Nothing against Germans, I’m just wondering why, outside of the English internet, it got such high adoption in Germany compared to eg. France or Spain. I see next to no French/Spanish/etc. content on here in comparison
It’s pretty much just that there are a lot of Germans.
The population of Germany is about 80 million.
All else being equal, there are 16 times more Germans online than us finns, for example.
Next to the USs 300 million people, that’s still one German about every 5 people. Add to that that Germans are definitely online more than americans, and yeah…
A lot of Germans.
Ok, but if you consider that there are 80M Germans, there are also 60M French (+African countries), and 50M Spanish (+ LatAm). That would make for a language ratio of ~1:1:1 considering Europe alone. This clearly doesn’t seem to be the case, so I’m just curious what the reason behind the strong adoption in German speaking countries could be…
I’m probably quite biased being German myself, but I feel like that things like privacy and security tend to be more important to Germans than to other folks. And I don’t speak just about the tech bubble, it shows everywhere.
To give a random example, when a license plate has been blurred in a photo posted anywhere, chances are high it’s been posted by a German. Despite the fact that there is no license plate lookup (like carfax for US, finnik.nl for Netherlands, car.info for Sweden etc) so a license plate wouldn’t even reveal anything to anyone, yet we treat it like a secret on instinct. If you ask such a German why he blurred it, he probably won’t have a reasonable response, he just does it because he feels like it.
(Edit: Just look through the used cars here, most if not all will have their plates censored given they have plates on them lol)Getting back to topic, this might not be the only explanation, but I’m pretty sure it’s a noticable factor why Germans are especially present on platforms like this, i.e. platforms that tend to respect the user’s privacy more than the big tech corporations.
Hmm that’s fascinating. I didn’t realize you guys had such a strong cultural tendency towards privacy. Do you think there’s a specific thing that caused it, or has it always been this way?
Hmm I don’t know actually, but now I’m curious too. From quick search:
As the newspaper Handelsblatt explains, “angst about potential surveillance is rooted in Germany’s past.” The combined legacy of the Nazi Gestapo and the East German Stasi are thought to be part of the reason Germany has been a pioneer in data protection — with legislation dating back to the 1970’s.
https://www.codastory.com/surveillance-and-control/coronavirus-germany-privacy/
Interesting, although seeing as being sensitive about privacy isn’t as big in other post communist countries (at least not here in Czechia), I assume it must just be a generic cultural trait
Well the German Democratic Republic is unique among the former USSR countries in that it was unified with the Federal Republic of Germany. The latter already had a strong focus on privacy laws resulting from the Nazi time (meaning there was strong mistrust towards the state, but Nazis trying to hide in plain sight was obviously also relevant). But when the sheer amount of information the communist intelligence services were storing on their citizens became known after reunification this pre-existing privacy bias was put into overdrive, it confirmed all the worst fears west Germans already had about the state becoming too powerful.
Half of Google streetview is blurred here
I think it took us 4 or 5 years of frog boiling until street view cars were allowed here (and only once google made it possible to have your home be censored)
Most of this privacy fetish is purely performative though. The Schufa is a dystopian data collector with information on every German and despite a token focus on data privacy politicians pass more and more surveillance laws like using Palantir for the police and crackdowns on free speech and protesting in general.
then you would also have to include the Austrians and our Brothers in Cheese 😏
60 millions Italian also.
As a neighbour (and disliker) of that country I can’t tell you how many German tourists I’ve seen immediately speaking germ and just assuming everyone needs to understand.
Probably why they are the only ones posting in their language here
Yeah, I haven’t noticed an unusual amount. Lemmy is still mostly Americans, and then maybe Brits and Germans. Just anyone that can speak English and has had broadband long enough to acclimatise to nerd culture, basically.
Lemmy mostly Americans
How can we even, like, know that?
The amount of American politics and culture on here for a start
To be fair the amount of absolute insanity coming out of the US is what’s driving it. Luckily the UK has been fairly stable recently.
They’ll tell you before you can ask
Yeah, occasionally. Honestly that’s fine, the annoying thing is when they assume everyone else is too.
I don’t have hard data, but it seems self-evident just from my personal experience. And going back to the original point, it’s a nation of 400 million.
What do you mean, Germans are “online more than americans”?
The USs social media user count is at 73% of population, to Germany’s 77%. Smaller difference that I expected, but I did remember correctly, that the US has lower penetration.
USA does have higher time spent online per person though.
How many germans do you need to change a lightbulb?
One. We are efficient and have no humour.
One to change it and seven to file the paperwork.
Not true.
!Actually we will automate it!< :)
off topic but i’ve never seen this tg-spoiler before, it’s much better than the normal click to dropdown one. looks good on piefed web ui but i clicked view original and it doesn’t work on your own instance
comparison
Lol.
Using Sync for Lemmy as my client.
So who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Dunno why the fediverse seemingly couldnt standardize on a certain markdown flavor.
Edit:
PS: Yours doesnt work on my client:
one of the last holdouts! More power to you! Its not been updated in almost a year now so its starting to fall apart as the api changes.
Nah, that thing was broken even in the beginning…
Problem is, that I used it for >4 years on reddit and since the first exodus and the announcement of the lemmy client I never was much in the mood to switch. And I like the interface, so theres even less reason to switch.Oh well, am I right? :P
I had to switch to summit from sync during the last major lemmy update as it was breaking to many things. I miss it though. it was by far the best client (for me) and I hope dawson randomly appears with a patch that fixes everything… but his last post is over a year old and last major update much older lol.
If its still working for what you use it for good on you! im jealous!
May I ask whats broken for you?
And always on the wrong side of history
Most of us speak pretty good English and German media absolutely sucks ass, so many people choose to exclusively hang out in English-speaking spheres i guess
luckily many Germans learn some English at school, also the languages seem really closely related, easy to learn.
I would guess because simply historically, we always were very private people. This was generally increased with the experiences during the second world war and after in East Germany, where there was widespread government spying and people spying on each other. Thus, we have lots of groups that are engaged with activism regarding privacy, and it’s present in the collective consciousness.
Reddit is an advertising shithole and Lemmy is the more private/free alternative, so it’s more likely more Germans come here.
Also in general, the internet lends itself for less social people, which I’d also characterize Germans to have a tendency for.
I have heard the same sentiment about privacy, and from what I’ve seen in privacy tool communities (e.g. meshnets, where the densest networks I saw in the world were Germany and Catalonia, or Tor network where it’s common to find German nodes) this matches up.
we always were very private people
I lived in germany for a while and I loved this aspect from germans. It really bothers me when people are like “what do you need privacy for, what are you hiding” like the government always has the best intentions
Wasn’t also /r/ich_iel a big part of the reddit exodus at one point?
Their reddit automod promots Lemmy on every post iirc
Germans are everywhere. Basically everywhere you go as a tourist, it’s loud Americans and slightly less loud Germans using the Americans for cover to be lounder than they would normally be.
let me introduce the Dutch to you … Every corner of the world you’ll find a Dutch tourist.
Are they particularly globalised? Like more than France or Spain?
The impression I have is that Germans are bigger users of the Fediverse in general than other countries, as in statistically overrepresented. Mastodon is originally a German project. Germans also created a Fediverse application for buying and selling second-hand items, Flohmarkt (Flea Market). Some other posts here have mentioned that Germans are culturally/historically more interested in privacy than many others, which may help explain the interest in the Fediverse. Finally, Lemmy is also an European project, so it makes sense that there would be more Europeans here, and Germany is the largest European economy and the most populous Western-European nation. Those are all probably factors contributing to this.
Shout out to dach und ich_iel for keeping me very confused and slightly glad I took German in highschool!
I think it’s more of a symptom of how narrow a view of the world you get from mainstream English language social media, even the view of other Western countries. Sites like Reddit are openly hostile to content in other languages since only English is allowed in the main subreddits and other languages are quarantined to dedicated language/country subreddits, while sites like Facebook/Twitter accept all languages but completely isolate different languages from each other to avoid the “bad UX” of seeing content in a language the user doesn’t know.
I don’t know, but I think more Germans per capita are fluent in English than French, Spanish, or Latino people are, and maybe that has something to do with it.
Ah that would actually be quite a logical explanation, since being able to operate in English would make it easier for you to partake in Anglosphere trends
Anglosphere trends
conversely, it can be a godsend when you consider how broadly the global north has been adopting fascism.
Nah that affects all countries regardless of English. Just look at Hungary
We have nothing elese do do because we never work and have to much money.
du bist Beamter?
Das wäre schön.
because we never work
so this is what Merz was complaining about? 😂
He still is. Lazy germans. Merz just hates us.
Ah of course! What illness are you off becaause of today?
Like all germans we never work. What Merz said is true.
We (French speaking peoples) have several instances, the one I’m writing from is probably the most active on lemmy, the others are on piefed.
I’d say if you see a lot of them it’s probably because of your language settings or because of those German instance settings.
I had to block several of their communities as I don’t have German selected in my languages but they still show on all (and in German, not English posts hosted on a German instance), so they were just badly setup. Maybe it changed tho, I haven’t updated my blacklist in a while.
Interesting point…
Maybe we should all have Spring Cleanup, where we get our instances to be configured to better settings, to keep tuning-up the fediverse?
_ /\ _
/\ 👉👈
Other countries would have the courtesy to write in English.
Even the FrenchHANS, GET ZE SPAMWERFER!
Also i think it’s because of germans having a bigger notion of data protection and that huge corporations are bad, which is why a lot more people are changing from reddit to fediverse.
in my personal experience, i can only compare it to spanish people, and i definitely see a lot more concern in german people.another reason might be economic wealth, having the strongest currency next to the pound in the 80s and 90s, this could mean that early adoption of PCs and dial-up was more spread than in other European countries because of the relative cost difference of equipment. This early adoption could also mean that more people got to know the ‘old web’ and are more appreciative of non-standardised web content.
it’s only hypothesises, i have no data to support it (yet)this part is about the early adoption hypothesis, and relies on one (!) table about the internet usage in Europe from 2000 to 2007
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Internet-usage-in-Europe-2000-2007_tbl9_4891139
we can distinguish a few groups:
- relatively wealthy countries with high percentages of internet adoption but with a small population size which translates into relative small proportions (green)
- relatively less wealthy countries with lower percentages but with bigger population size which makes for bigger proportions (red)
- relatively wealthy countries with high percentages with a big population size which translates into big proportions (violet)
as we can see from the statistics, Germany is sporting the biggest total amount of internet users relative to the other European countries.
another relevant aspect is the percentage of growth, and Germany has one of the lowest growth rate compared to other countries while having a high percentage of users, which implies an early adoption of internet users.
linear regression could probably be used to find the relation between wealth and internet usage.
the case of Portugal is really interesting though, as it’s a less wealthy country but sporting a high percentage of internet users. Maybe there was some government subsidies?
After the 1974 revolution that overthrew Fascism Portugal had a couple of decades of being quite Leftwing during which it massivelly invested in Education, including tertiary education, so the generations now in their 50s and younger almost universally learned English language at a school and include a large proportion of people with higher degrees.
There was also a period in the 80s/90s with some investment in adult education and that coincided with the fast growth of personal computing around here.
Then add to that that fixed Internet is quite cheap (a TV + unlimited 200Mb fibre + fixed phone line monthly packets costs around €45 and recently some even cheaper and faster providers have entered the local market, so for example I pay €15/month for 1 Gbps fibre) and almost universally fibre, possibly because unlike in countries like the UK the incumbent telecom operator in Portugal for whatever reason didn’t really manage to or tried to block the replacement of older internet access technologies with Fiber (I was living abroad at the time, so I don’t know for sure, but the period with maybe the only half-way decent non-crooked government - led by the guy who now heads the UN - kinda overlaps with the time with fixed Internet started spreading, so maybe they actually did some proper, Northern-Europe quality legislation around data access infrastructure which yielded a far more competitive market than you see in places like the UK).
I suspect some or all of these things explain why in this specific domain Portugal looks a lot more like smaller Northern European countries than it’s tradition of being a Chunk Of South-America in Europe would lead one to expect.
That is actually a very compelling explanation. Although I guess the data it is based on would be a bit less relevant considering they are from 19 years ago…
yeah, i looked for old data,because my whole point was the early adoption of internet usage which might translate into preferences of the old web and by extension to the fediverse.
i edited my post to reflect that, thanks for the feedback :)
Welkom to ze cyberspeisss! 🤖
Germans invented the printing press. They seem always at the front of decentralized media distribution technology lol.
*took credit for inventing the printing press ;-)
They were the first to scale printing to mass producing the bible … and introducing mass literacy in their country.
