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

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/

  • inv3r510n@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

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

    -USAmerican

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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    2 months 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.

  • LiPoly@lemmynsfw.com
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    2 months 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™️

    • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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      2 months 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).

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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    2 months 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
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      2 months 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.

  • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months 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
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      2 months 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!

      • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
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        2 months ago

        American culture has and likely always will dominate any general audience English speaking online community. It’s just a matter of population.

  • Sundial@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

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