this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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Unpopular Opinion

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Most of the posts that are frequently featured in the homepage are about social problems or styles of life common to that country (or most first world countries), and even limit to only United-Statesian media discussion. They do not appeal to someone like me, who has different thoughts, different people, different problems. It's hard to find something relatable in (most) non-local communities, because it's just about this style of culture. It doesn't helps with the poor website discorverability, making me limited to these same repetitive and unfunny posts.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

True, the biggest factor is language, a Lemmy in Arabic or Chinese would be completely. An analogous example is comparing YouTube to Bilibili (Chinese YouTube), two different worlds and I've only found one "YouTube like" reaction channel on BiliBili.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As an American who is undoubtedly contributing to the US-centric tone, I encourage you to post more non-US content. Especially from your particular corner of the globe. It's nice to see things from other parts of the world!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Yes please, more of this. I would really like to hear something other than what is going on in the US (and Canada). Good or bad, my only issue is I wish lemmy had some kind of translator. North American sad and mad with the world!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The problem is that the US people aren't interested in outside things. It quickly gets buried and forgotten. They don't bother for other places, or other cultures. And where should I post the non-US stuff?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Really? Did I miss that in the rules some where?

"Be the change you want to see".

Funny, the top posts in the Scotland community are about Scotland, because the bulk of people posting there are interested in posting about Scotland.

What you're acknowledging is that the largest plurality of posters on Lemmy post things about the US. That's all.

You're also functioning from an external locus of control rather than an internal locus of control. That leads to nowhere but dissatisfaction.

All that said, I'd like to see a greater variety of posts, but it is what it is, and I'm uninterested in putting forth the effort to gather interesting stories from around the world.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I am not asking people to pick up stories from around the world. I'm tired of the lack of interest about other places, and how they make the entire world revolve about US problems.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Don't take this the wrong way but that's the internet. Unless you're on a country specific page or a country specific forum, the USians are going to dominate, here and anywhere else. There really isn't much anyone can do about it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Das stimmt fei ned. Wir deutschen übernehmen gerne, sobald wir können ;)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Ja gut, Anschluss bestätigt die Regel.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There are 330,000,000 million of us and we all have internet. More populous countries, like India and China, have languages and alphabets so far removed from English that the vast majority of us can't begin to read them.

So yeah, I would expect American posts to dominate most of the Western world's online activity.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

330,000,000 million

citation needed ;)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is my opinion popular or impopular? Read the sidebar, and respectfully discuss your ideas instead of hiding cowardly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's too unpopular for the majority here to resist down voting as they should if they respected the rule. As a French trying to provide a different point or view sometimes, I agree. Not only it's a vast majority of USA, but also a specific political quarter of it.
Despite what some say here, even motivated minority posters can't compensate for the crushing statistic, and the total mass is too small to have lively niche communities like on Reddit.
I don't see any solution for now, apart some really major new fuck ups by Reddit that would trigger a bigger exodus.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I also feel like non-English communities just do their things on their own (feddit.org or jlai.lu are good examples), which increases even further the proportion of US users on the generic English-speaking communities.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I think it's good to have them doing their own things, but it is just not big enough to be as entertaining and wide-covering as Reddit. j'ai.lu feels more like a forum with 50 active members that you would check once a week.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@Camus @oce
I didn't completely understand the last part. What do you mean by that ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

@oce
Thank

In truth i don't see why it increased the proportion of US user. In fact Reddit wasn't popular outside US. And US if i recall correctly is one of the biggest internet country.

And when the migration started due to spez's decision to milk Reddit and its users's data, most of users stayed in Reddit and smaller commuties have a hard time to attract those Redditors since our activity is low.

Futhermore i follow most of jlai.lu active user through iceshrimp, my tab called "Lemmy" is in english.

So the final result isn't surprising. 😅

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

I'm not following the proportion point, but about non-US on reddit, r/france has 2.1 M readers and r/de has 2.7 M readers. They are very active, it completely dwarves anything on Lemmy. Any national subject is going to be discussed there. I am not using those by activism, but I can't blame the average person to prefer those vastly more active places.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Look at the daily posts on [email protected]. They have several hundreds of comments every day, because the mods of /r/Melbourne supported the migration to Lemmy.

[email protected] is kind of similar in that space, they had an official post to move to feddit a year ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/ich_iel/comments/14d65o7/%C3%B6ffentliche_dienstmeldung_%C3%A4nderung_der/

Meanwhile the mods of /r/France just removed every post mentioning Jlai.lu as it was "a social network".

Shaking my head.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

@oce
I'm not sure if they really have 2.1M readers on Reddit. I don't trust those numbers due to bots, inative accounts...

And if Lemmy was really connected to the fediverse we wouldn't have 1K users but lot more.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Even if we can't trust those numbers, you can just check their frontages and see the number of posts and comments per day, it's much more active.

And if Lemmy was really connected to the fediverse we wouldn’t have 1K users but lot more.

How could it be more connected?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

@oce
Well mastodon/iceshrimp's users can't see you. I can only see you there because i met you in jlai.lu first and added your account to my iceshrimp one. So right now, they can only see your jlai.lu account through me.

Outside my iceshrimp account or lemmyverse, you doesn't exist in the fediverse.

ActivityPub, as i read should work that way : whatever the software is, we should access any content and interact with.

So, Lemmy is somewhat limited. Small support of hashtag, and we can't follow people, nor react to their post. If ActivityPub worked well, those number as 1M would be irevalent as we should count the whole french fediverse community.

Same for Mastodon that doesn't support forum style format.

I hope my explanation was clear. It's still a wip project and i hope those barriers will be lowered and see software merging in some way. :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I guess there are issues with the post formats, micro blog and forum styles are quite different, and there's probably a cultural friction between people who like community based pseudonymous forums and strongly personified social media.
Let's hope we can one day have a common share place for information with UIs adapted to every tastes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

@oce
That's what i hope they will achieve one day. Both are good. And if they don't see the forum structure they won't notice. :)

[–] dsilverz 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Your instance tells me that you're also Brazilian. Portuguese text follows.

Concordo em partes. Por um lado, sim, eu percebo que países como o Brasil parecem não ter a representatividade necessária aqui na Internet global, sobretudo aqui no fediverso. Por exemplo, a notícia envolvendo o diretor da "UHC" retorna mensagens (postagens e comentários) onde há tanto implícito quanto explícito um pensamento de que EUA é "o mundo" e que não haveria nada além desse "mundo estadunidense". Isso é chato, principalmente para nós brasileiros, mas vamos ser justos: isso é chato para qualquer nação fora da panelinha EUA-Europa, principalmente do dito "sul global".

Por outro lado, há muitos paralelos de realidade entre os dois países. Exemplificando novamente o caso da "UHC", embora o Brasil tenha o Sistema Único de Saúde, a gente sabe que os convênios médicos, muitas vezes fornecidos pela empresa onde as pessoas trabalham, são uma realidade burocrática por aqui. "O que pinga de lá pinga daqui", isso sem contar a ligação direta entre a UHC estadunidense e a Amil brasileira, controlados pelo mesmo grupo.

Há uma solução para isso, que é algo que faço aqui no Lemmy. Se olhar os meus comentários aqui no Lemmy, sempre tento mencionar o Brasil tanto em aspectos positivos quanto negativos, coisas do Brasil, curiosidades culturais do Brasil, os problemas enfrentados pelo Brasil, tudo que tiver a ver com Brasil eu tento mencionar para que o Brasil seja mais conhecido por não-brasileiros. Acho que essa é uma forma de diversificar um conteúdo que geralmente é centrado na panelinha EUA-Europa.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Interessante. Mas como eu chego a mencionar o Brasil de uma forma forçada? Considerando que não me considero muito esperto em sociopolítica e não gosto das postagens sobre política?

[–] dsilverz 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Não algo forçado, mas através de comentários nas postagens, de uma forma relativamente natural, mencionando aspectos relacionados ao Brasil conforme contextos apropriados surgirem no Lemmy.

Por exemplo, esses dias atrás me deparei com um comentário onde questões fonéticas anglófonas eram abordadas, então comentei acrescentando uma perspectiva lusófona, nisso eu pude fazer uma menção dentro de um fluxo natural de conversa ali.

Outro caso foi um tópico sobre o que os gringos chamam de "suicide cable" (um fio elétrico cujas ambas as pontas são um plug de colocar na tomada, usam pra corrigir instalações de pisca-pisca em árvores de Natal), daí mencionei sobre o padrão brasileiro de tomadas e de gambiarras que muitas vezes vemos por aqui, que praticamente fazem parte de um aprendizado brasileiro de solucionar problemas sem ter que despender muita grana pra aquilo.

Então é dessa forma, relativamente sutil, que lembro os gringos da existência do Brasil como nação.

E quando o nome do Brasil é explicitamente mencionado por um gringo, por texto, notícias, imagens ou infográficos, menções que às vezes acontecem, melhor ainda, porque abre margem para contextualizar melhor, como brasileiro, sobre aquilo que está sendo mencionado. Exemplo: um dia desses falavam sobre a reunião do G-alguma coisa que teve recentemente no Rio, e mencionavam frevo e caipirinha e algum outro elemento cultural que foi escrito de forma errada ou confundido com algum outro elemento cultural (não lembro exatamente). Educadamente corrigi a palavra, e expliquei melhor o que era e qual a relação que os brasileiros tinham com aquele elemento cultural.

Edit: note que a maioria dessas menções são mais em função de aspectos menos polarizantes/complicados, focando mais em aspectos culturais, hábitos brasileiros e dia-a-dia, culinária, tecnologia, linguística, pronúncias, sotaques, e etc, do que política e socioeconômica. Um exemplo interessante que poderia também ser utilizado pra mencionar o Brasil, embora eu particularmente não tenho interesses nesse campo em específico, é o esporte, mencionando sobre os esportes onde o Brasil tem significativo destaque, não somente futebol porque disso todo mundo lembra, mas, por exemplo, a liga nacional de vôlei, basquete, natação, maratonistas brasileiros, fórmula 1, etc.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

[email protected] now exists to have a space for USA discussions

On the other hand, [email protected] has a vote to make the "no US politics rule" permanent

Feddit.org, feddit.uk and other languages and countries based instance are quite active (see the sidebar of [email protected] )

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oh, yay. The vote is heavily toward making the "no US politics" rule permanent. As an American, I am happy to see that. I'm so sick of [our] politics everywhere, so I can't imagine the rest of the world being any less sick of it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Yes, the vote is quite clear

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Be consoled. Soon it won't be among the first world countries anymore.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I can relate to this. But being federated, there are some local instances (not communities) which will have content you can relate to. For example, there was a kerala.party instance (which later mysteriously disappeared from the web) which had lots of memes I could relate to. Maybe you can find an instance with stuff you enjoy: https://join-lemmy.org/instances and https://lemmyverse.net/

EDIT: added lemmyverse link