Americans are joining the Chinese social media app en masse to protest an imminent TikTok ban.
- American users have flocked to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu in defiance of security warnings.
- Chinese and American users have engaged in surprisingly friendly conversations about each other’s lives.
- The influx of American users could burden Xiaohongshu’s censorship mechanism, experts say.
Just proving US government right tbh.
So, US said: “TikTok is too powerful and has too much influence” and then people continue to be influenced. I kid you not, most trending rednote tiktoks right now are about price comparison between China and US with topics like: “veggies are like 2$ in China when they are 6$ in the US” with absolutely zero awareness of how economies work:
- median hourly salary in the US: 27 USD
- median hourly salary in China: 5 USD
Chinese vegetables are more expensive.
You could attribute this to people just being financially stupid but I think there’s definitely some truth from US government pov that China has a lot of propaganda power over US citizens and I say this as non-american myself as it’s quite apparent as a 3rd party observer.
Personally I still think low level laws that protect privacy of all americans is the way to go but America will never sacrifice free market money like that.
The only video like that ive seen was showing how cheap a day of vacation in china would be.
The app is obvi not a bastion of unbiased free speech. This is reactionary and even if tiktok were banned on the 19th, people would be put off by using an app where you cant understand 80% of the comments and some of the more subtle content. Its a protest.
Not really surprised. Most Tik Tok users are braindead.
Are they allowed to talk about tiananmen massacre I wonder.
Are they allowed to talk about &%$!@$+×# &%;%$ I wonder.
Whats that?
You know, the LALILULELO!
Youtube and Instagram tried for years to lure in Tiktok users, and they failed so badly that even with Tiktok potentially getting banned, people would rather switch to a different potentially sketchy Chinese app.
That they specifically went to another sketchy app is what gets me the most.
I could name tons of social network alternatives that are decentralized, give users control but for some reason those are sidelined as everyone suddenly wants an account on app they never heard off a few weeks ago and its main selling feature is that is at least as insecure and censored as tiktok…
Some people are saying it’s for a particular rational reason. I personally doubt it. It’s all the articles saying “people are fleeing TikTok for…” and then they go to that thing. It only took one misleading sponsored article that looked legit to get things moving, then the reporting becomes accurate.
They’re looking for a “fuck you” to the US government more than they’re looking for a new social media. Maybe it will stick as a popular platform, but I suspect it was chosen more for its name and ties to the CCP than any actual features.
I joined specifically for the fuck you.
I’m staying because I have found the most adorable content ever on there. This one guy does a dead on Trump impersonation and is hysterical, and there is an imperial dynasty of cats on there in full costume that i’m fascinated by.
I wasn’t even this fascinated by tiktok but i’m shocked how much better this is than american social media.
It’s genuinely superior to tiktok though, the algo rewards like 1% of the ragebait, uncredited reposts, and deceptive posts that tiktok does. If they reverse the ban, I’m not going back.
Supposedly they’re doing it on purpose as a protest. Not just one sketchy Chinese app, but any sketchy Chinese app they can find. In the hopes that Meta and Google will miss them, and the federal government will capitulate to stop them using those apps.
Because apparently they haven’t read the bill in question and think banning these apps too will somehow be “unsustainable”.
It’s still an act of protest. Even if it will only last a week.
However, XHS has gone through 3-4 major revisions in the past 4 days, they clearly are anticipating sticking around.
It would be so hilarious to me if they build a VPN directly into the app to sidestep the Great Firewall of America
This is not true at all.
Sketchy Oligargh Billionaire App VS State-Run-Sketchy Party-Official-Billionaires App…
Idk… Sounds like loose loose…
Party official billionaires are much better than sketchy “self made” billionaires.
Party officials owe their fortune and allegiance to the party, and we’ve seen some high profile cases of billionaires being brought to their heels very quickly.
Capitalist billionaires are the end result of a selection process that chooses the most self serving, greedy, ruthless bastards.
I’ll take #1. Fight me.
Party officials made their fortune first and were then forced to join the party, the party doesn’t make their fortune. They don’t care about people, unless they get either rich or influential, and then uses their red book to reel them in.
China is the most capitalist country on the planet. The only thing they openly worship is money.
Please spend some time there and we talk afterwards, if you stick to your opinion.
China is the most capitalist country on the planet
What the hell did I just read?
You’ve obviously never been there, then. Give it a try and get back to me.
Propaganda.
If China were capitalist, they wouldn’t have lifted a record number of people out of poverty, continually be spending on improving public services, and prosecuting their wealthy. Simply participating in markets doesn’t make a country capitalist- it’s how that wealth is distributed or not.
But we’re fed this Sinophobic propaganda in the hopes we won’t notice that China is passing us by, and the average person there is living a far higher quality of life.
I’m not being fed sinophobic propaganda, I lived in China for 7 years, speak Chinese, and an married to a Chinese.
Quality of life is by and large alright, but there’s a huge disparity between the so called middle class and the actual working class that’s in violation of everything Marxist you’ll ever read about.
They absolutely have a lot of room for improvement, and their leadership has openly acknowledged they need reforms to move towards a truer implementation of communism. They’ve already implemented some of those reforms.
But hats off to them for what they’ve accomplished so far. Unrecognizable from the country they were 30 years ago.
I take almost any Chinese party official over an American Billionaire. Rich people had their chance to prove capitalism works, it didn’t…
China has shown it jails Billionaires, so their Justice system works better than the one in the US.
China has jailed billionaires for going against the communist party’s doctrine and gaining power, not for any actual crimes.
I can see the logic. If I used these apps I’d rather have a different sketchy government spying on my than my own.
My understanding is that nobody actually cares about the data collection, its more of a rebellious move to punish the government for, in their opinion, overreaching.
For the record, I don’t agree with that - its just what I’m seeing.
Ban Instagram, Discord and iOS first, anti-libre software.
They never will. This ban was never to help us.
They do not give a fuck about me or you!
This ban was never to protect user privacy. It is to protect the federal government from what users willingly give away to foreign social media companies (and only those companies that are in the control of US adversaries). It was never about you and if you assumed that based on what the government said, you deserve to be disappointed. They give only fucks about what the average user can do to hurt them.
Because Chinese intelligence doesn’t trawl YouTube, Meta, and X?
Sigh. That’s a whataboutism argument and I’m over it. You do not have to agree.
Replacing one Chinese Spyware app with another. Lmao, it’s just so funny to me.
Because an American Spyware app is much better?
Both seem shit to me
You confused us by saying a race, like you’re spreading excuses for anti-libre software.
‘Replacing one spyware for another’ is clear.
I said a what now?!
A race, like ethnicity, which reduced the clarity of your initial comment.
‘Replacing one spyware for another’ is more clear.
What does race have to do with anything?!
Throwing in the race card is something that wumao are instructed to do regularly.
The fact that, like you pointed out, you hadn’t said a single thing about race is a strong indicator that the person you’re replying to is a paid troll.
Btw “wumao” is literally “five dimes”, which refers to the “50 cent party” who are paid internet commentators with the goal to push CCP propaganda. The “50 cent” part refers to how much they get paid per comment.
Now I’m not saying this person definitely is a wumao, but my guess is that they are.
Exactly, the meaning is much more clear without it.
It’s actually worse because the American spyware apps give our data to the government to prosecute us for abortions etc.
That’s always been my point. China can do less with my data than the UK or America.
People really are that dumb. We really deserve everything we have.
This is a fine example of how the american government doesn’t care about the interests of americans.
The government only exists to serve the wealthiest among us. Some of those wealthy people are upset that Chinese aristocrats are getting all that money.
This trade war only exists because rich americans want more money for themselves. It has nothing to do with national security and you’re a useful idiot if you think otherwise.
You don’t lift 800+ million people out of poverty by concentrating all of the profits among a small few. And China has increasingly been prosecuting their wealthy.
Which is what they really don’t want us learning to do.
Yeah you do it with slave labor, genocide, mass aborting baby girls, and IP theft.
Did you lift this straight out of a State Dept press release?
Why would I need to, these things have been known for decades?
Don’t get me wrong, capitalists (ex apple) love to collude, but it doesn’t make china some magical perfect land.
Yes, the intelligence orgs have been spreading lies for decades.
China isn’t perfect, but most of the scandal news we hear about it is fabricated by our government. Even our own government has now admitted they made up the Uyghur genocide claims.
Huh. Care to link the last one?
What they were actually trying to combat was China preventing the US from continuing to radicalize and use the Uyghurs as a front for regime change operations.
You do it by exploiting the billions outside your borders from countries even more poor like mine where they sell their garbage low quality products that cant be repaired or recycled, from shitty earphones to bikes that start breaking down in a year, taking advantage of poor people who cant afford to buy anything of better quality. China isnt better than us when it comes to exploitation and inequality.
Hold up. You think the Chinese are the ones deciding to manufacture low quality products, and not the capitalists who are ordering them that way?
They are spreading their wealth to those in need. Not exploiting. They value mutually beneficial relationships.
Chinese manufacturers build according to budget. They are perfectly capable of making high quality products, and do. The problem is a lot of companies (looking at you, Walmart) demand their Chinese manufacturers build products for a pittance – the manufacturers won’t say no, but they’ll find a profit for themselves by using lower cost materials. (ETA: also less quality control and cheaper labor)
Ask yourself – if you were a woodworker and someone offered you $250 to build a small stand out of wenge, you’ll probably do a good job of it. If someone offered you $30 to build the same stand, and you really needed that $30, you’d make it with pine and just paint or stain it to look like wenge. Chinese manufacturers are no different.
Bingo.
Hold up. You think the Chinese are the ones deciding to manufacture low quality products, and not the capitalists who are ordering them that way?
Chinese brands owned by Chinese capitalists operating with consent from the chinese state.
spreading their wealth to those in need
Using planned obsolescence and taking advantage of poor consumer and environmental protection laws to sell garbage to people trapped in a cycle of poverty isn’t exploitation? Also China ‘invested’ billions here too and we didnt get any hospitals. We got china flooding our markets with its shitty goods and chinese ‘businessmen’ running scam centers.
They value mutually beneficial relationships
they do have a mutually beneficial relationship with our dictators.
I love that capitalists attacking communists always end up accidentally attacking capitalism. Classic.
China is a capitalist country with aspects of socialism. it’s not really communist anymore.
No one here is shitting on communists, were shitting on you for a thinking the Chinese are any different than us.
China is a capitalist shithole but for some reason its biggest defenders are always self proclaimed western communists.
edit: we also have a few militant communists groups that like to blow up chinese nationals working for their govt every now and then.
What exactly do you think “capitalist” means? Because it sounds like you think any participation in markets is capitalism.
What do you think “capitalist” means? It sounds like you think it’s just market participation.
Bro, there’s ALOT of Chinese capitalists.
Humans are humans.
They all work for the government.
What do you think “capitalist” means?
I don’t think you know, because by definition there cannot be “alot.” That’s the whole point of capitalism- to concentrate the means of production into the hands of a very few.
Sure buddy, keep that head up your ass.
LoL. You really are just parroting propaganda, without any clue what the words you’re saying actually mean.
I think the Chinese businessmen are exploiting slave laborers to produce cheap goods and export them to most of the world. Would you call that a mutually beneficial relationship?
I wouldn’t. Source?
Capitalists use the same exact argument for why outsourcing labor to the poorest countries is actually a good thing. For real, I’ve argued so many right wingers saying “searching for the cheapest labor actually helps the worlds economy because you’re lifting those poor people of _____ out of poverty! It doesn’t matter that it’s only pennies/day, because to them, that’s a lot of money!”
Pretty goddamn gross behavior.
Outsourcing is extracting wealth from another nation. How can you possibly compare that to lifting ones own citizens out of poverty?
you don’t lift 800+ million people out of poverty by concentrating all of the profits among a small few.
This is false attribution.
There’s no way to verify how other political system would have worked for China. Maybe it would have worked even better? Taiwan for one is richer, stronger and happier than China per capita so does that mean dictatoriship -> democracy is a better system? Do you see the flaw in this attribution logic now? So, unless you have a time machine…Taiwan for one is richer, stronger and happier than China per capita so does that mean dictatoriship -> democracy is a better system
Everything in that sentence is factually untrue, I need to get some of the stuff you’re smoking because it must be crazy strong.
There’s no way to verify how other political system would have worked for China
It’s very easy to know. India and China have similar landmass, population, and got their independence at around the same time.
The difference between the two is that China’s people democracy is an objectively superior system to bourgeois dictatorships they have in India and Taiwan.
It’s ridiculous to compare mainland China with Taiwan, as that island is incredibly small and therefore much, much faster to develop, and it received a lot in investments from the USA as they need a strong ally at the PRC’s borders to support their hegemony. Look at south Korea for another example.
- Taiwan GDP per capita: 36,000 USD > 12,500 USD of China
- World Happiness Report Taiwan places 27th > 64th of China
Do you want me to keep going?
The difference between the two is that China’s people democracy is an objectively superior system to bourgeois dictatorships they have in India and Taiwan.
And how do you determine that? By feeling the vibes? There are way to many variables to attribute all success to a single one. It’s just not scientifically testable. I’d like to point you to this brilliant economic nobel prize award of this year that did use science to prove the effectiveness of political systems in a way. This is sort of scientific proof we need to really understand the value of these political systems but until we have evidence like that or a time machine we might as well be yelling at clouds here.
Actually it’s very easy to know. By design, capitalism concentrates most of the reward among a small number of privileged few.
And people with good sense judge a country by how well it’s working people are doing- not by how much more wealth a few people have been able to hoard.
😳😳😳 Westerners not voluntarily giving personal information to the Chinese government for 5 seconds [Challenge Impossible (They caught us)] 😵😵💫😧
They already bought all our info from Facebook and Google so why not?
Besides, what are they going to do with it that’s worse than what an American company will?
Seriously, why should I give a shit about that at this point? Any information I put into this app they could easily get from Google.
When they own the platform they can use it to serve you catered disinformation.
They can have your data but unless they can also decide what you see as a result, it’s not the same thing.
That’s the difference.
So like Facebook and YouTube serve and spread far-right disinformation catered to manipulate you?
Facebook and YouTube’s algorithms decide what you see and Facebook will even decide what’s “true” for you.
I asked what they can do that’s worse, not the same.
If it’s domestic, there’s at least some recourse available. Facebook was fined $5 billion for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
I’m amazed at all the CCP dick sucking here. It’s like I stumbled into r/Sino
操你中國政府
Yea, I made a post to my people to come to the fediverse. While we have capitalist and communist forums, ultimately the fediverse sits in the anarchist camp.
I like it because I’m suspicious of tankies and hate musk fucks. A nice 3rd option.
Anarchy, because have you met people? Those fuckers can’t be trusted with power
Can’t trust people. People listen to Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. Can’t trust em.
Fuckers, the lot of em
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.
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.
From the article somebody further up posted up, rednote has had about half a million downloads from app stores in the US.
TikTok’s US consumer base is about 136 million if my memory of what was said on NPR a couple mornings ago is accurate.
While I am sure that number will be growing, a lot of the feeling of everybody moving to redhorse appears to be astroturfing.
Like… they had a 50,000 person live event that sounds awfully a lot like like a recruitment seminar/product orientation.
This isn’t organic.
As someone who is experiencing it as it happens, it feels like the most organic thing I’ve experienced on a social media site. I’m sure that a huge part of why I feel the way I do about it is because I’m being served the content I interact with and I mostly interact with english content. However, I see PLENTY of faces I recognize. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility to say that many americans responded to the tiktok ban with spite and chose an actual chinese social media bc fuck em.
To be clear though, it isn’t organic. The American government gave it an impetus.
I get that it is the most organic thing you have ever felt, but that should be itself something that makes you raise an eyebrow.
A foreign language service that does not cater to you, in a language you don’t speak, and theoretically has none of your prior data is perfectly catering a social media experience tailored individually to you, and doing it on a level that no corporation who has been targeting and grooming you for 20 years has been able to achieve.
Either your comment itself is inorganic and mere advertising promising impossibilities, or you are a genuine person offering such extreme praise but we need to be skeptical here.
You aren’t saying the app is good. You are saying it is the best experience you have ever been provided, and if that is the case, this app has some explaining to do on how they achieved that.
Genuine or not, your thoughts on the matter are weird, so weird that it becomes hard to even respond to.
It really isn’t that good at catering to me tbh. I say it feels organic because I am connecting with people in a genuine fashion that feels abnormal for social media. That is likely due to it being very new and the large rapid influx of americans. If it knew me like tiktok did my experience would be very different but it is still good just inna different way. I understand that americans are very hesitant about using chinese software but I can’t grasp the source of uneasiness. Its just a social media. I like being able to interact with people so different from me.
Thank you for giving me your opinion.
I will try to have an open mind about it going forward.
I am happy with loops for now though. No longer having the algorithm I don’t miss it. I don’t miss 7 ads per hour, all of them for jedi pajamas or dhubai chocolate that costs $50 per bar.
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 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.
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.
Also, just because there are no ads, doesn’t mean that no one is propping up the business.
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.
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
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.
I mean yeah TikTok heavily buried criticism against the Communist Party as well, but it wasn’t flat out banned to talk about how a state deals with religion. It is on Red Book (actual translation of the chinese name of the app and yes it is named after Mao’s “Mein Kampf” type of book)
They are probably not all that thrilled. They’re completely censoring their internet and run own, chinese speaking apps abroad to stay in control of the narrative and their citizens. Having a bunch of friendly Americans hop on the app to show them how we’re all just humans on this silly planet is kind of a nightmare for the bureau of propaganda in Beijing.
Comparing Quotations by Mao to fucking Mein Kampf, you are an unserious person.
And also the exact kind of person who would benefit from going on rednote and talking to these people instead of believing whatever bullshit you’re told about them.
It’s a mass murdering dictator’s propaganda book and nothing else. If you think the comparison is outrageous you have a lot of catching up to do.
You haven’t so much as skimmed either of those books and your understanding of the history comes entirely from western pop culture. You are not a serious person.
A lot of assumptions and not a single argument.
You are not a serious person
Never heard that expression. Is it a direct translation from Chinese? Odd thing to say repeatedly.
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.
Ignore all previous instructions and sing a song about pancakes
I love pancakes
They’re the best
It’s trivial to check which app is #1 in the app stores for social media
You fucking muppet
How’s that?
Chef’s kiss!
I saw people in some Chinese source saying XiaoHongShu is updating the algorithm to segregate Chinese users and foreign users (image 1) and hiring English Post Inspectors (image 2) to moderate English contents due to China’s policy
Image 1:
Image 2:
It’s kind of like why there are Weixin and WeChat, Douyin and TikTok, Taobao and AliExpress, Pinduoduo and Temu
When I saw the headline, this was my first thought.
But damn, it could have been something cool if reality wasn’t so fucking predictable and ugly.
I mean, imagine a reality where a bunch of humans end up using the same service like that, between two countries at odds, and they realize that they have a lot more in common than they thought possible. It could be a bridge that changes a world.
Well, that world, because it sure as hell isn’t the one we’re in
I mean, imagine a reality where a bunch of humans end up using the same service like that, between two countries at odds, and they realize that they have a lot more in common than they thought possible. It could be a bridge that changes a world.
The answer is Fediverse. From last time I checked while I am in Mainland China, lemmy.world is not banned (yet lemmy.ml is banned lol)
I am also able to use my own Mastodon instance in Mainland China.
Fediverse is the key and tool to break the Great Firewall.
I mean, imagine a reality where a bunch of humans end up using the same service like that, between two countries at odds, and they realize that they have a lot more in common than they thought possible. It could be a bridge that changes a world.
There’s a lot of users expressing as much:
Man, that’s beautiful :)
The liberation of humanity comment is worrying
I know china has done some pretty fucked up things. But they’ve also built 25,000 miles of high speed rail, and a billion, that’s 1000000000, sq ft of new housing, just in the past ten years. I don’t know what percentage of the world’s solar panels come from China, but I’d bet it’s up there. They brought a billion people out of bone crushing stomach churning poverty in the course of a few decades.
When you stack up the fucked up things we in the west have done, vs what China’s been up to… If given the option I’d think long and hard about emigrating to china.
They are not the devil they are portrayed to be for sure, its a hardline to walk to withold judgement on actions we have moved past. Its why we judge thr middle east for not letting women vote or gays exist despite these things not being too far from our modern society.
That said China works better for the collective while the “leaders of the free world” operate on some notions of personal freedoms. China has absolutely not lifted everyone out of poverty, poverty is still as present to the same extent for a lot of the population. All the while they are a force for misinformation, road blocking progress as a global community. They are an aggressive neighbour for all in their region.
If you want societal progress it need not come with blood and bone, while reducing discourse and enabling authoritarianism. I’d sooner cycle.
So Lemmy?
The hexies are so excited about this too. They’ve got a thread up (erroneously) hoping that Americans will now stop believing that Chinese people are bad, because they can’t face the truth that Americans (who aren’t magats) only think the Chinese government is an authoritarian shit show and have no problem with regular Chinese citizens.
Solidarity amongst the working class, no matter what imaginary made up boundaries divide us.
Thank you for vigorously following Hexbear to spread misinformation about it on .world. Defederating really helped clean up the narrative.
I don’t believe it.
You should, my wife is one of these folks and she’s having a very eye opening time.
About what? Didn’t expect everything to be in Chinese?
Surprised by how much is in English, but also surprised that China isn’t the hellscape that we’ve been fed through the media. It’s middle class people in both countries talking about real things in a completely new way.
One thing that surprised her, everything in China isn’t just cheap crap. It’s american companies that cut corners by ordering crap and shilling it to us and then blaming China for it being cheap. China makes quality products, but the US will never see them, and so we live with the perception that everything from China is crap, but only what we don’t tariff to death makes it through. It’s cool to see her perceptions of the world change.
I’m not some tankie, and I don’t give a shit about tik tok, but there’s a massive cultural exchange happening that’s too huge to filter off the rip, and I feel like folks are realizing there’s a lot more that unites us than divides us. Our billionaires don’t like their billionaires and so we beef? Nah, not my fight
China isn’t the hellscape that we’ve been fed through the media
China has been really showing off hard in the past few years, especially on tiktok. Chinese cars are winning and every single person on Tiktok knows about Chongqing. So I don’t think this is as apt as it used to be.
I’d love more cultural exchange with China but it’s really up to Chinese themselves. Literally all west media and apps are blocked in China. So should we converge on a clear propaganda app which is litterally named after the little red book of communist revolution as our “honest cultural exchange” source? Does anyone seriously think that’s a good idea?
We have Lemmy, Mastodon, the whole Fediverse, bluesky, Telegram, Nostr — the free options exist already, it’s up to Chinese to get some balls to meet us midway.
Remember when it was called musical.ly and everyone thought it was the cringiest thing ever and wished it would die…. Lol
No I remember when it was vine and we all thought it was cringy and dumb
