The USA/West-EU countries make up about 12% of the world’s population, yet have about 80% participation on Reddit. Statistics do not differ much for other sites, as I used to have a decent non-anonymous tech blog years ago, where Google and WordPress offered me similar statistics of 70-75% of the visitors being from the Anglosphere.
Is it because the citizens of these countries are drenched in individualist capitalist societal culture, and easier access to fast internet? What else could be the reasons, and cultural cues?
I have felt that it is the core reason for this chaos and toxicity on the internet, where this very kind of immoral self-centered culture became a virtual hegemony over the decades.
It is a thought that strikes my mind often, as someone from India/Asia, and there is almost non existent discussion about this anywhere.
“Why are there only Russians on VK? Why are there only Chinese people on WeChat?”
To be fair there are a lot of English-speaking nazis that end up on VK after they get canceled from other platforms.
Things get complex when you understand Ukraine and not Russia is a nazi country.
To my knowledge there’s plenty of nazis in both countries. I don’t know much about Ukraine, but i know for sure nazis and other fascists are NOT enemies of Putin, and the Russian governments has some policy points that align with fascism: restriction of sexuality/queerness, censorship, anti-demonstration…
There are Nazis everywhere but only in the Ukraine do the Azov Battalian have political representation in parliament.
Fair points but I have not seen particularly Nazi flag hoisting nationally in Russia, unlike in Ukraine where it happens openly.
Russia is not a national socialist country, but has authoritarian undertones and partially enforced inequality as you say, so a very light shade of fascism.
The political refugees i know who have been subjected to torture from the FSB and other secret services do not consider russian fascism “a very light shade”. Electric torture in particular is very cruel. Also neonazi groups in Russia are not exactly uncommon. Looking for “nazi russia” or “russian nationalists” on any video platform will prompt videos of nazi bands beating up folks they deem too gay or too brown in public spaces like the subway
The defectors who you rely on also defected to Anglo colonialist nations that brainwash them just as well, so Russian fascism is not exactly a thing.
You can search “Nazi USA” or “Nazi Africa” or even “nazi India” and can find absurd stuff. These are NOT factual cemented examples of fascism. Provide proper sources.
Was your blog in English, though?
If you take Internet access…
…and cross reference against English speakers…
…then I think that’s enough explanation, no?
Yes, English. It was a tech blog about comparison of software for Windows, Linux, Mac and Android.
This. Eastern Europeans have a more closed culture and most of them don’t even speak English.
Other countries internet usage often differs a lot. Japaneses for example often have their own Japanese language platforms and in many African countries it basically boils down to internet = Facebook (as Facebook made a deal with mobile ISPs to have Facebook access not count towards the data-cap).
as Facebook made a deal with mobile ISPs to have Facebook access not count towards the data-cap
This is so annoying. The internet here is pretty much only the most Popular Apps nowadays. Very hard to move to other platforms (and convince friends & family to switch too) when they literally cost more money to use >:/
“Why use
SignalMatrix, when WhatsApp is free?” UghI kind of love the Japanese Internet. Those old-school sites where everything is in plain HTML. That period before the iPhone where Japan was producing all kinds of futuristic flip-phones was great.
Wait until KaiOS based phones arrive to Japan.
I can give an insight from within
So most of third world countries (non-western) have had wide internet penetration only so lately, unlike western countries they have missed what is to me the golden age of the internet (late 90s to late 2000) i.e before the facebook era. they have missed the era where people used to blog and when genuine content was to be found on websites, blogs and forums. most people who have joined the internet lately have done so using smartphones. and their first entry point to the internet is the playstore, google apps and facebook apps.
I kid you not there are people who don’t know that the internet exists beyond those apps, they don’t know how to use a browser, and they show no interest in doing so. facebook has absorbed the huge masses of these netizens and has widened its offerings to the point that people don’t need to wonder out of those apps to find what they need. In most of these countries, there is no internet neutrality, ISP(s) offer very cheap plans bundling unlimited and un-metered access to facebook whatsapp messenger and youtube. most people have turned into content consumers and show no interest in making contributions if they don’t make the buzz or bring them followers and interactions.I know that, as an internet dinosaur myself in India. I have my Apple cousin that thinks my Linux ThinkPad is a control command battlestation (yes those are his words at 18 age).
That is pretty common here in the Canary Islands between medium and old people and certain young ones with little studies or very centric in something specific.
I think it’s pretty simple, these platforms get made in US or Europe. They get adopted there first, and by the time other countries make their way in there they become west centric. So they get turned off by it and leave. It’s like asking why Weibo is China centric (kind of anyway, it’s not exactly the same thing). In federated instances this doesn’t seem to be a big issue, there are Japanese Mastodon instances. I think same will be the case with Lemmy when it gets adoption.
Decentralisation will be the future for non Westerners, and Africa will be helped out of Facebook hegemony as they get out of the slavery relationship with Europe and USA, via China’s BRI.
But there has to be initiatives like Lemmy and Mastodon for multiple types of internet platforms that are mainstream.
There is nowhere else where tech giants hold as big monopolies as in Africa. Alternative platforms usage is nonexistent.
Yes, tell me more about how China is not (yet another) colonial empire with its Belt Road Initiative /s
Not that i’m defending other colonizing nations. But the whole “civilizing mission” of “superior cultures” to build useful infrastructure and such is so cliché in the history of colonization.
Ahh we’ve got a neocon here :) Welcome to Lemmy!
Because we have not had non divide and conquer style civilisations that helped other nations at this scale yet. India was always its own thing, and USSR/Russia was isolated as well, both not fit enough to be leading superpower with globalisation plans.
There are only so many key powers, USA, EU, India, China and Russia. EU is divided into two parts, where West EU is like little brother to USA. That leaves China that has a history of being colonised and imperialised and suffered loss in the two Opium Wars thanks to illegal British drug smuggling during Qing dynasty.
A non US/EU country must be given a fair chance, which I support since US/West EU (not East EU) opposes this due to their hegemonic collapse.
Literally all the countries you have cited have a history of conquest, subjugating people, and repressing popular movements. Yes, even India, China and Russia. India has hindu nationalism. China has han nationalism. Russia has whatever they call their brand of christian-orthodox authoritarianism. All three countries have severe political repression against minorities.
There is a big difference between nationalism in imperialist countries, and nationalism in colonized countries. Carl Zha has a good video about this.
India has ultra nationalism not for all Hindus but for the 15-30% upper caste section of all Hindus. Hindus consist of Brahmins/Pandits (general), 50-70% lower caste (SC/ST/OBC/others). Hindus make up for 80% of the population of 130 crore (100 crore =1 billion).
China has over 300 dialects and multiple classes of people, where Han make up 91% of the 150 crore population. If there was Han supremacy, Uyghurs would not be allowed to produce more than 1 child, compared to restrictions on Han Chinese majority.
Russia has a different style of population, 71% Orthodox Christian and 10% Islam. Russia does have some limitations, that criticism is known.
You should research before accepting and advocating such absurd groupthink stereotypes as a foreigner.
I think the main issue is as cited by others, language. The other is that Facebook et al focus on countries with high GDP per capita. So poor countries aren’t really serviced well by American social media companies because there’s little profit to be made.
Mastodon seemed to be gaining some popularity in India for a time. It could be useful in other countries. Same with Lemmy, in the same way that LibreOffice has a large Global South adoption rate. Lemmy and Mastodon would need to focus on and promote localization though for that plan to succeed.
But we’re talking about why westerners get treated differently than the rest of the world really, and a lot of it has to do with US hegemony.
As someone who grew up in an African country and spent sometime in North America, I would say there are various reasons one can point to [language, economic conditions, nature of available technology etc]. Most conversations in my growing up were ephemeral + oral. Mobile phones started changing the landscape. Facebook and Messaging apps like Telegram, Viber, and WhatsApp changed a lot of conversations from peer-to-peer to ‘mediated’ ones. I would say that most African-based folks are every social and active in discussions. They are just not in the platforms Westerns frequent, and increasingly so with closed-messaging platforms like WhatsApp groups.
I am so glad this post served the purpose exactly for folks like you.
I see the reason in language, people just want to communicate and especially consume content in their native language. So any service with predominant english cannot be truly global.
Could be that western cultures have more free time and/or being physically present has been trained out of people via marketing
I think this is the case. Virtual presence has been feeded to be more valuable than real relationships.
