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.”

  • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    19 hours ago

    That’s also a feature though. If I want to ask “should I risk snuggling myself into another state (in the USA) in order to get an abortion - what if someone finds out?”, then I don’t want the opinions of the Alt-Right (or the Alt-Left either), bc… I am not insane?

    Also, isn’t Lemmy far less fractured than Mastodon?

    • dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      17 hours ago

      yes, the bug is a feature in some sense, but it’s still also a bug 😅

      Do you know how big Lemmy is compared to Mastodon? I actually know much less about Mastodon, I just never could use anything like Twitter, trying to fit my thoughts into so few characters was futile (and yeah, maybe that’s a me problem, but still). Anyway, just completely speculating that if Lemmy is newer and smaller it might not have had the same opportunity to develop the same animosities and fractures, but at this point I’m literally making up fictions.

      • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        3 hours ago

        Blaze answered with the stats, but I’ll add some interpretation. Mastodon’s biggest problem is lack of feature parity (it seems to me, who has literally never used it, or X even when it was Twitter, so take this one with a huge grain of salt), but Lemmy’s problem is different, relating more to lack of content. Which in turn relates to lack of moderation tools across instances and willingness and ability to block trolls.

        It’s not just that Lemmy is newer and smaller, it’s that it works differently than Mastodon: here we have “thoughts”, like Star Trek or Star Wars or LOTR or using Linux btw, and so we go to where we can enjoy those thoughts. Or rather, we go to different rooms where we can enjoy discussing those thoughts. In those rooms, when we get barraged by extremist content e.g. from the Alt-Right, the Alt-Left, or just Alt-Alt, then we leave that room, and have little desire to ever return - after all, why would we? (How much fecal matter is okay to be in your soup?) This makes the same content that is here less worthwhile for us to want to consume, for the same reason that Musk’s constant Xcrements taint people’s experiences on that platform. The rest of the content is fine - but why put up with the bad along with the good when you don’t have to receive either, and you can instead just text individual people that you know irl, read a book, watch TV, touch grass, and basically enjoy life without having to ever walk back into that Nazi bar again?

        So taking a stab at it: Mastodon is too fragmented, while Lemmy is perhaps the exact opposite? At least, I almost walked away from Lemmy entirely as a result of this effect (in fact I somewhat did - I am talking to you from not from Lemmy but from a newer alternative to it called PieFed, although tbh it’s not fully ready for mass distribution yet, but it’s coming along so exceedingly nicely!:-), and Blaze and so very many others of us here have mentioned similar thoughts in needing to block much of the existing content here in this Nazi bar space. Which leaves even less content for us to consume, as well as somewhat reduced desires to contribute as well, knowing what kind of backlash in the comment section usually results whenever we do (is 100 positive upvotes worth one negative comment? what about 200 upvotes but the comment is REALLY bad? there is a line somewhere, but TLDR: toxicity discourages discussions).

        And the above thought helps explain why echo chambers exist: as an evolutionary feature - survival of the social media platforms that have it - they work, up to a point (after which they fall apart, most especially upon touching real life).

        Does this perspective help? TLDR: I want 100% of all the diversity of opinions, so long as they are offered in good faith, but I can brook zero of the bad-faith crap, and too much of the latter just causes most people to nope out, rather than find a way to stay and cope.

        • dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          Thank you, that is a huge difference in terms of size. Still not sure my speculation is useful even with that fact, but I do think size and scale will influence how complicated and fractured instances will be.