this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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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...
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
We've been so butt fucked by Russian bots that that good old fashioned internet brigading is seen as suspicious. I truly weap for the world I used to live in.
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. :(
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
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 :\
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.