Maybe someday

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Perfect meme to describe what's happening. Yes, fedi has some UX issues and is not very beginner friendly.

But also, people have gotten so used to being spoonfed content from an algorithm that tells them what they want to see that they can't handle the prospect of "build your own algorithm"

Corpo-curated-content is a hard drug and most people don't realize that they have an addiction.

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I like the fediverse because there's no algorithm feeding me crap.

But from all the memes I've seen about people's "Chinese spy" perfecting their feed. I guess normal people love the algorithm

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Recommendation engines aren't the biggest issue. People will figure out how to fins what they want, and be generally happy with that, if looking is easy enough.

The big issue is that "join the fediverse" is a really, really shitty and incomplete recommendation. It's like "join the blogosphere!"

And "join Mastodon" or "join Lemmy" is bad, too. It's like asking them to "join Joomla".

You need to point people to the specific website they should join, and that website has to already have what they're looking for. People aren't interested in building something.

They just want to consume.

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I recently listened to Paul Frazee talk about Bluesky on the Software Engineering Radio podcast and it struck me that one thing they got right was looking at social media like a search engine looks at the web, instead of like a centralized platform(Facebook) and instead of like a federated network of platforms(fediverse).

If your feed is understood to be just the search results you see, then users can understand that their algorithm is something they need to work on in the same vein that they change their search parameters on Google or Bing or other search engines.

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I don’t see how this is authoritarian, Bytedance’s bad intentions are clear. They could make money from selling the app, keep making money from it in a stock sale but yet they’d rather have 0 dollars than relinquish control of their brainrot engine. It’s clear that the CCP values it more as a cultural weapon than as a product.

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It’s gonna happen in the AT protocol I’m sure.

JaggedRobotPubes

We should be able to select different fully open source algorithms from a drop down menu, and load custom ones from fediversealgorithmmenuwithdescriptions dot org

I assume that's like a billion hours of work, but, goals.

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Don't get too high and mighty, your doom scrolling like everyone else.

metaStatic

you don't have access to the algorithm though.

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I mean, I've got definite FOMO, but I generally don't feel the need to continuously search for new content. If the comms in my feed are quiet, that's nearly a good thing.

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"No algorithm" would load nothing at all. Everything is an "algorithm," including listing all posts in chronological order.

Wanting "no algorithm" is like wanting food with "no chemicals" in it and not realizing that carbs, fats, proteins, etc. are "chemicals."

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Yeah, I use "normie" occasionally and it kinda makes me feel like le edgy teen. But the problem is that I'm not sure if there's another word that quite replaces it either. Sometimes it's the only word that works in a particular context.

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You know, if this rednote thing really takes off, I don't think I can believe the whole "fediverse is too complicated" thing anymore. People are moving to an app that isn't even fully in English. That's WAY more complicated than picking a random instance out of a list (or more likely, just going to the one big one). I'm getting to where I think the vast majority of people just click on what's advertised no matter how stupid it is, and without ads (not people spreading things by word of mouth, I mean actual "ooh, shiny" ads) mainstream uptake of the fediverse will never happen. Good luck outspending the big corps on that.

Might be for the best anyway. The type of people who respond to ads probably aren't particularly fun to engage with.

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A forced sale guarantees ByteDance gets a fire sale price. If there's any way forward that allows them to sell not-under-duress, there's a chance for far more upside.

That works even for pure economics game theory, aside from wanting to continue in what they built on principle/commitment/interest in the project.

Would Zuck give up Facebook for the right price? Would he give it up for a highly discounted price of a rush sale?

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UX issues

Easiest way to sum up Facebook

FartsWithAnAccent

Guess they're China's problem now.

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Yes he would if the option is making 0 dollars. Which is the option Bytedance faces, losing one of their biggest most profitable markets when they could get a big bag or do a stock sale and continue to profit from its growth.

Also I’d like to remind you, the US is not the only country looking to ban TikTok, other western countries are eyeing it as well.

For me their malicious intentions are transparent. Hell this bill passed with full bipartisan support after congress saw the intel acquired by the alphabet agencies proving as much. When was the last that happened?

sunglocto

"Average person"?

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Why sell it, when they can just give trump a paycheck under the table to keep it going?

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Only eating noble gases.