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submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by Blaze@feddit.org to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

Thinking about this lately, especially in the context of the UD elections getting discussed a lot all over Lemmy.

If you look at the top 20 instances https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy

  • Lemmy.world and feddit.nl are Dutch
  • Lemm.ee is Estonian
  • Feddit.org, discuss.tchncs.de are German
  • SJW and lemmy.ca are Canadian
  • Lemmy.blahaj.zone, aussie.zone and Reddthat are Australian
  • sopuli.xyz is Finnish
  • slrpnk.net is Portuguese
  • lemmy.dbzer0, infosec.pub, mander.xyz, programming.dev, lemmy.sdf.org are thematic
  • Beehaw is USA-based, but defederated from LW and SJW and still on 0.18.3, so not sure they're even that interested in Lemmy anymore

Out of the top 20, there is Midwest.social and Lemmy.today but they are quite small (326 and 201 monthly active users).

On the other hand, a lot of other countries have their own instances

  • feddit.uk
  • jlai.lu
  • feddit.dk
  • szmer.info
  • lemmy.eco.br
  • feddit.cl
  • feddit.it

With the USA population and the Internet presence of the USA citizens, you would expect at least one large generalist instance based in the USA, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Any ideas what the reasons might be? Is this just a coincidence?

Edit: for Lemmy.world:

The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed per the laws of the following countries and/or states:

  • The Netherlands
  • Republic of Finland
  • Federal Republic of Germany

https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

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[-] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 150 points 6 days ago

I never missed a US instance because LW is so US focused I assumed it was the main one.

We don’t need a US instance, we need more users to support active local communities.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 57 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

.World not being hosted in the US is news to me (as an American member of it, no less). It's definitely welcome news, though!

With a tld ending like .world you'd think it's for the whole world, not just europe (.eu) or a specific country.

feddit.org itself is a bit of a curiosity since the .org doesn't make it obvious that it is German - but someone posted the full story of how feddit.de fell apart and feddit.org became the successor.

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 21 points 6 days ago

With a tld ending like .world you’d think it’s for the whole world, not just europe (.eu) or a specific country.

Indeed. It always surprises me that !politics@lemmy.world is specifically US-only. Why not !uspolitics@lemmy.world?

[-] abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

That confuses me too. I've never really understood that. Likewise, /m/news is for US news while world news goes into /m/world and US news isn't allowed.

Maybe that's another reason why folks thing it's US-based - because the magazines are clearly so US oriented. But I'm not sure how that happened.

On the brain bin for example it's PoliticsUSA - https://thebrainbin.org/m/PoliticsUSA

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 9 points 6 days ago

Maybe that’s another reason why folks thing it’s US-based - because the magazines are clearly so US oriented. But I’m not sure how that happened.

Probably people creating the community soon after the instance creation

[-] davidgro@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

I assume it was just named after r/politics - like most of the other communities here during the migration.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 9 points 6 days ago

Feddit.org is only majority German speaking (it's actually run by an Austrian foundation) because people from feddit.de needed a new home. It is not per se only for German communities, for example /c/europe@feddit.org is in English.

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[-] inv3r510n@lemmy.world 44 points 5 days ago

Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing since the EU had better data privacy laws?

-USAmerican

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[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 67 points 6 days ago

I think one reason has to do with digital sovereignty. Especially people in Europe are not happy with the dominance of US based social media sites and thus are more likely to invest time and effort into local alternatives. They are also more likely to be concerned about the near total lack of legal privacy protections in the US.

Came here to say that. I wasn't covered by GDPR under spez's site - but luckily their policies treated me like I was anyways.

I moved to kbin.social - which was probably the 2nd largest after lemmy.world. Also, it was Polish.

What I liked about that was - as per my understanding - since these are hosted in the EU, the GDPR applies to my data here even if I'm not the EU myself and am not an EU citizen.

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 7 points 6 days ago

That's a good point.

[-] yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 5 days ago

I would just like to say, thank to all instance admins for the incredible foresight

[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 28 points 6 days ago

ive seen a bit of chatter about not trusting US hosting providers. also, prolly more expensive (conjecture).

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 22 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Small correction: slrpnk.net is hosted in Portugal and not Germany, but we do have a German speaking admin and our founder is Italian.

[-] KryptonNerd@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 days ago

Much love to the slrpnk.net admin team

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 7 points 6 days ago
[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 22 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Isn't Lemmy.World based in the US?

Edit: huh. Netherlands.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 18 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Since they run their site through Clownflare, it looks like they are hosted in the US, but their server is actually in Finland (at least as far as I know, might have changed recently).

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[-] andrew@pythag.net 14 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I looked up lemmy.ml out of interest (I realise you aren't classifying it as generalist). Anyway: it says that the server is in France.

Also, if you're able to lookup by IP instead of URL, you can bypass any CloudFlare confusion, and confirm that LW is hosted in Finland.

[-] drake@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 5 days ago

Cloudflare will proxy DNS requests as well, by the way, so I’m not sure how you would get the IP address if all of their host names are proxied through Cloudflare

[-] andrew_s@piefed.social 4 points 5 days ago

Hmmm. I'd imagine that's essential for cloudflare to work. You can get their IP addresses if you have a server that is federated with them and you look in your nginx logs (so that 'if' is a big IF).

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[-] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 17 points 6 days ago

I think a part of it is that english is just the default language and strongly leans american already, so there's just no demand for a USA instance and people just use the popular or thematic ones for that content. There's no advantage in laws to prefer US hosting.

The country ones make sense because they're also a different language, like jlai.lu in french, and the feddits for European languages.

[-] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 17 points 6 days ago

I'm in the US and was specifically drawn toward European instance because my (admittedly very lightly informed) understanding is Europe just has better laws on internet freedoms. IIRC a US-based Mastodon instance (Mastodon maybe?) was seized by cops at one point for pretty questionable reasons. Our legal system gives far too much power to police and corporations to enact spurious searches and punishment.

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 9 points 6 days ago

Feddit.uk, aussie.zone, lemmy.nz and other English speaking instances still exist

Good point about the laws.

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[-] LiPoly@lemmynsfw.com 11 points 5 days ago

Last I checked, the Fediverse as a whole is kind of an European thing. Across the pond, nobody really cares. They have a very different understanding of privacy and freedom and therefore no real desire to use some decentralized crap with shitty UI and broken federation when there’s a perfectly good alternative out there that just works™️

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[-] spiritsong@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago

Interesting. This actually puts into question why certain subs does not have countries assigned. Like news should be news, not a one country spesific news.

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[-] shoulderoforion@fedia.io 11 points 6 days ago

fedia.io, which is mbin, is us based

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[-] Sundial@lemm.ee 11 points 6 days ago

.world is more or less an American instance in all but name.

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 17 points 6 days ago

Which is ironic as the Ruud, the founder, is Dutch

https://fedihosting.foundation/lw-team/#org-chart

It always surprises me that !politics@lemmy.world is specifically US-only. Why not !uspolitics@lemmy.world?

[-] Sundial@lemm.ee 9 points 6 days ago

I did not know that .world was made by a Dutch person. Thanks for teaching me something new.

.world seems to have been the default instance people went to when they left reddit. It's more or less than mentality imported into Lemmy. This led to the fact that creating a US specific instance is not necessary. .world fills that niche enough.

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[-] Rhaedas@fedia.io 7 points 6 days ago

Probably trying to mirror Reddit, which had /r/politics for US, and /r/worldnews for everything else. There was a lot of effort (probably wrongly) to try and copy Reddit over instead of finding new ways to do things. /r/worldpolitics was the original sub, but there's an interesting drama story there.

[-] smokebuddy@lemmy.today 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I had no idea lemmy.today was that sparsely used. I appreciate their hands-off approach and the reliability is pretty solid. Just wanted to say I like what they're doing here.

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[-] Nougat@fedia.io 8 points 6 days ago

Pretty sure midwest.social is run by an Ohio Nazi.

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[-] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 7 points 6 days ago

dbzer0 is only as thematic as ml is imo

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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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