Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world sbf @feddit.org 2w ago

Why is Germany so prevalent on Lemmy?

Comparatively to the rest of the internet, it seems like there are a lot more Germans here. I’ve always assumed it was just because I was on a German instance and was in a sort of echo chamber (join feddit.org btw 🥳), but I just checked Fediverse Observer and it’s the 2nd largest country by users. Additionally, the German instances seem to be the biggest non-English ones.

Why is this?

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Germany has always been a big hub for Free software as a whole, for alternative communications, etc. The CCC's presence is a big factor.
German subs were really big on Reddit, too.

Germany is the second largest country in Europe by population, they don't really have their own social media like e.g. Russia or China and they're much better at English than most other big countries that are not already English native speakers.
One factor is German history with Stasi und ww2 fascism. We like increased independence and privacy, so lemmy rather than Facebook
It’s because I’m specifically learning German and the universe shifted to my will. The universe created feddit.org to give me a clear path to achieve my goal of befriending Germans.

This only happpened because me, Tischbier, decided to take an interest in Germany.

You’re welcome.

(Joking aside, I noticed on Reddit before I left and before I started to learn German, that ich_irl was hitting the front page a lot too. My family decided to learn German together probably in part because of how funny Germans are. I watch German YouTubers now too (Spacefrogs and Staiy). Germany is a pretty big country and I think them the top leader of the free world! I have enjoyed reading the actual Germans takes on this topic. Prost!)
Germany is also 2nd for self hosters, after US. According to a self hosting survey.
Simple, we germans were the biggest non-English ones on reddit, too.
Gotta say, I love reading the German memes in /all, even if I have a kindergarten-level understanding of German.
It’s more efficient to gather in one place
It happens, things become more popular in some countries than others ,and Germany has 80+ million people so it's not that small.

What I'm more surprised with is almost no content in Spanish, either from Spain or Latin America, just because of the number of speakers. I mean Hindi and Chinese are spoken by more people, but they tend to have their own software ecosystems.
Well educated, tech savvy, but also socially awkward. The Venn diagram is almost a circle.
Germans are low key into cool cultures
I guess, because Most of us are nerds and Love the Open source Community. In contrast to nerds of other countries, we are far more interested in talking and participating on that stuff. Just as examples see KDE, Codeberg...
Mastodon was made by a german. I think that made the concept of the fediverse popular to germans.
Because they're Ger-many?
As a kind of unique exception (!melbourne@aussie.zone being the other one), the mods of /r/ich_iel pointed out to feddit.de (previous version of feddit.org) in a pinned post: https://old.reddit.com/r/ich_iel/comments/14d65o7/öffentliche_dienstmeldung_änderung_der/

Compare this to all of the other country/regional subs who would remove similar posts for "self promotion", and you get why the German population was guided here instead of having to hear it from an second level comment on a Sunday thread
Its just a scam perpetrated by Big Germany. Don’t let it scare you
I've wondered and never thought to ask. Thanks, the resulting conversation has been awesome.
For once, we are not the baddies
No idea, but I love their here cus I realized I finally had a use for Gemini! Been using it to translate the memes 😅
This social media seems to be primarily eurozone folks
Ist dreddit rekrutierend?
Keine ahnung.
They're also heavy on Mastodon and the clone I use, Catodon.

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