Ok I hope I won’t come off as an ass here. I’m not always the most eloquent.
One thing that was quite grating on Reddit, was how most “global” subreddits were basically defaulting to the USA.
For example, people would ask questions in general question subs - “Can I legally…?” ”Is a teacher allowed to…?", “How much does it cost to…?” and unless they specify the country, you were just supposed to assume it’s the US, with people from other countries keeping such questions to specific subs.
And this is just a bit weird to non-Americans who always need to specify their jurisdiction or place when it’s relevant.
On Reddit it kinda made sense as Americans were almost half of all users, but with Lemmy, anyone can run an instance from wherever.
There is a bunch of instances dedicated to countries or regions.
But Lemmy.world has “world” right there in the title. So don’t assume everyone is from the same place as you.
Don’t get me wrong, I do love the global community! But I also don’t want to get confused and make assumptions.
So all I ask is some of these things:
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If you’re asking the global community a question, making a comment etc., that is specific to some area(s) of the world, always specify the place, even if it seems self-explanatory.
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Similarly, when using generic terms such as “congress”, “conservative”, “west coast” or “health insurance”, keep in mind that lots of countries have those too in some form or another. Specify what you’re talking about.
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Careful with names of places, especially abbreviation. By CA, do you mean Canada or California? Is IN India or Indiana? Is SD an SD card? UK is an university now? And so on. I personally think abbreviation should default to countries or global organizations, if anything - such as UK, EU, UN.
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When creating/managing a community, use the Display Name to specify what you mean. (I won’t call anyone out but I kinda want to…)
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If you see someone making these assumptions, maybe let them know it can be confusing for the others.
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Consider using (or creating) an instance or community that’s more region-specific or interest-specific . I don’t want to kick anyone out, don’t get me wrong, but everyone can subscribe everywhere, so…
I’ve seen instances for many countries (and the US midwest)… But not one for USA as a whole yet. So, just keep in mind the community is global.
Again, sorry if I come off harsh, it’s not my intent, and I don’t even mean to call out people from the US specifically. It’s just that on Reddit, this has often lead to some toxicity (r/USDefaultism and some other “defaultism” subs) and it would be a shame to bring that here as well.
And you know, just to try to avoid confusion.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
No, it’s a consequence of normies.
The original Reddit, like Slashdot, and Dig to a lesser extent, defaulted to a global community. These places started out by attracting nerds from across the globe. Nerdy communities are internationalist, and fluent in English. So there was a tacit understanding that English was simply Esperanto and that anyone could be from anywhere.
Slowly getting mainstream, Reddit started attracting randos. And American randos apparently associate English with themselves, completely lost to the fact that something like half of the planet uses it as a common language. So I sat and watched as the overall tone of the place went from a spaceship, to Chick-fil-A, Podunk.
Sauce: English as a second language and been there from the start.
I don’t think you understand. The heavy majority of users were from the US, if 95% of the posts are about the US, it’s safe to assume it’s the default. The website was built in the US.
It’s akin to going on a forum for Japanese news and being upset that everyone’s speaking Japanese and no ones specifying that they’re talking about Japan.
That’s besides the point anyway, people not from the US are frustrated that Reddit defaulted to the US, and I get it. I would be too if I wasn’t from the US.
I’m ALSO frustrated because the US can come up out of no where on reddit and everyone starts the US apart from seemingly no relation to the original post.
If you saw some of the comments on reddit that were shitting on the US about literally ANY other country, you would without a doubt be pissed off, especially if it was your own country. And it happens ad nauseum when it comes to the US.
I don’t think you understand. How do you know that the heavy majority of the users (of the early Reddit) were from the US? You are repeating the viewpoint that the place started out as US-centric — any concrete data here? Why do you think that the country where a web site was built in matters here?
I’ll reiterate: English is fundamentally different from Japanese because it is widely used as a second language.
No no, you don’t understand brother. Have you ever looked at the user stats by country for reddit? Literally right now something like 50% of users are from the US. Early on, the number was even larger.
Here’s a source for reddit users based on country in 2022. The number one spot, 47% of users are from the US, number 2? Oh that’s the UK with 7%. So even to this day, the US still has the vast majority of traffic to reddit when compared to any other country.
How’s that for concrete data?
It’s good data, but we know it’s been overrun by Americans.
This is something that we don’t know.
Early on, it was about random programming links and stuff that such crowd cared about. Then a bunch of people poured in and confused the language with the locality.
Okay, so I provided a source. Do YOU have any concrete data about early reddit or are you just arguing in bad faith?
Is it really not a safe assumption to make that since the website was founded in the US, and today has a vast majority of users from the US, that it wouldn’t have been the case early on?
If a website is built in your country, isn’t it a safe assumption that the majority of users would be from your country?
I’m arguing in good faith, since this is a new place and I’m (still) trying to foster discussion. Unfortunately, I could not find any published data on the visitors of the early Reddit.
So the best that I can do is offer first-hand account: cca 2006 Reddit was not US-centric. For that matter, almost no community on the Internet was, be it forums or IRC.
This is complete nonsense. Why would it work like that? Are most of the Spotify users Swedish?
Here’s a time line.
Users couldn’t even create their own subreddits, as in, Reddit themselves opened all of the original subreddits from the time reddit was founded (EDIT: June 2005) until January 2008.
Reddit, being a US company, would obviously default the subreddits to the US.
Early on? Probably, yes.
We’re just talking past each other.
People from the broader “west” look at the Internet, see a global network, and switch to English to maximize the reach.
(Certain) people from the anglosphere see the network is in English, and conclude it must be local to them.
Also this.
I was there, we took surveys.
Looks like the America Bad nonsense has already started here smh