American Tiktok users would rather use ACTUAL Chinese spyware app than Meta. XiaoHongShu (meaning “Little Red Book”) and ChatGPT (for translating the Mandarin only app) are currently #1 and #2 on the App store.
Pro Tip: Loops is a federated short form video platform.
Doesn’t surprise me though, that most will jump ship to another Chinese spyware instead.
Loops is great but it’s not a TikTok replacement for the average TikTok user. The average TikTok user likes TikTok’s algorithms
That is a fair point, but I’ve seen @dansup@mastodon.social talking about what he plans to do about the algorithm to keep privacy-friendly. If I’m not wrong, I recall something along the lines of having the option to self-host your own algorithm recommendation.
Self-hosting your own recommendations would be amazing. I’m on the Testflight waitlist for Loops, hope I can get access soon.
A lot of them are going to it because it’s Chinese Spyware, just to be petty to the government.
Yep, the sentiment is overwhelmingly what’s so bad about China having our data when Meta does exactly the same if not worse. There’s literal memes about skipping the middleman and sending it directly to China.
Quite a bunch are also learning mandarin to integrate better with them and a lot of chatter about how the divide is entitely made up by the government. The governments are fighting but the people on both sides are nice.
Some culture shock for americans is families in China can actually afford to stock up on food without going broke. Like, a lot of americans are seeing through the US propaganda for the first time.
They might not have free speech there and the guidelines are pretty strict, but one glaring thing is it’s just a good experience there. No arguing, no shitty political takes. The lack of constant negativity and fighting is a breath of fresh air compared to what the american social medias are pushing non-stop because it’s clicks and views and ad money.
I think it’s all a good thing: diversification of social media platforms so you get different perspectives and cultures. We get to see first hand what life really is over there and the reverse as well. And the likelyhood that both the US and China pressure social medias to silence the same discourse is pretty small. You can make fun of Trump and Musk all day there and you won’t mysteriously get burried by the algorithn because Elon pulled some strings to quiet it down. The good stuff has a tendency of being on the other side of borders.
You know the government fucked up big time when thousands of americans are fleeing to Chinese apps and learning the language and all.
Implementation is too slow - no plug and play app - why would they use it over an app you just need to download to use? I mean same problem as with all federation software: no central guarantors that you will always be able to chat with everyone, too much politics between all instances involved etc. which honestly is the whole point, but that’s not what normies want.
You can also just download loops? Afaik there is only one instance at the moment either way
No App in neither play store nor f-droid nor GitHub with obtainium please provide a link. I registered this morning (EU time so ~10h ago) on the website and still don’t have an admission Email. That’s just not normie friendly to make it a big app, while right now would’ve been the time to fill the maybe void of tiktok, the execution is just too damn sloppy.
Pixelfed app can’t play loops as well btw
Bro loops is right there
Bro, who downvoted you?? 😂
How dare you point out the obvious correct choice as an alternative.
The rednote move is mostly a form of protest. People are fully aware its a dumb idea for privacy.
It’s a bad form of protest, because it doesn’t do what protests are meant to do, but okay.
Protests are about bringing visibility about an issue to a wider audience right?
Tons of news coverage, anyone on the app store or play store are seeing the App at the top of the charts, sounds like visibility to me!
Protests have to do more than that to be effective. This issue is already incredibly visible just because of the news media covering the ban. People already know. So the protest doesn’t get people’s attention.
But a good protest provides a lens through which to put the average person in the shoes of those people who are detrimentally affected or trying to effect change.
It also usually inconveniences the institution being protested against, and the people not personally involved to incentivize them to help with a movement.
This doesn’t really tick any of the boxes of a protest from what I can tell but I’ve seen the word protest used to describe it several times.
I’m happy to listen to what the aims of this protest are and what they hope to achieve. Nobody yet has given me much of an answer.
You’re actually one of the few people who have bothered to respond who even seems to know that visibility is an important component of a good protest.
The Chinese users are actually pretty welcoming and funny
They keep harassing US users for pictures of their cats.
US Spyware app, Chinese Spyware app, whatever its all the same.
