- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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.”
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It’s super funny that so many zoomers have just moved to another (more) Chinese app. So obviously the reporting has been about that, and not the fediverse. But I also don’t understand why people have a need for these apps to get big. A small community of people who I kind of know a little bit is a way better experience.
I think it’s because TikTok and Instagram create dopamine addiction with their feed algorithms. Fediverse social networks do not.
2 massive issues I have with pixelfed: No support for webp No support for hevc/heic
I don’t use an iPhone but I do use heic for 10bit. As heic is default on iPhone, this means that iPhone users go through all the hassle to set up a pixelfed account but then can’t upload anything.
That’s not good.
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.
doctorate in Computer Science
Lmfao
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.
"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users
- https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
- https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU
- https://vger.app/ if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions"
Server choice affects content discoverability, I don’t think omitting that helps in the long run.
I think that’s already too complicated. And the part about the server location is irrelevant as the person doing the invite should already know where the person they are inviting is located. It should be just a “Welcome to Lemmy, click below to register and afterwards you are shown a QR code to link a mobile app like [insert recommended option] if you want”.
you can do that on Mastodon.
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.
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.
I got through it but that’s why I’m @lemm.ee instead of something good.
I went: oh a UK instance, that’ll do. And now I help run the place.
You can always move. I started on Kbin.
Admittedly, having the service collapse in on itself probably helps with the migration…
No reason you can’t make the switch now to a better instance
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.
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!:-)
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?
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 @[email protected]) 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.:-)
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.
I think the Join Fediverse site should ask a few questions (what service do you want? Where are you? What are your interests?) and spit out a small handful of suggestions. Shouldn’t be too difficult to program.
That’s what join-lemmy.org does, is it not?
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.
… 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.
.> Mind shuts down when asked to make a choice for himself
.> Is in computer science
Checks out
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 🤷♀️
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
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
"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users
- https://discuss.online/ if you want a server located in the USA (content is still accessible from any server, the most difference latency)
- https://sopuli.xyz/ if you want a server located in the EU
- https://vger.app/ if you want an app
Feel free if you have any questions"
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.
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
There is! https://loops.video/
didnt get an email from them to verify
There’s a lag in getting emails atm because the infrastructure is shared with pixelfed, which is blowing up right now and the emails are getting rate limited
“This also highlights the fact that people are thirsty for platforms that aren’t controlled by the same few oligarchs,”
So they move (and apparently willingly provide more access to their info than they already need to) to a platform that is controlled by a different few oligarchs, as a treat… 🙄
Also, you say we’re right here, but the number of people already here praising this shit* because they’re either tankies simping for faux communists, or simply too indoctrinated to realise that you don’t have to choose one, and can oppose both oppressive states (which use almost identical tactics), is pretty fucking gross.
*and before they descend on me with their bullshit and excuses and their throwing of marginalised people under the bus for the sake of maintaining their own black and white view of the world - yes Chinese and American people communicating and breaking down barriers is good. However the idea that this can honestly and freely be done on their oppressive state controlled media, any more than it can on ours, or that one is somehow less oppressive than the other, is a joke, and so are the people ignoring the fact that both states have equally terrible mass surveillance and control over our communications.
Oligarch doesn’t mean a rich person, it means a person who controls the country with their wealth. Even the richest people in china are still at the governments behest, not the other way around like in America.
Lmmfao, who do you think runs the Chinese government, the workers?
Anyway, thanks for providing an example of exactly the kind of bullshit and excuses I was referring to.
Lmmfao, who do you think runs the Chinese government, the workers?
yes
https://redsails.org/losurdo-on-china/
Read that to learn about how wealth is not able to be translated into political power in China like it is in capitalist controlled countries. @[email protected] wasn’t talking out of their ass - you are just ignorant on this subject.
Having to post this Losurdo essay for the second time today because westerners can’t help themselves but talk absolute nonsense about China anytime it comes up.
they execute billionaires from time to time. when’s the last time a western country did that?
most western countries are civilised enough to not allow capital punishment.
I love how modern liberals sound exactly like they did 140 years ago when discussing foreign people
Oh yes, it’s because we who are carrying out a genocide are so much more civilized than them, I see. China just isn’t civilized enough, you say? And what skull measurement would you posit is responsible for that, Professor?Lol. Lmao even. They kill millions of Arabs and Asians just for fun
Yes unlike the barbaric yellow hordes, their western betters have the civility to only perform executions in the streets, prior to arrest.
Extrajudicial street executions happens in Baghdad and Boston, both are done by white supremacist thumbs exported from the USA
Thesis:
Boston
Antithesis:
exported from the USA
Synthesis:
Boston is not in the USA
With a Vanguard party made up of nearly 10% of the population… uh yeah, kinda. Not in a fully idealised sense, but certainly in enough of one that billionaires actually get prosecuted for their crimes.
Yes, the workers indeed run the country, with over 99 million people in the party
They are just kids saying fuck you to their parents, same as it ever was since before the dawn of humanity.:-) Hopefully after awhile then move to a more sensible platform. This is our opportunity to help build it and make it welcoming enough to want to join…
Yes, it’s an odd one. I was listening to all the breathless coverage and thinking “they must just not like us.” It’s like school all over again!
That said, I wonder how much of it is because it makes good copy. After all, Pixelfed’s usage has taken off like a rocket and it’s app was doing better than quite a few of the larger social media platforms:
didn’t really rocket but yeah, it had a notable increase
the children yearn for the vines
Fuckin vine man let’s resurrect vine and partner it with loops or something
“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.”
Once again…meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
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.
Ah yes, the ole Gavin McInnes method of showing the government who’s boss. Got it.
Lol. I’m not actually surprised at all that the country that just elected Junior Hitler again is literally begging to be fucked by the CCP. You REALLY cannot fix stupid and stupid is now the vast majority.
Only a small minority of the tiktok users live in the swing states that mattered. Besides, both parties pushed for this ban, and now Trump is actually going to try and stop the shutdown so he can look like a hero.
It’s like Democrats are allergic to doing anything that’s popular.
“people are thirsty for platforms that aren’t controlled by the same few oligarchs” so they’re willingly submitting to and supporting CCP tyrannical oppression because they personally have never felt it’s raw evil, “Fuck the Chinese” I guess, huh
Nah, fuck the Chinese GOVERNMENT. You don’t have to be bigoted towards the people of a country to disapprove of what their authoritarian government does.
Personally, I have nothing against the people of China, Iran, or the US (to name a few obvious examples of peoples under the boot of an unrepresentative government), but that doesn’t mean that I approve the oppression and other abuses their governments keep committing towards their own people and others.
congratulations, everyone else understood what i was saying but you
Nope. If you mean the Chinese GOVERNMENT, say that. “The Chinese” means Chinese people.
Honestly the Fediverse needs to realize that decentralizing has consequences for the user experience. The average user is confused by the idea that there are multiple instances of a single community, for example realizing that there is a /c/AskLemmy on multiple instances can be really confusing, especially for lay people who aren’t technically inclined.
Even for those that aren’t intimidated or confused, it can still be frustrating to not have a centralized community, and there can be diminished value from not having all the users in one centralized place, e.g. if you ask your question on one instance and it doesn’t reach a bunch of users because of defederation and fracture between different instances, the truth is your question isn’t really going out to Lemmy but instead some smaller subset of Lemmy users. This dilutes the usefulness of that online community in a lot of cases - there is less content, fewer interactions, etc.
Ultimately people are only going to sacrifice so much, they may be thirsty for a platform that isn’t run by oligarchs, but the Fediverse doesn’t seem to offer feature parity for most people, as we saw with the failed migration of users to Mastodon after Elon Musk acquired Twitter.
The average user is confused by the idea that there are multiple instances of a single community, for example realizing that there is a /c/AskLemmy on multiple instances can be really confusing, especially for lay people who aren’t technically inclined.
Isn’t the same on Reddit? How do people know what is the best community between /r/Games, /r/Gaming, ,/r/VideoGames, /r/TrueGaming?
It is known for instance than /r/Canada isn’t as good as /r/OnGuardForThee , but that is something that people have to figure out too.
Yes, and I think Reddit has struggled to gain the same number of users as other social media platforms - their UI is more challenging for a lot of people, and the experience of trying to find communities can be frustrating and confusing. It’s a good point, but I still found it fairly easy to find the main subreddit for a given community based on the activity going on. My point about fractured instances is that you don’t have something like two /c/Gaming communities that don’t overlap in users at all due to defederation. On Reddit a user is on a single instance with all the communities in one place. On Lemmy you have to find not just the community but also the instance that community is on (or an instance that federates with the instance the community is on). All of these extra steps are even more complicated, and remember Reddit’s interface was already confusing for lots of people.
I still found it fairly easy to find the main subreddit for a given community based on the activity going on.
It is the same here. A community that would be on a defederated instance (like Beehaw’s community) are always less active than communities on generally federated instances like LW, Lemm.ee or SJW
Sure, but depending on how fractures are created in the future, navigating which instances are federated together and where to be is itself complicated. I don’t think even the idea of “instances” is something most users are going to easily grok. It sets us up to have trouble receiving and retaining users.
they may be thirsty for a platform that isn’t run by oligarchs
Except this isn’t the case at all, evidently.
I doubt they care at all who runs the platform they use (again, evidently), they just want the addictive dopamine hit these apps are designed to constantly provide (the vast majority of people didn’t leave fb or twitter because of zuck or musk, they left because something more addictive and personally tailored thanks to even more intrusive and manipulative algorithms came along). Honestly, the idea that this migration is fuelled by any anti-rich/anti censorship sentiments (neither of which is met by rednote) is completely ridiculous.
Otherwise I agree, the fediverse can be hard for people to pick up, which is a shame, but I think those who genuinely do want to get away from oligarchs, the state, and their censorship, rather than just keep swiping (or whatever you do on tiktok/rednote) for their dopamine, are much more likely to actually make the small effort it requires to figure it out.
Not everyone has the same situation.
Sure, some people have every opportunity to research and learn about alternatives, but the number of those people are much fewer than the number of people busy raising kids, holding down jobs, etc. This idea that users are mostly idiots who are addicted to the algorithm is highly reductive, it actually adopts the cynical mindset of the capitalists trying to manipulate people (that users are just marks, idiots to be exploited, deserving of their exploitation). It’s honestly surprising to see how much hatred people have for the average user here, considering to my mind Lemmy is meant to be a non-profit, community-driven alternative to corporate apps like Reddit. You would think that mindset would come with some understanding that the users are the victims and that blaming them misses the point. Lemmy is not a perfect alternative to Reddit, as I made my point above, so blaming the users feels a bit delusional to me, and honestly quite convenient to the desires of the oligarchs, which is to ignore social, economic, and otherwise structural inequalities and manipulations and instead focus on the failings of individuals (in this case users) to not exceed their circumstances.
Maybe I’m just old but the concepts are no harder than irc or Usenet. It’s been around forever.
I think my mom would find IRC and usenet very difficult to get into using, for example. Being old doesn’t mean it’s accessible or understandable to people. Even worse, the young people (like “Gen Z”, as much as I hate to use generational thinking) seem to be less tech-literate than Gen Y, so lots of the relevant user base are not going to navigate these things even if they seem simple to a lot of us. Just the curse of expertise I guess (where you forget what it was like before you knew things, how intimidating it all was, etc.).
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?
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.
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.
43k monthly active users:
Mastodon has 850k:
However due to the community vs microblogging format, Lemmy can feel more active than Mastodon
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.
Lots of bots and bots-only instances on Mastodon as well
Maybe there should be a library of all the communities that have matching names and goals, so that an app can present them as one group with all the posts and comments merged as if it was just the one community.
The app would need some smarts so as to de-duplicate posts etc.
Maybe there should be a library of all the communities that have matching names and goals, so that an app can present them as one group with all the posts and comments merged as if it was just the one community.
Not sure people want to see a merge between [email protected] and [email protected]
Hehe. Hence the table / index that links similar communities with some intelligence.
The issue is that someone would have to manually identify is the communities are similar or not.
Personally I find it more productive to just consolidate similar communities, like [email protected] to [email protected] recently
A semi-unified view is sorta what you get when instances are federated with one another, not that communities with the same name get unified but at least both communities’ posts show up in one place. But the problem is even if you solve those problems, you still have instances that will defederate over differences in moderation policies and politics, etc. - ultimately a given set of instances will still always be a fractured subset of all the Lemmy instances. Maybe with enough people in a set of instances this wouldn’t be a problem, but you have to find a way to get that many people to show up and stick around, and you have to keep those instances playing nice with one another and not falling apart like Mastodon instances did when a huge number of people migrated. People bring drama and overwhelm these smaller communities which are maintained by volunteers running servers and moderating. Ultimately what you see is that people just quit, and there is no stability - and then users leave and don’t come back.
It’s just not a model for gaining and retaining users, tbh.
If someone gets confused about two different places with the same name existing then, frankly, they are not good enough to join lemmy to begin with. They’d just lower the quality of the platform, and i say that as someone who doesn’t contribute all that much myself.
sure, I can understand that concern, but I think there are plenty of users who might need better UI/UX for so many different reasons (thinking of disabilities like dyslexia, etc.) that have nothing to do with the quality of the content they would bring.
My point is that users bring content and activity, and that is why people ultimately want to join and stick around in an online community. Not every person who finds the Fediverse confusing is “not good enough” - I just hard disagree with you, there are plenty of good people with useful and entertaining things to contribute who would be more likely to if there weren’t barriers. Regardless, this attitude is exactly what I think undermines the Fediverse, it’s arrogant and alienating. Lemmy shouldn’t be just for the technologically privileged, websites in general should be accessible to people of all kinds and perhaps online communities especially. What’s the point of a community-built social media alternative if we reject most humans who would make up that community?
There is a community here dedicated to a specific influencer. Not going to give the name to avoid brigading, but they’ve been around for almost a year now, and are able to use the platform.
They came here when their subreddit got banned, and as Lemmy is similar enough to Reddit, they just were able to continue their discussions here. They acknowledge themselves that are aren’t definitely the most technical users.
Might be easier for a particular subreddit to move (the same thing happened with /r/196 when they got banned, they moved to Lemmy), and in that case I don’t think the problems I described matter as much because the social activity is already centralized to that one community. But that’s a rather niche situation, most users are not dedicated to a single subreddit or community and they want to consume content from a variety of places.
My point was more than as bad as the Lemmy UI is said to be, it’s still close enough to Reddit so that non technical users can just move here and not be lost
I pretty much agree with the UI itself being fairly close to Reddit, and I think a Reddit user wouldn’t find it too complicated to move here and be able to comment and post. My critique isn’t as much that aspect of Lemmy’s UI (which I think is impressive and pretty great), but more about the way federation can be confusing and thus alienating to users. The user experience (UX) overall is much worse in the Fediverse for lay users who are expecting this to be a typical centralized social media site.
The user experience (UX) overall is much worse in the Fediverse for lay users who are expecting this to be a typical centralized social media site.
They can ignore the federation aspect and still use the site. You see quite a few people here not even knowing what their instance is. For them Lemmy is just their Lemmy mobile app and that’s it
I mean look at it from their perspective: either there is a war with China, in which case you’re fucked so many more ways than whatever data tiktok has collected. Or you’re one of a billion with compromised data. What are the Chinese going to do? Pick you in your service industry job to blackmail for no reason? Even if they were doing that the chances of it being a you are one in a million. Advertise more directly to you? The fact is no one cares.
The desire for privacy is either necessary to a very small percentage of the population or just an icky feeling with no discernable consequences. (Even if you list me irl consequences for the Chinese taking your data, I can guarantee you it doesn’t end up affecting the majority of people’s lives in a noticeable way.)
Maybe you’re in a service industry job but maybe your cousin works for the DoD. Yeah to the majority of people it will never matter. But same can be said for researching some rare disease. Insuring against car accidents. It’s probably not going to be me, so who cares?
Yeah. That’s my point.
I mean, I’d rather the foreign tyrant get my data than the one that can actually use it. Not that I’m even on anything but Lemmy and youtube anyway.
I’m going to be honest, I do feel a little baffled but maybe that’s because I didn’t vibe with tik tok.
I think the pros are probably responsiveness and uptime (compared to fediverse things). Even now, hexbear goes down for one reason or another, to say nothing of back when we were the biggest lemmy instance (sorry Des, god that was a while ago), and setting up a new server is something that the vast majority of people don’t want to do (especially compared to just signing up for an account). I think this is especially the case if you mostly consume video. While peertube (and others?) does exist, video is still pretty big per second of content, meaning that sort of continuous scroll video is a big ask for a small private server.
Compared to Facebook or Twitter or whatever, its unlikely that a Chinese spy is going to rat your weed ring out to American feds, unlike Facebook or Twitter (which routinely co-operate with American cops, no warrant).
Lastly, network effect, which is the big one. If the big creators you follow (idk what tiktok is like) go somewhere, you’re going to follow them (well, not you, fellow lemmy person, but you know who I’m talking about). And your preference is that all your big creators go to the same place rather than to a dozen fediverse instances. Not that it would be insurmountable, but it would be a bigger ask.
Specific oligarchs may still be an effect (Zuck or Musk are not necessarily the most popular people).
