’t like it try another. That’s what I did with Lemmy, Linux, fuck even the menu at this Mexican restaurant near me.

          Try something, see if you like it. Pick something else if not. It’s that simple

          • Care_anew@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            4 hours ago

            For a lot of people it’s not that simple. Once burnt out on decisions, they just don’t make one. Picking one at random is still a decision and one that requires at least an ounce of what picking a server even means here. It sucks but it’s the truth

    • 3dmvr@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      9 hours ago

      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