Asklemmy

No FOSS clients, nobody's got time to reverse engineer it as it happened so fast.

As for privacy, well, it uses plain HTTP for at least all the media, so, not very private. It requests less permissions than Meta's apps however, and only asks when the feature is needed (for example, the Nearby page requests GPS which makes sense). It does seem to like to paste my clipboard which is not very cool, no idea what it's doing with it. I use a VPN for it.

It's still a chinese app under the control of the CCP. Personally, I'd rather China have my data than the US, because at least for China it's useless whereas with the current administration in the US, who knows what they do with that data.

As for the app itself, it's pretty nice. Don't expect free speech, but the rules also make it for a rather respectful and positive experience overall. For what it's intended to be (share cats, recipes, makeup, and other entertainment content) it's pretty good and a breath of fresh air compared to the non-stop political fighting on other platforms. That said it's not as censored as some assume it is: if it's presented tastefully you can usually get away with it. Respect and honesty gets you far on there whereas lies and aggression gets you banned. I've seen guns, LGBTQ, cars, religion, politics, comparing capitalism and communism. They're talking about Elon's nazi salute on there and all.

The massive cultural exchange going on there is quite enjoyable. People from all sorts of countries are trying out new recipes and adapting them to their local taste. Turns out mandarin isn't so bad to learn either. Very welcoming community. Rumors are it made the chinese government consider relaxing the great firewall. The sentiment is very anti-war as people from enemy countries are building online friendships.

I approach it with caution, but I've been rather please with what I see.