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
This is it. A strong public domain benefits everyone. It is why open source software works.
AFAIU Lemmy sends your username, a user ID, and URI along with your message. That's pretty innocuous.
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.)
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 agree that promoting the fediverse generally kind of doesn't make sense. People join communities, not web protocols.
I wonder if we shouldn't talk so much about "the fediverse" as we do about individual instances, because that's what people actually join. They get the rest of the fediverse for free, but their home server will always be home. Just like with reddit back in the day, how I may not have identified much with the reddit overculture, I did love some of its communities.
Like look at the difference between the slrpnk communities, and the programming.dev communities. That's something to be celebrated, like, come join this server - look at all the cool things we're doing!
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.
You get it. Well said.
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
Not the first on the app store, unfortunately...
I understand people arguing that a lot of advocacy work is on tiktok, hence it is important; but I really wish good people can advocate on good platforms, instead of monopolistic data-hungry tech oligarchs.
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 used to think that the perceived complexity of the fediverse was creating a hurdle for more adoption.
Now all these fucking people are learning Chinese to better use RedNote.
Apparently convenience isn't actually a barrier? I'm baffled why so many people are flocking to anything other than the fediverse.
I think it's probably marketing more than convenience
I agree. You have to either be in the tech sphere or privacy sphere to know about fediverse apps. Outside of reddit refugees I don't think anyone using the normal apps know about fediverse options or what that even means to be decentralized. I don't think it's really a functionality or convenience issue, we really need our own special interest groups or something to help with fedi app branding and PR. Not sure if that is even something that is crowd sourceble?
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.
"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."
Ptime example:
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.
Apparently some Israeli-Americans went on Red Note to specifically asked Chinese people what they thought of Israel, and users basically said they were "Devil's on this earth for killing babies" which like...damn. Even through the Great Firewall they aren't beating the allegations.
So I'm sure the Israeli lobby will get that banned next, we shouldn't worry.
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
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."
Its OK, I dont mind lower numbers on fedi. Feels more like The Good Old Days™ of forums. More people, more shit.
Personally I just like the fuck you energy behind it all.
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.
Is Loops out yet?
very beta rn, but its no worse than TikTok functionally and doesn't have any Chinese spyware
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.
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.
What should we expect from people who voted in a rich, old, white guy as their savior.
Americans are populist trend followers, get what they deserve. Even China banned TikTok 😂
" . . . giving Rednote access to their data as a show of protest . . ."
That's a special kind of stupid.
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