I’ve been very cynical about the TikTok ban, and assumed people would work around it by sideloading the APK on Android phones, after it was removed from the app stores (which, as I detailed in this comment, could theoretically get random users who share the APK with friends prosecuted by the federal government and charged with a $5000 per user fine)
but this is exceeding my wildest expectations
“oh, but it’s full of Chinese propaganda!!!” people will whine. cool. don’t care. Twitter and Facebook are full of American propaganda, no one seems to be falling over themselves to ban those apps from app stores.
if propaganda is the concern, have schools teach critical thinking and how to recognize propaganda techniques. they won’t do that, of course, because they want people to be susceptible to American propaganda.
haha class solidarity go brrr. the average American worker has more in common with the average Chinese worker than they do with an American oligarch. all of the American propaganda about how Chinese people are inherently untrustworthy and nefarious is gonna fall apart as people interact with actual Chinese people and realize “oh they’re pretty much just like me, other than the language barrier”.
and TikTok-style shortform video is very nearly the ideal medium for surmounting that language barrier. it was already commonplace to have captions in TikTok videos. start captioning videos on RedNote in both English and Chinese and bang, language differences don’t matter nearly as much anymore.
I mean, if TikTok US were more like TikTok China, with emphasis on educational content, there would never have been a problem.
Don’t give a shit
On the plus side pixelfed seems to be popping off. And every time one of the big companies f up, we get a slow trickle of new users. Which is much more sustainable in the long run.
Alright. I’m finally hearing enough about pixelfed to start looking into it. Are there any good resources for jumping in?
I see it’s decentralized. Do I just go to pixelfed.org and create an account, or is this like the fediverse where you have to pick an instance to get started?
It’s part of the Fediverse, so if you’re on a Pixelfed instance you can see other servers running Mastodon, et al. Pick an instance that seems like it feels nice to you.
“… reports Chinese state propaganda branch, through western media …” 🙄
I had a hunch TikTok users weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but now I know for certain.
There is already a thread here: https://beehaw.org/post/18010336
sorry, I probably should have checked, I have no objection to mods deleting this thread if this violates the rules here
No big deal, you’re good.
I am not a mod, but I guess this happens sometimes. No stress I would say.
Good.
