this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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I've seen a bunch of companies claiming us users are flocking to them. I guess we shall see where users end up
Yeah, this honestly sounds like a press release with made up "users". Definitely part of a marketing campaign.
Everyone I followed on tiktok said they're going to Rednote, and my FYP on rednote is extremely active with tiktok refugees. It's also been the number 1 app on both apple and chrome for 3 days. The users are very real.
Ahahah the eagle with the cat, that's hilarious
That picture is amazing, lol.
Nah, I am on xiaohongshu. Its fucking crazy. Most of the mandarin speaking audience woke up to their app filled with english. There is a running joke on the site now about US citizens "colonizing" the app. It is silly and in good fun but I cannot stress enough how real the influx of users is. Some brits are even moving there because so many Americans they follow did. I have seen multiple chinese citizens have their account jump from a few hundred followers to 30k in an hour or two. I mean you can hop on and see for yourself, it is free. It has actually been really wholesome so far and I hope the vibes continue to be good.
With all due respect, this comment is exactly what a faked "Grass roots marketing campaign" would write. But your account has an extensive post history, so thats a lot more effort than a typical astro turf account.
Also, inflating subscriber numbers and view counts wouldn't be out of the question either, remember Facebook video...
I am 100% seeing the same thing over there. It’s not astroturfed. A popular tiktoker got the idea and we’re all hopping over to say fuck you to the government.
And have all been shocked to find a very sweet, wholesome experience.
a company that now owns the most talked about app online is not astro turfing on Lemmy.
Signed up myself. Still rebuilding my FYP. Most US users I've seen are TikTok refugees. It picks up quickly though. I see less and less Chinese users and more and more US. Pearlmania is on there, Tizzyent (still kinda unsure if that's a good thing). It's happening.
Would be interesting to see if the Chinese and US communities eventually separate entirely, or if there will remain some significant cross over between them. The article implied significant cross over, but your experience so far seems less so?
Oh the algorithm is very very intuitive. It isn't taking long to connect me with content I like. The Chinese videos are definitely there, but the app is learning and adapting quickly as US content is flooding in
I just talk like that. Is it so hard to believe that there are plenty of Americans who would flock to a genuinely chinese owned social media out of spite or just bc it is funny? I haven't even seen an ad on the site so I don't think they are making enough money to astroturf nor can I find a reason why they'd want to.
Id question the intelligence of anyone who used any app specifically because of a country associated with it when it's not an app about countries. Going to Chinese apps just because TikTok gets banned is kinda silly imo, but then again I don't use state-sponsored social media like TikTok or instagram etc
The whole point is to say fuck you to America for banning their app
You can say fuck you to America without supporting other capitalist or otherwise authoritarian nations, and instead support anti capitalism by using decentralized networks. I won't slurp on Winnie's hunny pot to say fuck you to Uncle Sam, but you do you lemmy.ml
I dont mean that your tone is bot like or anything, just that they would want authentic voices.
I do find it hard to beleive, because look at the reddit and twitter transitions. They either took years (bluesky is only barely starting to gain notability, and I'm not convinced that isn't also doing astroturfing) or never happened (Lemmy userbase is a rounding error). Getting people to switch social media is very difficult. And tiktok isnt even banned yet.
Also, just because there are no ads, doesn't mean that no one is propping up the business. Someone is paying to keep the servers running and lights on, and an astro turfing campaign isnt that expensive. Social media companies either grow or die.
So if your liking this new site, power to you, but I suggest you enjoy it while it lasts, because its going to have to become profitable somehow, and that is never good for the users.
That's a non sequitur. The jump from MySpace to Facebook was practically overnight.
Hell, Digg to Reddit as well.
Remember that twiiter was not up against a deadline. There was no reason to move to move quickly.
We just had a supreme Court hearing on tiktok yesterday and it didn't look good for tiktok. That's why this is more sudden.
Why RedNote instead of loops.video or something? I'm not sure how the influencers decided to go there. Maybe that's your conspiracy. Or maybe one person thought of migrating to another Chinese app as protest and other people copied them
My conspiracy, if you want to call it that, is that I dont think article is the product of actual journalism. I think Xiaohongshu has paid for that article to be written, to give the impression that the influencers are moving to it, and its the next tiktok. One of the listed authors has never published anything else, and the site isnt exactly a mainstream news site.
It seems entirely plausible to me that someone that uses tiktok a lot saw enough folks talking about it that they thought it would be an interesting story.
Further I feel like:
are not really the sorts of claims that would exist in an astroturf campaign. I mean maaayybe they wanted it to appear more authentic, so they invited the writer to be more critical and portray the app in a revolutionary light that is pretty counter to it's culture, but I think it's far more likely to be genuine.
Definitely valid points, and I might be wrong. It definitely isnt a super glowing article, but "flocking to" part of the headline struck me as a bit hyperbolic, which is probably the root of my skepticism.
Fair, I think hyperbolic headlines are just the reality of click-driven journalism :\
There is a shopping tab, and ads are allowed as long as it's declared I think. Undeclared sponsored content gets bans.
My phone failed whenever I tried to buy something (just testing to see what it would do), and I haven't seen anything that stood out as an obvious ad.
I suspect it's looking for alipay or wechat or something.
My roommate mentioned it a few days ago, and I found out this evening that her and her girlfriend are both using it. While it may have started off as an astroturf, it's legit now.
I even dont think its Russian bots, just plain old capitalism and a general decline in journalistic integrity. Any article that hypes up XYZ, I assume is written by a marketing firm representing XYZ. :(
Just check it out, the volume of engagement is massive enough the FYP page can get very specific and very recent.
There's even a few Australians like "Yeah, they're not gonna ban the app, but here's a kangaroo"
RedNote is seeing the largest influx of new users right now. There's a few other TikTok-like apps that are also seeing some bumps, but RedNote is soaring.
Most likely banned because the rules on that app are insane. It’s made for chinese people abroad and the chinese government does not want a bunch of foreigners there anyway.
It seems similar to tiktok; nudity is not OK, but sex-adjacent stuff like bondage is just fine. Art is fine as long as the genitals and nips are censored.
If anything, the chinese government should be thrilled by the idea of Americans seeing that chinese people are just like them and learning first-hand that 90% of what they thought they knew about China was just racism and western propaganda.