1y ago

It's weird that there isn't a US-specific Lemmy instance

A ton of countries have a decently active Lemmy instance, including the English-speaking ones (UK, AUS, NZ, ZA).

The closest to a US one that I know of is midwest.social, which looks pretty lively from what I can tell.

Anyway, so lemmy.world is becoming quite populated with all kinds of US-specific stuff, like communities for sports teams, sometimes with generic names that could be used for other things ( !bears@lemmy.world ), states/cities like !texas@lemmy.world or even !politics@lemmy.world (while !uspolitics@lemmy.world also exists), with other instances also having duplicate comms.

I'm expecting Lemmy to have, at some point, and hopefully soon, an option to block entire instances so that we don't have to see posts especially that are country-specific. But I'll need to block all the baseball teams one by one if I want to browse all and try to find new things.

And I'm sure it would also be more convenient to have it all under one roof, just like everything about Germany is under feddit.de, and people from elsewhere can still visit if they like.

So, please someone make one? Or navigate people to the right one? Thank yooou

99 comments

The US-defaultism that happens on the internet is very annoying
- Yeah, it's especially annoying when you live in a different English speaking country. I don't give a shit about your pounds in the chicken recipe.
  
  That's right! Put dollars in the chicken recipe!
  Anyway that's my two cents.
  
  Pounds mass or pounds force? 😅
  
  And cups, and spoons…
- I immediately became a bit upset when I read this post and realized US defaultism was going to happen on lemmy too now. Very annoying thing.
  
  You guys are nuts if you let it bother you.
  Literally makes no sense.
- The US! Oppressing everything else in the world since...the beginning!
  
  Damn americans, they ruined america!
- I'm just dumb and forget the world wide web is, well, world wide haha. I just live in my own little bubble sometimes but i'm trying to be better about not blindly assuming the folks i interact with on here and other places are from the US

I mean pretty much every website is US focused unless stated otherwise.
- And the argument always was that Reddit/Facebook/Twitter/whatever are American.
  Well, Lemmy is not. So there's no reason for it to be americanised by default.
  (Unless we'll hear the argument that the internet is American :p)
  
  I don't think hosting was ever the argument. It was always just that the vast majority of users were American.
  Any site defaulting to English is going to attract users who predominantly speak English as their primary language, and then people who speak English as a sort of lingua franca are going to be a smaller part of that. Among native English speakers, Americans make up the majority, so that's the prevailing default you are likely to see.
  Even if Lemmy.world is hosted in Europe, I'd hazard that the largest user demographic is still Americans.
  
  It is a stupid argument anyway that fundamentally ignores the entire concept of the internet being global and universal. If a site is aimed at a global userbase it is mostly completely irrelevant (except for legal purposes of course) where that site was originally created or where the servers are located.
  
  Well, Al Gore said he invented it, so...
  
  That was never the argument, the internet was always international and not just American.
  The issue is language, the assumption is English spoken content is assumed to be American or possibly british/Australian.
  I'd like to see that get more fluid, but that probably involves a lot of people speaking more English or more autotranslate kicking in.
- ShitAmericansSay
  
  If they were wrong people wouldn't be complaining about US defaultism.
- Yeah I assume the reason there isn't is because the general ones are US-centric by default and then everyone else has to have somewhere specific to go. But I guess if they want their own dedicated place too why not?
- Isn't that the problem being stated in the OP haha.
- To be fair, they are to thank for the internet, so I guess it makes sense...

Of course the Germans have have everything all organized.
- Ja natürlich :)
- Na klar! 😁
- That's what we love about them. And the accent when they speak English. And their cars. Not forgetting their tools. Beer.
  
  Brandschutz 👍

There is no rule that everything about Germany is hosted on feddit.de and everything what is hosted on feddit.de is about Germany. I have a english language GalaxyWatch community located on feddit.de.
TBH, I do not know what is the best way to handle these. As far as I understand, the idea of fediverse is that instance as such must not be important. And there are many instances which have no "self-vision" or it is based on other logic than geography.
- I have a english language GalaxyWatch community located on feddit.de.
  Literally the first sentence in their sidebar says "Deutschsprachige Lemmy Community" (= German-language Lemmy Community). So you're right that feddit.de is not about Germany but German is spoken in several European countries, so you do disrespect the intend of feddit.de by hosting an English community there.
  
  They also write in their rules that it's okay to create English speaking communities. So no harm done.
- You know what I mean. Instances may be based on anything, but some are based on geography, and so it makes sense for communities also based on those aspects to be based on such instances.
  Yesterday I came across a post "what's your favourite book based in Melbourne?", which was on a community on an Australian server. I'd assume communities about Australian rugby (or what's it called) would also be there.
  Geography-based instances also partially solve the problem of duplicate names, so you can have c/Manchester on different country instances.
  I have a english language GalaxyWatch community located on feddit.de
  Well the problem also is that instances don't let you make a community if you come from elsewhere, and one can't set their community to not appear under /All.
  I wonder what comes first, if these features or instance-blocking.
  
  I’d assume communities about Australian rugby (or what’s it called) would also be there.
  Or may be they should be in a "sport instance", so people who are not interested in sport can block whole sport instance? This makes a lot of sense for people who are not interested in given topic (for example sport, politics, cats, anime) - whatever geography or language is.
  I see what where you can from, but I do not think that instance blocking and a strong geographical separation is a good solution. This, btw, will also enforce "US by default" pattern even stronger.

I mean you can just have your feed show only the stuff you’re subscribed to…

Given the prevalence of US defaultism, I don't mind the lack of a US-specific one. Plus, unless an instance, or even community, is regionally specific, chances are Americans are going to assume it to be American. Even if that subreddit specifically claims to be worldwide, it may still be dominated in excess by Americans, like the politics @ lemmy.ml community.
- Isn't it ironic that lemmy.ml, run by essentially communists, shelters a forum for American politics?

Lemmy.ca exists for Canada too. There are dozens of us. Dozens!
- That must be the most polite server on Lemmy.
  
  Sorry

And I'm sure it would also be more convenient to have it all under one roof, just like everything about Germany is under feddit.de, and people from elsewhere can still visit if they like.
I'm trying to advertise my country's instance, feddit.nu (Sweden). feddit.de got a headstart with Germans by having been created before the Reddit migration and providing the first federated community discovery tool.
Instances that were created after the migration started on the other hand? It's frustrating with Redditor behavior, because they expect the Lemmy community to share the same name as the Reddit community (/r/Sweden) and only subscribe to communities that use the same name.
If you don't want your lemmy.world feed to be flooded with languages you can't understand, please make sure to annoy their users about it as much as possible, in English, that they should move to the country-specific instances instead of centralizing on lemmy.world. It's healthier for the Fediverse in general with everyone on many instances, in the long run.
- New instances have it super hard in general. This is an issue the Lemmy system needs to resolve somehow.
  
  It's difficult to come up with an onboarding solution that doesn't give overwhelming power to the hands of a few people (who operate the onboarding platform), leading to centralization again.
  If everyone was directed to one central onboarding platform, the operators could choose to advertise and censor instances as they saw fit – which is why I don't recommend potential Mastodon users to the join-mastodon.org server picker, because all of the instances there are hand-picked by mastodon.social admins.
  I didn't expect security and outage threats to be the factor that keeps big instances in check, but I'm kind of glad for it.
  
  This is an issue the Lemmy system needs to resolve somehow.
  Once you introduce anything that resembles an discovery algorithm, some people will lose their mind.
- If you don't want your lemmy.world feed to be flooded with languages you can't understand
  Mastodon has a feature where you can set which language a post is in, and a setting in your account where you can select which languages you want to see. Is this not viable for Lemmy?
  Edit: Nevermind, I just found out this feature is in Lemmy as well 😅
  
  The feature is there, but it's glitchy. Whenever I try to post with a language tag to lemmy.world and other big instances, the post screen stays loading forever and the post is never submitted. It only goes through when I remove the language tag, so I avoid posting non-English content on lemmy.world because I can't tag it...
  
  It is, but everyone just has it set to undetermined, because I don't think you can set the default language you write in, so you'd need to set it with every post and comment.
  (Or am I wrong?)

Well beehaw.org is hosted in NYC.

well now someone needs to make the most obnoxiously American patriotic instance possible, as a meme
- Can we afford to buy freedom.us?
- Call it blackjacknhooke.rs

Isn't lemm.ee US based?
- It's Estonian (.ee is the country code for Estonia) but it's also a cool domain hack and the owner opened it to everyone.
  
  Oh, thought I saw it was US based somewhere, must've mistaken it for another instance
- If it is, they aren't doing much to advertise it or to attract those kinds of communities.
- Nah, lemm.ee is hosted in the EU.
  
  The .ee must stand for European Eunion

lemmy.world is not the US instance? 😱 🦅🦅🦅
- I can totally see it happening. "World? What do you mean world beyond America? That's the same thing!"

I thought beehaw.org is US based.

I intentionally used one based in Switzerland. Like my email and VPN needs.

It might be because most of us Americans lick the boots of corporations for free or get in line to.
- Don’t forget about subscription services for everything!
  
  I like my life for rent!
  
  Speaking of which, !fucksubscriptions@lemmy.world

Nah. What's weird is you thinking everyone should follow your strict rules about national segregation online.
If it's such a problem for you, instead of begging everyone else to fit your narrow world view, go find an instance that works better for you. Or, when you don't because that's ridiculous, make your own and block it off from everyone else not following your rules. Then you might be happy.

99 comments