memes

I think that it was less: let's find alternatives, than it was fuck you government TikTok isn't Chinese enough. It was a direct answer to the government telling us which social media apps we were allowed to use. Also, 100% avoidable if they'd passed data protection instead. It really felt like the government enforcing private interests on its citizens.

Americans typically don't like the government telling us what to do. It's all fine if Facebook buys all the competition, but it's another thing when the government makes the competition illegal because they won't sell to zuck or musk.

Honestly, Redbook was sort of neat. I doubt it has much staying power as it was really just a protest, but it was sort of a historical feeling moment.

power users/businesses: "you can't go VIRAL on mastodon"

Regular Users: "yOu HaVe To PiCk A sErVeR?????"

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 known platforms:

I don't think there are any experiences on the fediverse right now that are comparable to TikTok. Loops is still beta, isn't it? If Reddit was banned and people clocked to some Chinese forum I could agree with this meme.

You're missing the important factor of the cultural zeitgeist

People who flocked to RedNote weren't just going there for an alternative to TikTok

They were specifically going there because the US government said "you can't go on the Chinese App!" so they said "Oh yeah? I'm gonna find an even MORE Chinese app to hang out at!"

I don't think you can localize to a language. You localize to a region, you translate to a language. Localization goes beyond mere translation, they are different concepts.

You mean they signed up for an app that actually works and generates a feed for you vs one that doesn't do either of those things?

OK but my wife is actually excited by how it lets her see Chinese experiences

A lot of people are going to rednote as a show of protest:

• these people have had their data mined since they were babies, they've been taught by the market since birth that their data isn't something they should value
• then they're told that it's bad that these other people can access their data, with no explanation as to why it's any different
• while at the same time being told that it's totally fine for the folks who are already mining your data to sell it to the people who shouldn't have your data

So they're basically saying "you're lying, and your explanation contradicts your previous behavior, so I'm gonna do the exact opposite of what you want"
Again because they don't actually care about their data

This is fine. I don't want mainstream users. I want niche weirdos.

Yep that's addiction it's hard to recover.

Red note just added a feature that lets you translate any comment to English (or presumably the local language of your phone number) . Online reviews and Airbnb have done this for a long time. It's a simple yet amazing feature, one that will really remove barriers to appreciating different cultures. I would love to have it here so that everyone can speak their native tongue and others could appreciate it. I always want to know what the French and German communities are up to (those are the most common other languages I see).