Why is Lemmy so US-centric? The largest instances are in Europe, aren't they? So why does it have to be US news trolling as if it were Reddit?
The US population is grouped together in one giant pool instead of spread out by state like Europe is grouped by individual country. We focus on national news that affects the large population, and stuff that happens on other states becsuse of the shared identity, while European countries don't have the same kind of European Union shenanigans that affect all of Europe and mostly post about country level stuff. Communities in languages other than English also tend to be posted in separate communites further separating their discussions from the general purpose communities.
We are also louder, which also contributes, but that is not as big of a deal as the sheer numbers.
plus, you know, inheritors of the British empire - practically an unbroken chain of hegemonic anglophones who refuse to learn another language
While a huge portion of the population chooses not to become fluent in a language, because nearly everything within hundreds of miles of where they live uses the same language by default, we still provide opportunities to learn languages and in some areas people are commonly bilingual.
It can be hard to maintain a language without frequent exposure. I had some classes in Spanish and French, but without a large population that speaks either language in my area I just forgot it over time. Moved tons place where we do have a lot of people who speak Spanish and English, but since I'm not part of their community my exposure is limited to the occasional festival or signage as nobody needs me to impose my attempt to learn their language on them.
It isn't all about refusal, it is mostly lack of exposure.
I am actively working on learning spanish as an American, because I want to be able to speak to people when I go to central and south America.
I have far less interest in learning french or german, because Europe is both expensive to get to for me, and expensive to stay in relative to other places I have equal interest in travelling to. And besides that, if I were to travel to Europe, I've been told that everyone there already speaks english anyway. And besides that, I've been told that even if I try to learn french or german, the locals will just speak to me in English anyway since it is faster for them. Due to this, learning these languages largely becomes an intellectual exercise performed for its own sake. And if I'm going to spend hours doing some sort of intellectual hobby, I could just as easily want to learn to paint or play the guitar or perform statistical analysis on the different varieties of weeds in my back yard.
Presumably you're browsing english-language Lemmy
Most people are going to want to converse in their native/primary language, and by numbers that means a lot of Americans who are, of course, primarily concerned with American issues
There's also the fact that America is a huge player on the international stage, so American issues can have a lot of repercussions in other countries
And if you haven't noticed, America has kind of a lot of shit going on and there is a lot to talk about there.
Everyone slows down to watch the car wreck.
Because Americans are louder and tend not to confine their activities to the country-specific forums
As an American, I can say one of our defining characteristics is we believe we belong everywhere on the Internet. There is no space that we are embarrassed to enter. Reminds me of the Americans showing up on Chinese social media and acting like they owned the place.
Because it's the most newsworthy country at the moment. The most powerful country in the world is crashing before your eyes, whilst the rest of the world mostly continues on as it was. Yeah, some noteworthy things are happening all over the world, but that's not as dramatic as the fall of arguably the most hated country in the world. And everything from genocide to climate change, disease and general suffering can be at least tangentially related to the disaster that is the US and it's administration. I mean, what noteworthy things are there to chide Sweden for? Anything? Is it comparible to the horrors and despair that the US is causing? There's your answer.
I checked the news in the biggest newspaper in sweden, and there's this story about a bus that scraped the roof while driving under a bridge. Must have been scary for the passengers. Luckily it wasn't going that fast. And there's a list of schools where you actually get paid to study so you don't need student loans.
For Norway a good chunk of the news on our state-run newspaper is related to the US as well. Especially the recent Epstein stuff
Other than that it's Israel/Palestine, Ukraine/Russia, some other international news, sports, the current heatwave, a little about nature, a little about new infrastructure projects, a news story about hate speech, and a couple other misc stories
That's awesome that that's the worst news from there. And I love Sweden and Norway as that's where my family originated from. What I wouldn't give to have been born in either of those countries. Unfortunately I'm one generation out of being able to easily go back.
... but that's not as dramatic as the fall of arguably the most hated country in the world
Easy there, lets not forget Israel. America is maybe right behind them though.
That's why that key word, "arguably" is there. Russia is also working for that title.
Most of the things happening in Israel now is because of the US though. Netanyahu really felt empowered by Trump becoming president, and rightly so, because he can manipulate that orange toddler into doing anything he wants.
Israel wouldn't be high on that list without the sweetheart funding it gets from the United States to wage its atrocities.
what noteworthy things are there to chide Sweden for?
They're been losing Social Bastion points for a while now and are turning a hard right towards Aryan Master-race ethos.
Most of europe actually.
Almost at all times...
Because those at the head of the whole government thingy fuck it up for almost half of the world...
Have you seen the shitstorm we're (U.S.) in? We're like the worst car crash you've ever seen and then the ambulance also crashes then the fire truck blows up and then aliens come down and start attacking...kinda hard to look away.
You forgot the train derailment and plane crash...
I thought I understood US politics...even if it was by osmosis given the sheer volume we're exposed to...but lately I felt like I only understood the dem half...after the election I'm not sure and by now I have this "there is no hope of understanding this mess, different culture, different values" that I get from trying to understand Indian politics.
I mean honestly this is the most deranged and worst it's been in my ... at least adult lifetime. I think a lot of the political mess we're in is tied into our appetite for some pretty terrible pop culture. Yes, yes, we have moral and intelligent and sane people here too, but the way that we have leaned in so hard to trashy reality television, infuencers, anything to grab your attention and reward it monetarily...hell we have a reality tv president. It's not the only reason I think we're in the mess, but I think we've been primed to accept more and more outrageous behavior cause we've always been over the top and big and loud. I always assumed I'd live in a democracy, it was just a given. This is the first time I'm doubting it.
As an American I think the same way.
We’ve always really had two parties but historically they were not radically different. While I have certain tendencies, I’ve always understood the other party/perspective and sometimes voted for those candidates.
But now I have no clue what half the country is thinking. I don’t understand what happened to let the current crop of criminals attain leadership or get away with so much. Sometime I think it’s the “leopard eating faces” scenario, but sometimes I think it’s the toddler having a tantrum and knocking over the table scenario. Sometimes I think it’s just narcissists who can only think in the current time with no connection to the future. Sometimes I think people have no abstract thinking anymore and sometimes I think they’re all just gullible and easily manipulable. I can’t even have empathy for them because I can’t tell whether they deserve pity or need a scolding or need to stick to their sandbox.
Or if you’re talking about the mechanics of politics, that too. We have ways we’ve done things traditionally, according to laws back to (and even before) the constitution found our country. Apparently that doesn’t matter anymore
Please. Let it diversify.
As a US dweller, I'd love it to be anything but US centric.
I think I know what you mean. When I go on holidays, the last place I want to spend my days is in Irish pubs. The good ones can be lovely, and it’s nice to meet new people from home, but it’s not why I’m there.
The US is the largest English-speaking country by far and this post is in English. Switch to another language and you'll see less US stuff.
That has nothing to do with anything. You will obviously not be aware of it, but by far the greater majority of English speakers you encounter on the internet are not actually from an English speaking country, and definitely not from the US. That is because English functions as the lingua franca of the internet, so we have to use English to be mutually understood.
Most of us came from Reddit, and Reddit is predominantly Americans.
and unfortunately a lot of people don't want to leave the reddit behind
If they’re that addicted to reddit’s way of doing things they can stay.
No, the majority of users on reddit are non-Americans. Americans are just the biggest national group of users, but they are a minority. You are more likely to be talking to a non-American than an American on reddit.
yeah, I want to hear more about which of your former ministers have shit themselves at McDonalds!
I think only Americans like announcing they are Americans. Working with tourists in Europe spotting Americans was easy because the first thing they would say is "hello, I'm from America", or "I'm from Califooornia"
Never had this happen with any other nationality.
I need to change that. From now on I'll loudly announce I'm from Earth
Or whisper it like a secret for extra lols.
or, you know, keep it to yourself unless asked? No one needs to know which planet you come from, why does it matter if I'm from Mars? Will you see me as inferior because I didn't have a good atmosphere or liquid water in my childhood and my favorite color is red because that's what we had?
I think its because how people speak in movies, americans speak like a script writer
Strange. Working with tourists in the US, you can't get Europeans to NOT tell you where they're from. Pretty much everyone who speaks English will tell you where they're from and even the ones who don't usually still do.
I think its a subconscious need to feel like people are interested in you as you are in them.
As an American, the first thing you spot is my overweight ass asking for a bucket of Mayo.
I never said "I'm an American" or any of that in my life.
My guess is because the US is a dumpster fire that is exploding right now, and let’s be honest: who doesn’t slow down to “rubber neck” a dumpster fire when they’re passing by?
Once we’ve completely fallen on our asses, and worn ourselves out crying like little babies, I’m sure the noise will subside.
Until then you probably want to get a lemmy client that supports keyword filtering and you can at least lessen the noise a little.
As an American, I don’t know if “rubber necking” is a known colloquialism outside of the US. So, if you don’t know, it’s a term used to refer to the assholes on the road who slow down to gawk at traffic accidents as if they’ve never seen one before; very, very annoying.
From around 7PM - 9PM HST, lemmy is almost 100% German.
No idea where/what time HST is, but I agree, there is a "German time", not so for French, Italian, ...
https://www.timetemperature.com/tzhi/honolulu.shtml
My read is that this is about when Germans are waking up, so there are many people posting whatever the new's of the day is. It just so happens that it corresponds with the time of the evening after work where I might browse lemmy while watching a show.
It would already be nice if posts specified they are about the USA instead of just blurping out something about "the civil war" for example instead of "the USA civil war".
One can dream!
There are several of these already, which one are you talking about?
United States of Bolivia: Civil War: Federal War (1898-1899)
United States of Colombia: Civil War: The War of a Thousand Days (1899-1902)
United States of Venezuela: Civil War: Federal War (1859-1863)
...
Do you agree that Israel should stop receiving any and all US aid and end the genocide on Palestine?
How the fuck is that related to this thread?
I agree to you stfu instead of polluting the discussion.
Most likely English-centric.
For me, english is my internet language anyway so...
Donald Trump and the current iteration of america are train wrecks. It's hard to look away no matter where you are in the world. Super power countries don't fall every day.
if there were countries in Europe that were as politically idiotic as the US has been for literal decades I'm sure you'd read about that place more than the US.
I live in Canada and as far as political news goes here...it's dreadfully boring and I imagine it's the same for most of Europe. It's always been like that. even regular news here it's boring. nothing dramatic happens because unlike the US most of the world has their shit together when compared to the US.
I miss the days of boring US politics
Because in a 24 hour news cycle the most interesting story gets the most airtime? Also we likely outnumber you on any engagement. I can't tell you the last time I saw a story from Canada or Germany or the uk that beats felonious demented white nationalist pedophile attempts to ruin entire world in narcissistic crashout. Even if a euro story is important, There are likely less lemmy users who even have a chance of seeing the story much less understand the context enough to engage. Even chinese people are engaging with America's shit show on xiaohongshu. It's a matter of worldwide impact on every platform. Everyone here to watch Nero fiddle
This is one of my main motivations to learn other languages. The internet is tedious if you only speak English.
That's a good point. I've already been tempted to pick up French for weird cartoons like peepoodo, but there's so much Internet I don't see at all because English
French is fun!
Well to read at least. I can't speak it worth a damn. Sentences are like a single word.
The good thing about English is that it's a slut. So many words and terms come from other languages that it's easy to have a basic word base to start with from other languages. As easy as some Americans dismiss Spanish influence, it's hard to not have at least some kind of understanding of at least some words. And being a Latin language, it's not that hard to grow from there. Hell, even the warnings and manuals for equipment will accidentally give you exposure as you look for the english version. Hablamos por uno ràzon. Broken ass Spanish, but it gets the point across.
I'd spend time in All and filter out a bunch of US-centric news communities if I was you. I did that with loads of communions I didn't want to see stuff from.
Why have you filtered out your communions, my child?
It is important that you not desecrate the sacrament and accept the blood and body as they were intended, not strained or filtered.
Also, please do not chew the wafer.
It took a long time before I started actively filtering. My current feed is mostly what I'm asking for, at this point.
Like a Pandora station.
i did that too, since they start banning for some misconstrued comments.
There are just more of us than any single EU country.
"We're the most powerful country in the world for a few more years!" -- Homer Simpson
a past time
\sigh
The internet as a whole is pretty US centric
There are however exceptions (for example: china)
In pretty sure my instance is based in Germany, or somewhere in Europe at least. That doesn't really matter. You can belong to an instance hosted anywhere, and also I don't trust data privacy at all in the US so I'd rather not have my home instance be hosted here.
Presumably somewhere close enough that they don't want to risk breaking UK law as it's blocked here. Not sure if any other instances will follow. I think all of lemmy is probably against UK law now. Hope we will always have some instances or its small enough to get ignored.
There are 27 countries in the EU, there is only one USA. Most people don't seem to care about each other's national happenings.
That's so fascinating.
As an American, only peak news from Mexico and Canada gets on my radar. I don't know shit about Brazil, Cuba, etc. and with my shit American education system, I can't even name the South American countries.
So if you're in Italy, you don't give a shit about Austria, Switzerland, or France and their big news?
Yes, we do.
I remember in primary school that we were tasked with learning the names and capitals of all countries on the planet, continent for continent, so there is an early taught awareness of all countries, as well as a culture for backpacking, experiencing and adapting to other cultures. As a Norwegian, most news here are about here, and only major headlines from other countries are mentioned in the news, like the upcoming doctors strike in UK in the news today or the power outage in Spain a while back. Some more news from Sweden though, as it is our closest neighbour and the country we visit the most.
Maybe it has to do with your language settings as well? I imagine filtering out English will make your experience much less US-centric.
Filtering out English is a bad idea because 80% (no quote just an estimation) of the content here is written in English.
Yes, that is the implication I was making to answer the original question. The majority of content here is in English-->the majority of English-first users are from the US-->this is why Lemmy seems so US-centric.
I was being a little obtuse because it's like a French-filtered user asking why social media seems so France-centric even though there's lots of social media in Africa--there are other languages that people use that you're not necessarily seeing on your feed.
It's good if you filter out that shit based in keyword. I've had so much less stress by filtering out any posts with the words {"Trump","Vance", "Putin", "Israel", "Republican", "Democrat", "Fart Sandwiches"}
Damn, all my Fart Sandwich memes getting blocked. 😭
Not all of them! Just the ones that have more than one sandwich in them
Well mine is, but only because I blocked a lot of German and French language instances, because I don't speak those languages, and therefore don't see that stuff anymore. Before that like half of the posts I saw were in German.
Also I still see plenty of Canadian and UK topics all over the place.
But you are missing out on the Stör memes, and all the ich_iel posts.
I will confess that I don't get the ones about German politicians.
Whenever I see a meme in German, I'm sad I'll never understand it, because I'm definitely not going to the trouble of running it through a translator.
Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Chaos makes the news. Boring doesn't. Countries that are currently being run by mostly functional adults don't find themselve in the news as much as countries that are a literal dumpster fire being fed by boat-loads of orange toddler piss.
Ergo...the U.S. news is everywhere at the moment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
You do the Jaguar math.
To be fair, rest of countries added up have more English-speaking population than the US. Of you would have to also account for the internet access and general social media presence.
But there is a difference between a population who speaks English and a population that speaks English as a first language.
There are five countries that have a larger English speaking population than the UK: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Yet, a lot of the cultural output of those nations isn't in English because those countries have first languages which take priority.
So the commenters of a post may be fairly diverse, but the post is likely going to come from the perspective of someone who speaks English as a first language. In that case, English speakers are likely going to know more about what is happening in the UK over India because British news is likely written in English while Indian news is going to be written in a wider variety of languages.
Because the average US citizen doesn't speak a 2nd language while most of Europeans know English, so the focus shifts towards that
The United States is a giant nation in the English language. It comprises of a majority of English as a first language speakers and a large percentage of English speakers overall. American media output is also going to be primarily in English, including local news.
In contrast, a nation like Germany is likely going to speak in German when possible. This likely includes media like news. So, when it comes to news articles, I don't expect English news from Germany to be written in anywhere near the quantity of English news written about California.
I feel like it would be like asking why Portuguese media focuses on Brazil.
The majority of English speakers on the internet are non-Americans. In fact the majority of English speakers on the internet are not even from an English speaking country. That is because English is used as the international language on the internet.
So no, that is not the answer, even though a lot of native English speakers in this thread seems to think it is.
I've mentioned in other cases that a lot of cultural post content is generally created mostly by people's first languages. Local news is likely going to be written in the local language. Discussions on media are likely going to be in the language the media was produced in unless it is a major national hit.
I've mentioned that five more countries have English-speaking populations larger than the UK, but you're likely going to see a lot more post content on the UK over Indonesia because local Indonesian media likely isn't producing the quantity of English coverage as the UK. And I don't expect that to change, as such a change would mean killing local languages.
You're focusing on the nationality of the readers. Most of the people arguing that the USA is the largest English-speaking country is focusing on those providing the written content.
Post content. That’s all that matters.
English speakers will talk about the UK/Canada/Austrailia/etc. once one of them are on fire/falling into fascism as well.
No, English speakers will talk about anything because speaking English on the internet says nothing about where you are from. It is the international language of the internet, not tied to any specific country.
We have Florida Man and Europe doesnt
Because people engage with it regardless of wether they live there or not.
It's possible that most English-speakers on this planet are in the US.
Maybe native speakers or English only speakers. But over a billion people speak English (approx, per Wikipedia), and US only accounts for a fraction of that.
Even then, though, the US accounting for 1/5 of all English speakers, and the majority of native (L1) English speakers, is notable all the same.
Sure. But people upvote content about their own nation, and the US is the largest single population of english speakers. Maybe India would beat us out, but they seem to have their own internet that they stick to for the most part.
No, most English speakers on the planet are not from the US. In fact most English speakers on the planet are secondary speakers, and not even from an English speaking country.
English is used on the internet as an international language which enables people from all over the world to understand each other.
Because US news are the funniest and the most absurd.
USA! USA! USA! We’re number ONE!
People are drawn to trainwrecks. The weirdest part of living outside the US is the number of people who still obsess over the US.
The weirdest part of living outside the US is the number of people who still obsess over the US.
Do you honestly find it weird that people all over the world obsess over the one country in the world that constantly sends its enormous military all over the world?
Also the country that collapsed the world economy when some guy in Florida was late on a mortgage payment.
Canadian, here. Kind of hard to ignore our giant idiot neighbour to the south.
I mean I feel like Canada is a given. The reference in my mind was China.
I guess in retrospect, people in China obsess over the US about as much as Americans obsess over whatever China does, so in that context maybe it's just superpower rivalry.
But it is something when you go to other countries like Mongolia where people don't generally know English, yet you walk into a random shop and they're still playing Taylor Swift over the radio, and the first question asked when people learn you're American is what you think about Trump.
Europe is trying to solve their problems while we are just throwing fuel on the fire.
have you set a preferred language? if you do, lemmy filters posts in other languages
Because most users of lemmy are from the US.
I think we might be noisy.
I made my account so I could block all the "news" /politics , which are mostly US news/politics XD. There is no community for my country here as far as I know, and if there is, and it's anything like it's counterpart on reddit, then also no thanks.
Are you sure? Seems like the news magazines are very centered on Israel and Palestine.
What do you mean?
I am Canadian at heart
Does maple syrup run through your veins?
The US has a lot of vital internet servers, is the source of a lot of current population movies and TV shows, and other widespread things that make people pay attention to it.
Internally, a lot of our "news" channels are sensationalized for higher ratings, so if we want to actually learn anything we tend to seek out the internet. Specifically, other "regular folks" online, who can maybe relate.
Because Americans take over platforms and force them to obey American rules while pretending to be neutral. For example, LemmyWorld touts itself as an instance for everyone which is hosted in Europe.
But its /News and /Politics community discourse is forcefully limited to the USA. This is incredibly weird if you stop to think about it for a second.
Imagine if .ml had a /Politics community where the only allowed politics was China. And an unreliable biased Chinese website was to grade sources a credible, instead of the unreliable American MBFC website. Nobody would think that would be normal. But do the same thing for America and everything is fine.
I think there was a conscious effort to emulate reddit subs, which is daft but that's what happened.
Did they get Ghislaine Maxwell to run /worldnews as well?
Yeah imagine that
Would be even weirder if people started going into meltdown mode every time a non-mbfc approved site was posted on .ml. Screaming at the .ml mods to delete the post and constantly linking their Zionist-ran mbfc site because they have been indoctrinated into using it.
Except if the comments are german.
In that case:
𝔇𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔢 𝔎𝔬𝔪𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔞𝔯𝔰𝔢𝔨𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔦𝔰𝔱 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔲𝔪 𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔅𝔲𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔯𝔢𝔭𝔲𝔟𝔩𝔦𝔨 𝔇𝔢𝔲𝔱𝔰𝔠𝔥𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡!
More budget for propaganda.
Except the propaganda isn't exactly favorable for the US. Almost as though there is a concerted and consistent effort to discredit the US.
Have you posted articles and discussions relevant to your country?
Not enough budget.
That's empire for ya.
why does it matter so much? when war in Ukraine broke out nobody but the fascists complained.
I have never seen anyone complain about news in Europe take over, so why does it bother you so much?
Maybe because the internet was invented by the US, controlled by the US until rather recently, and has the most people who actively use it that speak English? China firewalls their nation, and you don't speak Indian...so....yeah...
You're right, my house has exactly 4 walls. It is perfectly rectangular with not a single other shape, as god intended.
To acquire said perfectly rectangular house, whose four 90° angles wonderfully sum to 360 total degrees, I had to murder an entire population of locals, all of whom had occupied the land for four months before I arrived. Of course, I did so with prejudice, not a single speck of their existence could be seen after I was finished.
Have you posted articles and discussions relevant to your country?
Is it? Or is it a question of which communities you're looking at? Because mine isn't.
Yes, you can set that up. But most news communities such as /world, /worldnews, /news, and others are very US-centric. I wonder why that has to be the case when it should be clear to everyone by now that the White House is employing troll tactics.
Because the USA has so much military and economic power that it is the axis about which the English-speaking world turns. And it is making wildly stupid choices in its foreign and domestic policies, which gets peoples attention from both potential impacts to their own countries and out of sheer horror and exasperation. Finally, it has a huge population relative to any other english speaking nation, and its citizens will tend to vote as a bloc about things they find interesting. And the things they find interesting will typically involve their own nation. Germans, for example, will do this too - but there are far fewer germans than americans, so in an open market, American news gets the most votes from its citizens and ends up on top of the stack.
I don’t know for other countries, but I read French news in French. So the French instance is way smaller than the English speaking ones
Have you posted articles and discussions relevant to your country?
Typical dismissive answer that I see on here. You know very well US political BS has infiltrated most communities by now.
Not in my experience. If you don't want to see politics there is a robust blocking system on Connect (and other apps I'm sure) that you can use.
Have you posted articles and discussions relevant to your country?