Yes, you can set that up. But most news communities such as /world, /worldnews, /news, and others are very US-centric. I wonder why that has to be the case when it should be clear to everyone by now that the White House is employing troll tactics.
Because the USA has so much military and economic power that it is the axis about which the English-speaking world turns. And it is making wildly stupid choices in its foreign and domestic policies, which gets peoples attention from both potential impacts to their own countries and out of sheer horror and exasperation. Finally, it has a huge population relative to any other english speaking nation, and its citizens will tend to vote as a bloc about things they find interesting. And the things they find interesting will typically involve their own nation. Germans, for example, will do this too - but there are far fewer germans than americans, so in an open market, American news gets the most votes from its citizens and ends up on top of the stack.
This is what I wanted to suggest. There's just a lot of news happening in America right now, and because of America's position in the western world that news has widespread implications.
Politics in America are also very dramatic, so the stories might drive more engagement from people into that sort of thing.
Nah, bullshit. Most news networks and media houses have marketing teams to spread their news links and artificially "boost" their links all over the place. Lemmy has these folks who pretend to be normal users but tend to only post news from specific websites or post tangetial links and then add in their own. And, they get to the top fast.
It's social media marketing 101.
Normal lemmy users who actually got here to escape the vote manipulations or whatever in other networks usually post archived links, summary, or even the whole article in the text. You don't normally see that with marketing accounts. And I've seen that's grow ever more as the community gets larger.
But continue to think the US is the center of the universe and there's no manipulation or marketing going on at all. It's working out so well for it, they made a TV reality star president, TWICE.
Would that be J Lai Lu? And how would you make it show more often in your feed and us news show less often? That's the kind of balance I'd like to get, useful us news about once a day and useful French news about once a day, instead of 10x of same Epstein news and 0 French/whatever
That's why we moved our french communities there, on jlai.lu. so if you have a jlai.lu account, you can set your timeline to local and then every news will be french.
There is another solution : PieFed. With PieFed account, you can subcribe to the flux i created :
I appreciate all the info, unfortunately there's several things that confuse me.
What's piefed, is this an instance or an app?
What do I do if I want Australia, France and a few other countries, do I need accounts in multiple instances? How do I find them? Can I have all of their posts collated simultaneously in my racoon app?
What's a flux?
Is there a book "Lemmy for Dummies"? Or perhaps a ted talk course to teach me basics?
PieFed is a software that support flair, tags, multicommu...your instance has opened a PieFed instance there : https://piefed.world/
The account on jlai.lu allow ya to use local shorting so you can switch to french content or english easily as we do.
A flux, is a piefed feature, this is a multicommunity. They can be public (shared to everyone) or private. So you can create flux based on countries, language, whatever come to your mind...on subcribe to an available flux, import existing one to your piefed instance...
J’lai lu has news but it isn’t the only thing. it is the best I know but there might be something better. I don’t know how to search for communities by language. I actually read newspapers at the library when I want to read French news
And how would you make it show more often in your feed and us news show less often?
The US population is grouped together in one giant pool instead of spread out by state like Europe is grouped by individual country. We focus on national news that affects the large population, and stuff that happens on other states becsuse of the shared identity, while European countries don't have the same kind of European Union shenanigans that affect all of Europe and mostly post about country level stuff. Communities in languages other than English also tend to be posted in separate communites further separating their discussions from the general purpose communities.
We are also louder, which also contributes, but that is not as big of a deal as the sheer numbers.
While a huge portion of the population chooses not to become fluent in a language, because nearly everything within hundreds of miles of where they live uses the same language by default, we still provide opportunities to learn languages and in some areas people are commonly bilingual.
It can be hard to maintain a language without frequent exposure. I had some classes in Spanish and French, but without a large population that speaks either language in my area I just forgot it over time. Moved tons place where we do have a lot of people who speak Spanish and English, but since I'm not part of their community my exposure is limited to the occasional festival or signage as nobody needs me to impose my attempt to learn their language on them.
It isn't all about refusal, it is mostly lack of exposure.
Yeah, the geography certainly plays a role - much like it does for Britain having ~30 miles of ocean between it and the rest of Europe.
But the broad trend in the States has been a narrowing of languages. Like, a century ago there was national distribution for newspapers printed in German. Those started disappearing during WW1 and were completely gone by the end of WW2. And, of course, that is dwarfed by the number of First Nations languages that have been driven to the edge extinction, if not outright extinguished already.
I think if Lemmy wants to have less of a US bent to topics and perspectives, then they'll have to follow ich_iel's example and stubbornly commit to a language that isn't english. The way how the internet collapses geography, conversation trends toward orbiting the densest population of monoglots.
It is a self reinforcing system, and the same reason that English has become so widespread worldwide.
Increased communication across wider areas promote common languages to be more accessible to more people, so in the case of the US this means each time people communicate it is more likely to be in English. Sure, some stupid laws have helped out too but this is a trend that was going to happen in the US for the same reasons English is increasingly used worldwide, but we don't have a national language that English is being added to to promote being bilingual. Quebec has been fighting the trend though legislation since it was happening there as well.
Even regional dialects of English are being homogenized within the US. It is less likely for people traveling across many states to be unable to understand a regional dialect as was fairly common before cheap long distance communication.
I am actively working on learning spanish as an American, because I want to be able to speak to people when I go to central and south America.
I have far less interest in learning french or german, because Europe is both expensive to get to for me, and expensive to stay in relative to other places I have equal interest in travelling to. And besides that, if I were to travel to Europe, I've been told that everyone there already speaks english anyway. And besides that, I've been told that even if I try to learn french or german, the locals will just speak to me in English anyway since it is faster for them. Due to this, learning these languages largely becomes an intellectual exercise performed for its own sake. And if I'm going to spend hours doing some sort of intellectual hobby, I could just as easily want to learn to paint or play the guitar or perform statistical analysis on the different varieties of weeds in my back yard.
Most people are going to want to converse in their native/primary language, and by numbers that means a lot of Americans who are, of course, primarily concerned with American issues
There's also the fact that America is a huge player on the international stage, so American issues can have a lot of repercussions in other countries
And if you haven't noticed, America has kind of a lot of shit going on and there is a lot to talk about there.
As an American, I can say one of our defining characteristics is we believe we belong everywhere on the Internet. There is no space that we are embarrassed to enter. Reminds me of the Americans showing up on Chinese social media and acting like they owned the place.
I've accidentally learned a good amount of German from lemmy, actually. I didnt mean to, but from similar words, to looking up Rammstein lyrics, I had a base. From that base, and context, I'm actually learning a good bit of German without intention. Sometimes I read a German headline and it takes me a second to realize I'm reading German. I come across a word I don't know and I'm like "oh shit, I'm reading German". It's honestly been my favorite part of lemmy, I struggled with Spanish in a classroom setting and here I am learning German on accident. Granted, I couldn't pretend to know how to pronounce half of it, but I'm learning to read it.
You have to be a bit careful, because some people deliberately talk in wrong German ("Zangendeutsch", where words are translated from English by "force").
Worse.
The German you read from Zangendeutsch memes are almost as grammatically accurate as the German accent you got from Schwarzenegger.
Imagine the most broken grammar and then you get that.
On top the grammar is also non-applicable.
Upside: You can still get some idea of what the meme is about. :)
Probably eisbrecher, honestly. Because it started coming up on a Rammstein playlist. Which is cool because it gives me the base for ice and breaker, making it that much easier for me to pick up on other words in context, that I may have missed otherwise. Even moreso because I read so much climate news, which is important to me as the US dwindles in climate research, I hope to learn more French and German. I just wish I could learn my grandparents native languages of Norwegian and swedish. Those are much harder for me, even though I've actually put effort into those. It just doesn't come as easy to me.
Have you seen the shitstorm we're (U.S.) in? We're like the worst car crash you've ever seen and then the ambulance also crashes then the fire truck blows up and then aliens come down and start attacking...kinda hard to look away.
I thought I understood US politics...even if it was by osmosis given the sheer volume we're exposed to...but lately I felt like I only understood the dem half...after the election I'm not sure and by now I have this "there is no hope of understanding this mess, different culture, different values" that I get from trying to understand Indian politics.
I mean honestly this is the most deranged and worst it's been in my ... at least adult lifetime. I think a lot of the political mess we're in is tied into our appetite for some pretty terrible pop culture. Yes, yes, we have moral and intelligent and sane people here too, but the way that we have leaned in so hard to trashy reality television, infuencers, anything to grab your attention and reward it monetarily...hell we have a reality tv president. It's not the only reason I think we're in the mess, but I think we've been primed to accept more and more outrageous behavior cause we've always been over the top and big and loud. I always assumed I'd live in a democracy, it was just a given. This is the first time I'm doubting it.
Yeah fam we live in a fascist oligarchy masquerading as a democracy. Been that way probably our whole lives, it's just the latest puppet gave the game away pretty hard. Hope you'll keep following the white rabbit for your own self edification but stay hydrated and fed and look after your safety, things can get a lot worse before enough people come together to make it better.
We’ve always really had two parties but historically they were not radically different. While I have certain tendencies, I’ve always understood the other party/perspective and sometimes voted for those candidates.
But now I have no clue what half the country is thinking. I don’t understand what happened to let the current crop of criminals attain leadership or get away with so much. Sometime I think it’s the “leopard eating faces” scenario, but sometimes I think it’s the toddler having a tantrum and knocking over the table scenario. Sometimes I think it’s just narcissists who can only think in the current time with no connection to the future. Sometimes I think people have no abstract thinking anymore and sometimes I think they’re all just gullible and easily manipulable. I can’t even have empathy for them because I can’t tell whether they deserve pity or need a scolding or need to stick to their sandbox.
Or if you’re talking about the mechanics of politics, that too. We have ways we’ve done things traditionally, according to laws back to (and even before) the constitution found our country. Apparently that doesn’t matter anymore
Because it's the most newsworthy country at the moment. The most powerful country in the world is crashing before your eyes, whilst the rest of the world mostly continues on as it was. Yeah, some noteworthy things are happening all over the world, but that's not as dramatic as the fall of arguably the most hated country in the world. And everything from genocide to climate change, disease and general suffering can be at least tangentially related to the disaster that is the US and it's administration. I mean, what noteworthy things are there to chide Sweden for? Anything? Is it comparible to the horrors and despair that the US is causing? There's your answer.
It is not just the funding, they literally got a cheerleader in Trump, extremely eager to participate as well, as was seen with the bombing of Iran.
Netanyahu doesn't have to hold back anymore, he can blatantly genocide because he got the backing of the US, and the European leaders are mostly too spineless to cross the Americans.
Most of the things happening in Israel now is because of the US though. Netanyahu really felt empowered by Trump becoming president, and rightly so, because he can manipulate that orange toddler into doing anything he wants.
I checked the news in the biggest newspaper in sweden, and there's this story about a bus that scraped the roof while driving under a bridge. Must have been scary for the passengers. Luckily it wasn't going that fast. And there's a list of schools where you actually get paid to study so you don't need student loans.
That's awesome that that's the worst news from there. And I love Sweden and Norway as that's where my family originated from. What I wouldn't give to have been born in either of those countries. Unfortunately I'm one generation out of being able to easily go back.
For Norway a good chunk of the news on our state-run newspaper is related to the US as well. Especially the recent Epstein stuff
Other than that it's Israel/Palestine, Ukraine/Russia, some other international news, sports, the current heatwave, a little about nature, a little about new infrastructure projects, a news story about hate speech, and a couple other misc stories
I think I know what you mean. When I go on holidays, the last place I want to spend my days is in Irish pubs. The good ones can be lovely, and it’s nice to meet new people from home, but it’s not why I’m there.
Oooh! Switching things up to keep it spicy. Spoilers! Well, there has been some foreshadowing, but still... I mean, the writing is far from stale or boring, but throwing in a plot twist like that mid-season would be a bold move.
Either way, I'm sure the season finale won't disappoint.
That has nothing to do with anything. You will obviously not be aware of it, but by far the greater majority of English speakers you encounter on the internet are not actually from an English speaking country, and definitely not from the US. That is because English functions as the lingua franca of the internet, so we have to use English to be mutually understood.
No, the majority of users on reddit are non-Americans. Americans are just the biggest national group of users, but they are a minority. You are more likely to be talking to a non-American than an American on reddit.
I think only Americans like announcing they are Americans. Working with tourists in Europe spotting Americans was easy because the first thing they would say is "hello, I'm from America", or "I'm from Califooornia"
or, you know, keep it to yourself unless asked? No one needs to know which planet you come from, why does it matter if I'm from Mars? Will you see me as inferior because I didn't have a good atmosphere or liquid water in my childhood and my favorite color is red because that's what we had?
Strange. Working with tourists in the US, you can't get Europeans to NOT tell you where they're from. Pretty much everyone who speaks English will tell you where they're from and even the ones who don't usually still do.
I think its a subconscious need to feel like people are interested in you as you are in them.
My guess is because the US is a dumpster fire that is exploding right now, and let’s be honest: who doesn’t slow down to “rubber neck” a dumpster fire when they’re passing by?
Once we’ve completely fallen on our asses, and worn ourselves out crying like little babies, I’m sure the noise will subside.
Until then you probably want to get a lemmy client that supports keyword filtering and you can at least lessen the noise a little.
As an American, I don’t know if “rubber necking” is a known colloquialism outside of the US. So, if you don’t know, it’s a term used to refer to the assholes on the road who slow down to gawk at traffic accidents as if they’ve never seen one before; very, very annoying.
It would already be nice if posts specified they are about the USA instead of just blurping out something about "the civil war" for example instead of "the USA civil war".
My read is that this is about when Germans are waking up, so there are many people posting whatever the new's of the day is. It just so happens that it corresponds with the time of the evening after work where I might browse lemmy while watching a show.
if there were countries in Europe that were as politically idiotic as the US has been for literal decades I'm sure you'd read about that place more than the US.
I live in Canada and as far as political news goes here...it's dreadfully boring and I imagine it's the same for most of Europe. It's always been like that. even regular news here it's boring. nothing dramatic happens because unlike the US most of the world has their shit together when compared to the US.
Donald Trump and the current iteration of america are train wrecks. It's hard to look away no matter where you are in the world. Super power countries don't fall every day.
That's a good point. I've already been tempted to pick up French for weird cartoons like peepoodo, but there's so much Internet I don't see at all because English
The good thing about English is that it's a slut. So many words and terms come from other languages that it's easy to have a basic word base to start with from other languages. As easy as some Americans dismiss Spanish influence, it's hard to not have at least some kind of understanding of at least some words. And being a Latin language, it's not that hard to grow from there. Hell, even the warnings and manuals for equipment will accidentally give you exposure as you look for the english version. Hablamos por uno ràzon. Broken ass Spanish, but it gets the point across.
Yeah and as a Canadian everything I have comes with French on the label. Guess it's suiting that the romance languages have been sleeping with the English slut
Because in a 24 hour news cycle the most interesting story gets the most airtime? Also we likely outnumber you on any engagement. I can't tell you the last time I saw a story from Canada or Germany or the uk that beats felonious demented white nationalist pedophile attempts to ruin entire world in narcissistic crashout. Even if a euro story is important, There are likely less lemmy users who even have a chance of seeing the story much less understand the context enough to engage. Even chinese people are engaging with America's shit show on xiaohongshu. It's a matter of worldwide impact on every platform. Everyone here to watch Nero fiddle
I'd spend time in All and filter out a bunch of US-centric news communities if I was you. I did that with loads of communions I didn't want to see stuff from.
If you compare English as a first language, the USA is still over a majority. There is a reason why most other English-speaking nations have some subsidy for local media.
In pretty sure my instance is based in Germany, or somewhere in Europe at least. That doesn't really matter. You can belong to an instance hosted anywhere, and also I don't trust data privacy at all in the US so I'd rather not have my home instance be hosted here.
Presumably somewhere close enough that they don't want to risk breaking UK law as it's blocked here. Not sure if any other instances will follow. I think all of lemmy is probably against UK law now. Hope we will always have some instances or its small enough to get ignored.
Yes, that is the implication I was making to answer the original question. The majority of content here is in English-->the majority of English-first users are from the US-->this is why Lemmy seems so US-centric.
I was being a little obtuse because it's like a French-filtered user asking why social media seems so France-centric even though there's lots of social media in Africa--there are other languages that people use that you're not necessarily seeing on your feed.
That is not the reality though. The majority of English-first users is a quite irrelevant statistic, since a majority of people from non-English speaking countries still uses English on the internet outside of their specific national environments. The majority of English speakers on the internet are non-Americans, so it explains nothing about why the English language (international) areas of lemmy are US-centric.
Perhaps, neither of us seem to have statistics here so it's a little moot. But I was talking more about my impression of Lemmy, the scope of OP's question, rather than the internet at large. I'd be curious to hear your alternative explanation tho!
As an American, only peak news from Mexico and Canada gets on my radar. I don't know shit about Brazil, Cuba, etc. and with my shit American education system, I can't even name the South American countries.
So if you're in Italy, you don't give a shit about Austria, Switzerland, or France and their big news?
I remember in primary school that we were tasked with learning the names and capitals of all countries on the planet, continent for continent, so there is an early taught awareness of all countries, as well as a culture for backpacking, experiencing and adapting to other cultures.
As a Norwegian, most news here are about here, and only major headlines from other countries are mentioned in the news, like the upcoming doctors strike in UK in the news today or the power outage in Spain a while back. Some more news from Sweden though, as it is our closest neighbour and the country we visit the most.
Well mine is, but only because I blocked a lot of German and French language instances, because I don't speak those languages, and therefore don't see that stuff anymore. Before that like half of the posts I saw were in German.
Also I still see plenty of Canadian and UK topics all over the place.
It's good if you filter out that shit based in keyword. I've had so much less stress by filtering out any posts with the words {"Trump","Vance", "Putin", "Israel", "Republican", "Democrat", "Fart Sandwiches"}
Chaos makes the news. Boring doesn't. Countries that are currently being run by mostly functional adults don't find themselve in the news as much as countries that are a literal dumpster fire being fed by boat-loads of orange toddler piss.
To be fair, rest of countries added up have more English-speaking population than the US. Of you would have to also account for the internet access and general social media presence.
But there is a difference between a population who speaks English and a population that speaks English as a first language.
There are five countries that have a larger English speaking population than the UK: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Yet, a lot of the cultural output of those nations isn't in English because those countries have first languages which take priority.
So the commenters of a post may be fairly diverse, but the post is likely going to come from the perspective of someone who speaks English as a first language. In that case, English speakers are likely going to know more about what is happening in the UK over India because British news is likely written in English while Indian news is going to be written in a wider variety of languages.
The United States is a giant nation in the English language. It comprises of a majority of English as a first language speakers and a large percentage of English speakers overall. American media output is also going to be primarily in English, including local news.
In contrast, a nation like Germany is likely going to speak in German when possible. This likely includes media like news. So, when it comes to news articles, I don't expect English news from Germany to be written in anywhere near the quantity of English news written about California.
I feel like it would be like asking why Portuguese media focuses on Brazil.
The majority of English speakers on the internet are non-Americans. In fact the majority of English speakers on the internet are not even from an English speaking country. That is because English is used as the international language on the internet.
So no, that is not the answer, even though a lot of native English speakers in this thread seems to think it is.
I've mentioned in other cases that a lot of cultural post content is generally created mostly by people's first languages. Local news is likely going to be written in the local language. Discussions on media are likely going to be in the language the media was produced in unless it is a major national hit.
I've mentioned that five more countries have English-speaking populations larger than the UK, but you're likely going to see a lot more post content on the UK over Indonesia because local Indonesian media likely isn't producing the quantity of English coverage as the UK. And I don't expect that to change, as such a change would mean killing local languages.
You're focusing on the nationality of the readers. Most of the people arguing that the USA is the largest English-speaking country is focusing on those providing the written content.
No, English speakers will talk about anything because speaking English on the internet says nothing about where you are from. It is the international language of the internet, not tied to any specific country.
Maybe native speakers or English only speakers. But over a billion people speak English (approx, per Wikipedia), and US only accounts for a fraction of that.
Nice! I was wondering if US or India would be higher and this answers that. I didn't spot that page in time for the previous response.
I should add too, I don't disagree with your point! It is a huge portion of the English speaking population. I was mostly just being pedantic, but also wanting to push back on a statement that could overstate the importance and relative size of the US.
Sure. But people upvote content about their own nation, and the US is the largest single population of english speakers. Maybe India would beat us out, but they seem to have their own internet that they stick to for the most part.
No, most English speakers on the planet are not from the US. In fact most English speakers on the planet are secondary speakers, and not even from an English speaking country.
English is used on the internet as an international language which enables people from all over the world to understand each other.
You clearly don't remember him bragging about being the tallest building in New York as the twin towers fell.
Or him being pissy at Obama all the time.
Or him having a huge hit show.
Or him poisoning people with shitty steaks.
He was constantly in the news because he as always been desperate for attention and praise. Now he has that and the president seat of the collapsing empire.
I made my account so I could block all the "news" /politics , which are mostly US news/politics XD. There is no community for my country here as far as I know, and if there is, and it's anything like it's counterpart on reddit, then also no thanks.
The US has a lot of vital internet servers, is the source of a lot of current population movies and TV shows, and other widespread things that make people pay attention to it.
Internally, a lot of our "news" channels are sensationalized for higher ratings, so if we want to actually learn anything we tend to seek out the internet. Specifically, other "regular folks" online, who can maybe relate.
Because Americans take over platforms and force them to obey American rules while pretending to be neutral. For example, LemmyWorld touts itself as an instance for everyone which is hosted in Europe.
But its /News and /Politics community discourse is forcefully limited to the USA. This is incredibly weird if you stop to think about it for a second.
Imagine if .ml had a /Politics community where the only allowed politics was China. And an unreliable biased Chinese website was to grade sources a credible, instead of the unreliable American MBFC website. Nobody would think that would be normal. But do the same thing for America and everything is fine.
Would be even weirder if people started going into meltdown mode every time a non-mbfc approved site was posted on .ml. Screaming at the .ml mods to delete the post and constantly linking their Zionist-ran mbfc site because they have been indoctrinated into using it.
Maybe because the internet was invented by the US, controlled by the US until rather recently, and has the most people who actively use it that speak English? China firewalls their nation, and you don't speak Indian...so....yeah...
You're right, my house has exactly 4 walls. It is perfectly rectangular with not a single other shape, as god intended.
To acquire said perfectly rectangular house, whose four 90° angles wonderfully sum to 360 total degrees, I had to murder an entire population of locals, all of whom had occupied the land for four months before I arrived. Of course, I did so with prejudice, not a single speck of their existence could be seen after I was finished.
Everytime huh? Impressive. I'd bet you probably see it every now and then maybe. But everytime? I'd be curious to see some examples. I haven't seen what you speak of.
Is it? Or is it a question of which communities you're looking at? Because mine isn't.
Yes, you can set that up. But most news communities such as /world, /worldnews, /news, and others are very US-centric. I wonder why that has to be the case when it should be clear to everyone by now that the White House is employing troll tactics.
Because the USA has so much military and economic power that it is the axis about which the English-speaking world turns. And it is making wildly stupid choices in its foreign and domestic policies, which gets peoples attention from both potential impacts to their own countries and out of sheer horror and exasperation. Finally, it has a huge population relative to any other english speaking nation, and its citizens will tend to vote as a bloc about things they find interesting. And the things they find interesting will typically involve their own nation. Germans, for example, will do this too - but there are far fewer germans than americans, so in an open market, American news gets the most votes from its citizens and ends up on top of the stack.
This is what I wanted to suggest. There's just a lot of news happening in America right now, and because of America's position in the western world that news has widespread implications.
Politics in America are also very dramatic, so the stories might drive more engagement from people into that sort of thing.
Greatest show on earth, bby!
Nah, bullshit. Most news networks and media houses have marketing teams to spread their news links and artificially "boost" their links all over the place. Lemmy has these folks who pretend to be normal users but tend to only post news from specific websites or post tangetial links and then add in their own. And, they get to the top fast.
It's social media marketing 101.
Normal lemmy users who actually got here to escape the vote manipulations or whatever in other networks usually post archived links, summary, or even the whole article in the text. You don't normally see that with marketing accounts. And I've seen that's grow ever more as the community gets larger.
But continue to think the US is the center of the universe and there's no manipulation or marketing going on at all. It's working out so well for it, they made a TV reality star president, TWICE.
But you do you on your axis.
I don’t know for other countries, but I read French news in French. So the French instance is way smaller than the English speaking ones
Would that be J Lai Lu? And how would you make it show more often in your feed and us news show less often? That's the kind of balance I'd like to get, useful us news about once a day and useful French news about once a day, instead of 10x of same Epstein news and 0 French/whatever
That's why we moved our french communities there, on jlai.lu. so if you have a jlai.lu account, you can set your timeline to local and then every news will be french.
There is another solution : PieFed. With PieFed account, you can subcribe to the flux i created :
Oh i forgot, on piefed, we have a keyword filter. You can add trump, musk, eipstein and then ask piefed to hide or blur those posts.
I hope it helped ya somehow :)
I appreciate all the info, unfortunately there's several things that confuse me.
What's piefed, is this an instance or an app?
What do I do if I want Australia, France and a few other countries, do I need accounts in multiple instances? How do I find them? Can I have all of their posts collated simultaneously in my racoon app?
What's a flux?
Is there a book "Lemmy for Dummies"? Or perhaps a ted talk course to teach me basics?
PieFed is a software that support flair, tags, multicommu...your instance has opened a PieFed instance there : https://piefed.world/
The account on jlai.lu allow ya to use local shorting so you can switch to french content or english easily as we do.
A flux, is a piefed feature, this is a multicommunity. They can be public (shared to everyone) or private. So you can create flux based on countries, language, whatever come to your mind...on subcribe to an available flux, import existing one to your piefed instance...
J’lai lu has news but it isn’t the only thing. it is the best I know but there might be something better. I don’t know how to search for communities by language. I actually read newspapers at the library when I want to read French news
I sort by scale for this
Interesting, thank you :)
Have you posted articles and discussions relevant to your country?
Can you parrot anything else?
Typical dismissive answer that I see on here. You know very well US political BS has infiltrated most communities by now.
Not in my experience. If you don't want to see politics there is a robust blocking system on Connect (and other apps I'm sure) that you can use.
Alright lemme just block every community brb
Keywords, friend. Keywords.
Ok then let me block the whole English dictionary then
This would be less of a problem if Lemmy moderators actually gave a fuck anout the quality of their communities.
Have you posted articles and discussions relevant to your country?
The US population is grouped together in one giant pool instead of spread out by state like Europe is grouped by individual country. We focus on national news that affects the large population, and stuff that happens on other states becsuse of the shared identity, while European countries don't have the same kind of European Union shenanigans that affect all of Europe and mostly post about country level stuff. Communities in languages other than English also tend to be posted in separate communites further separating their discussions from the general purpose communities.
We are also louder, which also contributes, but that is not as big of a deal as the sheer numbers.
plus, you know, inheritors of the British empire - practically an unbroken chain of hegemonic anglophones who refuse to learn another language
While a huge portion of the population chooses not to become fluent in a language, because nearly everything within hundreds of miles of where they live uses the same language by default, we still provide opportunities to learn languages and in some areas people are commonly bilingual.
It can be hard to maintain a language without frequent exposure. I had some classes in Spanish and French, but without a large population that speaks either language in my area I just forgot it over time. Moved tons place where we do have a lot of people who speak Spanish and English, but since I'm not part of their community my exposure is limited to the occasional festival or signage as nobody needs me to impose my attempt to learn their language on them.
It isn't all about refusal, it is mostly lack of exposure.
Yeah, the geography certainly plays a role - much like it does for Britain having ~30 miles of ocean between it and the rest of Europe.
But the broad trend in the States has been a narrowing of languages. Like, a century ago there was national distribution for newspapers printed in German. Those started disappearing during WW1 and were completely gone by the end of WW2. And, of course, that is dwarfed by the number of First Nations languages that have been driven to the edge extinction, if not outright extinguished already.
I think if Lemmy wants to have less of a US bent to topics and perspectives, then they'll have to follow ich_iel's example and stubbornly commit to a language that isn't english. The way how the internet collapses geography, conversation trends toward orbiting the densest population of monoglots.
It is a self reinforcing system, and the same reason that English has become so widespread worldwide.
Increased communication across wider areas promote common languages to be more accessible to more people, so in the case of the US this means each time people communicate it is more likely to be in English. Sure, some stupid laws have helped out too but this is a trend that was going to happen in the US for the same reasons English is increasingly used worldwide, but we don't have a national language that English is being added to to promote being bilingual. Quebec has been fighting the trend though legislation since it was happening there as well.
Even regional dialects of English are being homogenized within the US. It is less likely for people traveling across many states to be unable to understand a regional dialect as was fairly common before cheap long distance communication.
I am actively working on learning spanish as an American, because I want to be able to speak to people when I go to central and south America.
I have far less interest in learning french or german, because Europe is both expensive to get to for me, and expensive to stay in relative to other places I have equal interest in travelling to. And besides that, if I were to travel to Europe, I've been told that everyone there already speaks english anyway. And besides that, I've been told that even if I try to learn french or german, the locals will just speak to me in English anyway since it is faster for them. Due to this, learning these languages largely becomes an intellectual exercise performed for its own sake. And if I'm going to spend hours doing some sort of intellectual hobby, I could just as easily want to learn to paint or play the guitar or perform statistical analysis on the different varieties of weeds in my back yard.
yeah, broadly speaking, there are two languages spoken on this continent and french is not one of them (désolée Quebec)
Presumably you're browsing english-language Lemmy
Most people are going to want to converse in their native/primary language, and by numbers that means a lot of Americans who are, of course, primarily concerned with American issues
There's also the fact that America is a huge player on the international stage, so American issues can have a lot of repercussions in other countries
And if you haven't noticed, America has kind of a lot of shit going on and there is a lot to talk about there.
Kind of a natural thing to happen, french lemmy (and reddit) is very france focused in much the same way.
Well said!
"Well said"
"I hope your family gets bombed and you watch your family die"
Are you OK? Please logout and hug a person IRL, it does wonders for mental health.
Everyone slows down to watch the car wreck.
Because the Europeans post in their weirdo languages.
NEIN
ABSOLUT NICHT!
DOCH!
OH!
Nem
Nee hoor, dat doen wij helemaal niet!
Waar heb je het over?
É raro mas acontece.
Squomp, squendled scruinion.
Kamo sreće
Because Americans are louder and tend not to confine their activities to the country-specific forums
As an American, I can say one of our defining characteristics is we believe we belong everywhere on the Internet. There is no space that we are embarrassed to enter. Reminds me of the Americans showing up on Chinese social media and acting like they owned the place.
As an american, I don't see a problem with this.
I heard theres a comm around the corner that doesn't have anything to do with us. Wanna go crash it, guys?
I see German content here all the time, even though I don't understand it or follow it.
I've blocked so much german.
It’s either that or learn German and I’m way too busy scrolling for that.
I've accidentally learned a good amount of German from lemmy, actually. I didnt mean to, but from similar words, to looking up Rammstein lyrics, I had a base. From that base, and context, I'm actually learning a good bit of German without intention. Sometimes I read a German headline and it takes me a second to realize I'm reading German. I come across a word I don't know and I'm like "oh shit, I'm reading German". It's honestly been my favorite part of lemmy, I struggled with Spanish in a classroom setting and here I am learning German on accident. Granted, I couldn't pretend to know how to pronounce half of it, but I'm learning to read it.
You have to be a bit careful, because some people deliberately talk in wrong German ("Zangendeutsch", where words are translated from English by "force").
That makes sense, like learning English from Internet memes?
Worse.
The German you read from Zangendeutsch memes are almost as grammatically accurate as the German accent you got from Schwarzenegger.
Imagine the most broken grammar and then you get that.
On top the grammar is also non-applicable.
Upside: You can still get some idea of what the meme is about. :)
Even worse, English memes usually aren't as bad regarding the creation of new words.
The good news is German has consistent pronunciation so it's easy to learn that part
Until the loan words come out.
Whats the latest word you've learned?
Probably eisbrecher, honestly. Because it started coming up on a Rammstein playlist. Which is cool because it gives me the base for ice and breaker, making it that much easier for me to pick up on other words in context, that I may have missed otherwise. Even moreso because I read so much climate news, which is important to me as the US dwindles in climate research, I hope to learn more French and German. I just wish I could learn my grandparents native languages of Norwegian and swedish. Those are much harder for me, even though I've actually put effort into those. It just doesn't come as easy to me.
Eisbrecher meaning a way of meeting other people easier or the type of ship? :)
𝔅𝔲𝔱 𝔴𝔥𝔶?
Have you seen the shitstorm we're (U.S.) in? We're like the worst car crash you've ever seen and then the ambulance also crashes then the fire truck blows up and then aliens come down and start attacking...kinda hard to look away.
You forgot the train derailment and plane crash...
I thought I understood US politics...even if it was by osmosis given the sheer volume we're exposed to...but lately I felt like I only understood the dem half...after the election I'm not sure and by now I have this "there is no hope of understanding this mess, different culture, different values" that I get from trying to understand Indian politics.
I mean honestly this is the most deranged and worst it's been in my ... at least adult lifetime. I think a lot of the political mess we're in is tied into our appetite for some pretty terrible pop culture. Yes, yes, we have moral and intelligent and sane people here too, but the way that we have leaned in so hard to trashy reality television, infuencers, anything to grab your attention and reward it monetarily...hell we have a reality tv president. It's not the only reason I think we're in the mess, but I think we've been primed to accept more and more outrageous behavior cause we've always been over the top and big and loud. I always assumed I'd live in a democracy, it was just a given. This is the first time I'm doubting it.
Yeah fam we live in a fascist oligarchy masquerading as a democracy. Been that way probably our whole lives, it's just the latest puppet gave the game away pretty hard. Hope you'll keep following the white rabbit for your own self edification but stay hydrated and fed and look after your safety, things can get a lot worse before enough people come together to make it better.
As an American I think the same way.
We’ve always really had two parties but historically they were not radically different. While I have certain tendencies, I’ve always understood the other party/perspective and sometimes voted for those candidates.
But now I have no clue what half the country is thinking. I don’t understand what happened to let the current crop of criminals attain leadership or get away with so much. Sometime I think it’s the “leopard eating faces” scenario, but sometimes I think it’s the toddler having a tantrum and knocking over the table scenario. Sometimes I think it’s just narcissists who can only think in the current time with no connection to the future. Sometimes I think people have no abstract thinking anymore and sometimes I think they’re all just gullible and easily manipulable. I can’t even have empathy for them because I can’t tell whether they deserve pity or need a scolding or need to stick to their sandbox.
Or if you’re talking about the mechanics of politics, that too. We have ways we’ve done things traditionally, according to laws back to (and even before) the constitution found our country. Apparently that doesn’t matter anymore
Because it's the most newsworthy country at the moment. The most powerful country in the world is crashing before your eyes, whilst the rest of the world mostly continues on as it was. Yeah, some noteworthy things are happening all over the world, but that's not as dramatic as the fall of arguably the most hated country in the world. And everything from genocide to climate change, disease and general suffering can be at least tangentially related to the disaster that is the US and it's administration. I mean, what noteworthy things are there to chide Sweden for? Anything? Is it comparible to the horrors and despair that the US is causing? There's your answer.
Easy there, lets not forget Israel. America is maybe right behind them though.
That's why that key word, "arguably" is there. Russia is also working for that title.
It is not just the funding, they literally got a cheerleader in Trump, extremely eager to participate as well, as was seen with the bombing of Iran.
Netanyahu doesn't have to hold back anymore, he can blatantly genocide because he got the backing of the US, and the European leaders are mostly too spineless to cross the Americans.
Most of the things happening in Israel now is because of the US though. Netanyahu really felt empowered by Trump becoming president, and rightly so, because he can manipulate that orange toddler into doing anything he wants.
I checked the news in the biggest newspaper in sweden, and there's this story about a bus that scraped the roof while driving under a bridge. Must have been scary for the passengers. Luckily it wasn't going that fast. And there's a list of schools where you actually get paid to study so you don't need student loans.
That's awesome that that's the worst news from there. And I love Sweden and Norway as that's where my family originated from. What I wouldn't give to have been born in either of those countries. Unfortunately I'm one generation out of being able to easily go back.
For Norway a good chunk of the news on our state-run newspaper is related to the US as well. Especially the recent Epstein stuff
Other than that it's Israel/Palestine, Ukraine/Russia, some other international news, sports, the current heatwave, a little about nature, a little about new infrastructure projects, a news story about hate speech, and a couple other misc stories
No moose mentioned?
There was a story about moose some weeks ago, but it's been a while now, sadly.
They're been losing Social Bastion points for a while now and are turning a hard right towards Aryan Master-race ethos.
Most of europe actually.
Almost at all times...
Because those at the head of the whole government thingy fuck it up for almost half of the world...
Please. Let it diversify.
As a US dweller, I'd love it to be anything but US centric.
I think I know what you mean. When I go on holidays, the last place I want to spend my days is in Irish pubs. The good ones can be lovely, and it’s nice to meet new people from home, but it’s not why I’m there.
Yes!
And also, imagine the loudest bits of your local pubs are Trump, Trump, Trump, 24/7/365.
That’s another good point. That mindset is probably overrepresented online.
I assume its because people love watching train wrecks.
Can confirm. Season 5 is off to a great start. 🍿
I heard a rumor that half way through season 5 there is going to be a surprise change in cast.
Oooh! Switching things up to keep it spicy. Spoilers! Well, there has been some foreshadowing, but still... I mean, the writing is far from stale or boring, but throwing in a plot twist like that mid-season would be a bold move.
Either way, I'm sure the season finale won't disappoint.
The US is the largest English-speaking country by far and this post is in English. Switch to another language and you'll see less US stuff.
That has nothing to do with anything. You will obviously not be aware of it, but by far the greater majority of English speakers you encounter on the internet are not actually from an English speaking country, and definitely not from the US. That is because English functions as the lingua franca of the internet, so we have to use English to be mutually understood.
Most of us came from Reddit, and Reddit is predominantly Americans.
and unfortunately a lot of people don't want to leave the reddit behind
If they’re that addicted to reddit’s way of doing things they can stay.
No, the majority of users on reddit are non-Americans. Americans are just the biggest national group of users, but they are a minority. You are more likely to be talking to a non-American than an American on reddit.
yeah, I want to hear more about which of your former ministers have shit themselves at McDonalds!
I think only Americans like announcing they are Americans. Working with tourists in Europe spotting Americans was easy because the first thing they would say is "hello, I'm from America", or "I'm from Califooornia"
Never had this happen with any other nationality.
I need to change that. From now on I'll loudly announce I'm from Earth
Or whisper it like a secret for extra lols.
Whispers are you from Earth too?
which planet are you from?
or, you know, keep it to yourself unless asked? No one needs to know which planet you come from, why does it matter if I'm from Mars? Will you see me as inferior because I didn't have a good atmosphere or liquid water in my childhood and my favorite color is red because that's what we had?
I think its because how people speak in movies, americans speak like a script writer
It makes a whole lot of sense the other way around. Script writers speak like Americans.
Strange. Working with tourists in the US, you can't get Europeans to NOT tell you where they're from. Pretty much everyone who speaks English will tell you where they're from and even the ones who don't usually still do.
I think its a subconscious need to feel like people are interested in you as you are in them.
As an American, the first thing you spot is my overweight ass asking for a bucket of Mayo.
I never said "I'm an American" or any of that in my life.
My guess is because the US is a dumpster fire that is exploding right now, and let’s be honest: who doesn’t slow down to “rubber neck” a dumpster fire when they’re passing by?
Once we’ve completely fallen on our asses, and worn ourselves out crying like little babies, I’m sure the noise will subside.
Until then you probably want to get a lemmy client that supports keyword filtering and you can at least lessen the noise a little.
As an American, I don’t know if “rubber necking” is a known colloquialism outside of the US. So, if you don’t know, it’s a term used to refer to the assholes on the road who slow down to gawk at traffic accidents as if they’ve never seen one before; very, very annoying.It would already be nice if posts specified they are about the USA instead of just blurping out something about "the civil war" for example instead of "the USA civil war".
One can dream!
There are several of these already, which one are you talking about?
...
Do you agree that Israel should stop receiving any and all US aid and end the genocide on Palestine?
How the fuck is that related to this thread?
I agree to you stfu instead of polluting the discussion.
From around 7PM - 9PM HST, lemmy is almost 100% German.
No idea where/what time HST is, but I agree, there is a "German time", not so for French, Italian, ...
https://www.timetemperature.com/tzhi/honolulu.shtml
My read is that this is about when Germans are waking up, so there are many people posting whatever the new's of the day is. It just so happens that it corresponds with the time of the evening after work where I might browse lemmy while watching a show.
if there were countries in Europe that were as politically idiotic as the US has been for literal decades I'm sure you'd read about that place more than the US.
I live in Canada and as far as political news goes here...it's dreadfully boring and I imagine it's the same for most of Europe. It's always been like that. even regular news here it's boring. nothing dramatic happens because unlike the US most of the world has their shit together when compared to the US.
I miss the days of boring US politics
Donald Trump and the current iteration of america are train wrecks. It's hard to look away no matter where you are in the world. Super power countries don't fall every day.
Most likely English-centric.
For me, english is my internet language anyway so...
This is one of my main motivations to learn other languages. The internet is tedious if you only speak English.
That's a good point. I've already been tempted to pick up French for weird cartoons like peepoodo, but there's so much Internet I don't see at all because English
French is fun!
Well to read at least. I can't speak it worth a damn. Sentences are like a single word.
You mean frrench?
The good thing about English is that it's a slut. So many words and terms come from other languages that it's easy to have a basic word base to start with from other languages. As easy as some Americans dismiss Spanish influence, it's hard to not have at least some kind of understanding of at least some words. And being a Latin language, it's not that hard to grow from there. Hell, even the warnings and manuals for equipment will accidentally give you exposure as you look for the english version. Hablamos por uno ràzon. Broken ass Spanish, but it gets the point across.
Yeah and as a Canadian everything I have comes with French on the label. Guess it's suiting that the romance languages have been sleeping with the English slut
Because in a 24 hour news cycle the most interesting story gets the most airtime? Also we likely outnumber you on any engagement. I can't tell you the last time I saw a story from Canada or Germany or the uk that beats felonious demented white nationalist pedophile attempts to ruin entire world in narcissistic crashout. Even if a euro story is important, There are likely less lemmy users who even have a chance of seeing the story much less understand the context enough to engage. Even chinese people are engaging with America's shit show on xiaohongshu. It's a matter of worldwide impact on every platform. Everyone here to watch Nero fiddle
I'd spend time in All and filter out a bunch of US-centric news communities if I was you. I did that with loads of communions I didn't want to see stuff from.
Why have you filtered out your communions, my child?
It is important that you not desecrate the sacrament and accept the blood and body as they were intended, not strained or filtered.
Also, please do not chew the wafer.
It took a long time before I started actively filtering. My current feed is mostly what I'm asking for, at this point.
Like a Pandora station.
i did that too, since they start banning for some misconstrued comments.
There are just more of us than any single EU country.
The internet as a whole is pretty US centric
There are however exceptions (for example: china)
And I'm sure that Mandarin Internet media sites are very Sinocentric.
English is a first language in more countries than Mandarin is, though.
Do wish Yanks would recognise the world as bigger than themselves, the PRC and the USA are shockingly similar.
If you compare English as a first language, the USA is still over a majority. There is a reason why most other English-speaking nations have some subsidy for local media.
"We're the most powerful country in the world for a few more years!" -- Homer Simpson
\sigh
In pretty sure my instance is based in Germany, or somewhere in Europe at least. That doesn't really matter. You can belong to an instance hosted anywhere, and also I don't trust data privacy at all in the US so I'd rather not have my home instance be hosted here.
Presumably somewhere close enough that they don't want to risk breaking UK law as it's blocked here. Not sure if any other instances will follow. I think all of lemmy is probably against UK law now. Hope we will always have some instances or its small enough to get ignored.
Maybe it has to do with your language settings as well? I imagine filtering out English will make your experience much less US-centric.
Yes, that is the implication I was making to answer the original question. The majority of content here is in English-->the majority of English-first users are from the US-->this is why Lemmy seems so US-centric.
I was being a little obtuse because it's like a French-filtered user asking why social media seems so France-centric even though there's lots of social media in Africa--there are other languages that people use that you're not necessarily seeing on your feed.
That is not the reality though. The majority of English-first users is a quite irrelevant statistic, since a majority of people from non-English speaking countries still uses English on the internet outside of their specific national environments. The majority of English speakers on the internet are non-Americans, so it explains nothing about why the English language (international) areas of lemmy are US-centric.
Perhaps, neither of us seem to have statistics here so it's a little moot. But I was talking more about my impression of Lemmy, the scope of OP's question, rather than the internet at large. I'd be curious to hear your alternative explanation tho!
There are 27 countries in the EU, there is only one USA. Most people don't seem to care about each other's national happenings.
That's so fascinating.
As an American, only peak news from Mexico and Canada gets on my radar. I don't know shit about Brazil, Cuba, etc. and with my shit American education system, I can't even name the South American countries.
So if you're in Italy, you don't give a shit about Austria, Switzerland, or France and their big news?
Yes, we do.
I remember in primary school that we were tasked with learning the names and capitals of all countries on the planet, continent for continent, so there is an early taught awareness of all countries, as well as a culture for backpacking, experiencing and adapting to other cultures. As a Norwegian, most news here are about here, and only major headlines from other countries are mentioned in the news, like the upcoming doctors strike in UK in the news today or the power outage in Spain a while back. Some more news from Sweden though, as it is our closest neighbour and the country we visit the most.
Well mine is, but only because I blocked a lot of German and French language instances, because I don't speak those languages, and therefore don't see that stuff anymore. Before that like half of the posts I saw were in German.
Also I still see plenty of Canadian and UK topics all over the place.
But you are missing out on the Stör memes, and all the ich_iel posts.
I will confess that I don't get the ones about German politicians.
Whenever I see a meme in German, I'm sad I'll never understand it, because I'm definitely not going to the trouble of running it through a translator.
It's good if you filter out that shit based in keyword. I've had so much less stress by filtering out any posts with the words {"Trump","Vance", "Putin", "Israel", "Republican", "Democrat", "Fart Sandwiches"}
Damn, all my Fart Sandwich memes getting blocked. 😭
Not all of them! Just the ones that have more than one sandwich in them
Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Chaos makes the news. Boring doesn't. Countries that are currently being run by mostly functional adults don't find themselve in the news as much as countries that are a literal dumpster fire being fed by boat-loads of orange toddler piss.
Ergo...the U.S. news is everywhere at the moment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
You do the Jaguar math.
To be fair, rest of countries added up have more English-speaking population than the US. Of you would have to also account for the internet access and general social media presence.
But there is a difference between a population who speaks English and a population that speaks English as a first language.
There are five countries that have a larger English speaking population than the UK: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Yet, a lot of the cultural output of those nations isn't in English because those countries have first languages which take priority.
So the commenters of a post may be fairly diverse, but the post is likely going to come from the perspective of someone who speaks English as a first language. In that case, English speakers are likely going to know more about what is happening in the UK over India because British news is likely written in English while Indian news is going to be written in a wider variety of languages.
Because the average US citizen doesn't speak a 2nd language while most of Europeans know English, so the focus shifts towards that
The United States is a giant nation in the English language. It comprises of a majority of English as a first language speakers and a large percentage of English speakers overall. American media output is also going to be primarily in English, including local news.
In contrast, a nation like Germany is likely going to speak in German when possible. This likely includes media like news. So, when it comes to news articles, I don't expect English news from Germany to be written in anywhere near the quantity of English news written about California.
I feel like it would be like asking why Portuguese media focuses on Brazil.
The majority of English speakers on the internet are non-Americans. In fact the majority of English speakers on the internet are not even from an English speaking country. That is because English is used as the international language on the internet.
So no, that is not the answer, even though a lot of native English speakers in this thread seems to think it is.
I've mentioned in other cases that a lot of cultural post content is generally created mostly by people's first languages. Local news is likely going to be written in the local language. Discussions on media are likely going to be in the language the media was produced in unless it is a major national hit.
I've mentioned that five more countries have English-speaking populations larger than the UK, but you're likely going to see a lot more post content on the UK over Indonesia because local Indonesian media likely isn't producing the quantity of English coverage as the UK. And I don't expect that to change, as such a change would mean killing local languages.
You're focusing on the nationality of the readers. Most of the people arguing that the USA is the largest English-speaking country is focusing on those providing the written content.
English speakers will talk about the UK/Canada/Austrailia/etc. once one of them are on fire/falling into fascism as well.
No, English speakers will talk about anything because speaking English on the internet says nothing about where you are from. It is the international language of the internet, not tied to any specific country.
Post content. That’s all that matters.
We have Florida Man and Europe doesnt
Because people engage with it regardless of wether they live there or not.
It's possible that most English-speakers on this planet are in the US.
Maybe native speakers or English only speakers. But over a billion people speak English (approx, per Wikipedia), and US only accounts for a fraction of that.
Yes.
wp:List of countries by English-speaking population
Nice! I was wondering if US or India would be higher and this answers that. I didn't spot that page in time for the previous response.
I should add too, I don't disagree with your point! It is a huge portion of the English speaking population. I was mostly just being pedantic, but also wanting to push back on a statement that could overstate the importance and relative size of the US.
Sure. But people upvote content about their own nation, and the US is the largest single population of english speakers. Maybe India would beat us out, but they seem to have their own internet that they stick to for the most part.
No, most English speakers on the planet are not from the US. In fact most English speakers on the planet are secondary speakers, and not even from an English speaking country.
English is used on the internet as an international language which enables people from all over the world to understand each other.
Because US news are the funniest and the most absurd.
USA! USA! USA! We’re number ONE!
Also the country that collapsed the world economy when some guy in Florida was late on a mortgage payment.
Canadian, here. Kind of hard to ignore our giant idiot neighbour to the south.
A lot of English speaking people live in the USA. ~340M people.
I see tons of news about the major world powers, and there just happens to be a lot going on in the USA rn.
Yeah. Before this, I couldn't even name the president of the US.
You clearly don't remember him bragging about being the tallest building in New York as the twin towers fell.
Or him being pissy at Obama all the time.
Or him having a huge hit show.
Or him poisoning people with shitty steaks.
He was constantly in the news because he as always been desperate for attention and praise. Now he has that and the president seat of the collapsing empire.
have you set a preferred language? if you do, lemmy filters posts in other languages
Europe is trying to solve their problems while we are just throwing fuel on the fire.
I made my account so I could block all the "news" /politics , which are mostly US news/politics XD. There is no community for my country here as far as I know, and if there is, and it's anything like it's counterpart on reddit, then also no thanks.
I think we might be noisy.
Because most users of lemmy are from the US.
Are you sure? Seems like the news magazines are very centered on Israel and Palestine.
What do you mean?
I am Canadian at heart
Does maple syrup run through your veins?
The US has a lot of vital internet servers, is the source of a lot of current population movies and TV shows, and other widespread things that make people pay attention to it.
Internally, a lot of our "news" channels are sensationalized for higher ratings, so if we want to actually learn anything we tend to seek out the internet. Specifically, other "regular folks" online, who can maybe relate.
Because Americans take over platforms and force them to obey American rules while pretending to be neutral. For example, LemmyWorld touts itself as an instance for everyone which is hosted in Europe.
But its /News and /Politics community discourse is forcefully limited to the USA. This is incredibly weird if you stop to think about it for a second.
Imagine if .ml had a /Politics community where the only allowed politics was China. And an unreliable biased Chinese website was to grade sources a credible, instead of the unreliable American MBFC website. Nobody would think that would be normal. But do the same thing for America and everything is fine.
I think there was a conscious effort to emulate reddit subs, which is daft but that's what happened.
Did they get Ghislaine Maxwell to run /worldnews as well?
Have you posted articles and discussions relevant to your country?
In their relevant communities yes. But not in a world news.
People from around the globe don't need to hear about the latest epstein fart.
Yes plenty. I didn't say "I do not live in the US."
Except if the comments are german.
In that case:
𝔇𝔦𝔢𝔰𝔢 𝔎𝔬𝔪𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔞𝔯𝔰𝔢𝔨𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔦𝔰𝔱 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔲𝔪 𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔅𝔲𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔯𝔢𝔭𝔲𝔟𝔩𝔦𝔨 𝔇𝔢𝔲𝔱𝔰𝔠𝔥𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡!
Yeah imagine that
Would be even weirder if people started going into meltdown mode every time a non-mbfc approved site was posted on .ml. Screaming at the .ml mods to delete the post and constantly linking their Zionist-ran mbfc site because they have been indoctrinated into using it.
More budget for propaganda.
Except the propaganda isn't exactly favorable for the US. Almost as though there is a concerted and consistent effort to discredit the US.
Have you posted articles and discussions relevant to your country?
Not enough budget.
That's empire for ya.
why does it matter so much? when war in Ukraine broke out nobody but the fascists complained.
I have never seen anyone complain about news in Europe take over, so why does it bother you so much?
Maybe because the internet was invented by the US, controlled by the US until rather recently, and has the most people who actively use it that speak English? China firewalls their nation, and you don't speak Indian...so....yeah...
Indian is not a language
*any of the 10,000 or so regional dialects of india
They know what I am saying, they just want to pull that whole smug PC thing.
Which is no doubt why he doesn't speak it.
You're right, my house has exactly 4 walls. It is perfectly rectangular with not a single other shape, as god intended.
To acquire said perfectly rectangular house, whose four 90° angles wonderfully sum to 360 total degrees, I had to murder an entire population of locals, all of whom had occupied the land for four months before I arrived. Of course, I did so with prejudice, not a single speck of their existence could be seen after I was finished.
Have you posted articles and discussions relevant to your country?
Everytime huh? Impressive. I'd bet you probably see it every now and then maybe. But everytime? I'd be curious to see some examples. I haven't seen what you speak of.
Curious, what am I to do with this?
Let me guess, you'll cry about censorship and persecution when this comment gets deleted and/or you get banned.