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.”
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.
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
Feel free if you have any questions"
.> 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 🤷♀️