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?

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. :(

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.

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.

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.

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…

Yeah, this honestly sounds like a press release with made up “users”. Definitely part of a marketing campaign.

As a developer (not affiliated with either of those projects), you have to understand a couple of points:

1. Adding features means increased maintenance burden. Any feature that is added must be tested and maintained, and once released, often cannot be changed without significant user push back.

2. Users often have no idea what they actually want. If a project just implements what every user asks for, it’ll end up being a disjointed mess of a project. Developers have to draw a line somewhere.

3. Unless someone is paying for the work, developers have zero incentive to make changes. A democratic committee can make all the requests they like, but unless the developers are on board, nothing will happen. (Also, tying into 2, but good luck getting a committee of users to agree on anything)

The only real answer is to fork the software, make the changes and hope that either everyone switches to your fork, or the upstream accepts the changes. That is the Open Source way of doing things.