𝕯𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖊 𝕶𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖐𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖎𝖘𝖙 𝖓𝖚𝖓 𝖟𝖚 𝕱𝖚𝖊𝖓𝖋𝖟𝖎𝖌 𝕻𝖗𝖔𝖟𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝕰𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖚𝖒 𝖉𝖊𝖗 𝕭𝖚𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖗𝖊𝖕𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖎𝖐 𝕯𝖊𝖚𝖙𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖑𝖆𝖓𝖉!

I have blocked sooooo many german communities and several german instances.

I browse all to get as much new content as possible.

But I have to block a shitload of stuff I am not interested in seeing.

There was a fair amount of French language posts too, not sure how much quality and engagement they have.

Well, then have some proof:

G E K O L O N I S E E R D

SPRICH

Just like Reddit was back in the day.

Alter.. das kann nicht sein

Ja genau.

I'm Scottish and don't know what the fuck % I am.

I'm guessing 67% German, 22% American at this point.

I assume 70% European 30% whatever else, although that depends on the instance. Of the instance gives any indication I just assume that.

Counterpoint: I rarely see non-US news posted. I do from time to time here on Lemmy, but it’s very rare.

I might just be in the wrong communities though.

I do this sometimes, and I hate when I catch myself doing it.

Imagine if different fonts represented different accents.

𝓗𝓸𝔀 𝓭𝓸 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓭𝓸𝓸𝓸𝓸𝓸𝓸𝓸?

I’ve been guilty of that- commenting before checking what community the post was in. Thankfully, I’ve found that most people outside of the US prefer gentle correction. Unfortunately, I doubt the average person from the US would show the same courtesy if the roles were reversed.

Or the Australian version "Matebook", full with Aussies.

Mate.

I'm ready to discuss maple syrup on HoserLoonieSorryEh

Ah, yes! The 3 billion Americans on Facebook!

And why would you make that assumption? The internet has no borders, so it doesn’t really matter where or by whom something is made. Especially if the language is English, which has somewhere between 1.5 and 2 billion speakers worldwide.

people using too many U’s

You mean people using British spellings right?

I think you'll find most of the time the British use precisely the number U's they intend to though typos may afflict even the best.

What if i use "color", " gouvernment", "dialogue", " humor", "armor", " and "honour"

and an aversion to Zees - I mean Zeds!

Lmao no. God no.

That implies every country started out as the US. Whereas the US is actually one of the youngest countries.

I just wish Americans would have a little self awareness when engaging in foreign content.

I was in a comment thread for a video on a report by the ABC about ADEs. Now I will give Americans the benefit of the doubt, we both have ABC networks, but ours clearly says "Australia", the news presenter has a Australian accent, and was talking about the Australian minimum wage, there were references to Centrelink and the Australian government repeatedly. If you watched the video and couldn't tell me what country the video was about, you need to go back to primary school, your media comprehension level is dysfunctional .

I mentioned a clarifying point in the the comments about ADE being different from DES and giving numbers for each (you don't need to know anything about these acronyms), and someone starts arguing with me that when they were in the disability program they got xyz and they didn't have to do any of this. I replied saying that these processes have been unchanged for 20 years, I don't know how they're getting what they're getting, they have a unique case. They come back telling me everyone gets that, that's how it is, I need to do my research before I make stuff up. I explain that I work in the sector, I'm looking at the cases software, if they are indeed getting those services through that program, they are the only one of 40,000 people in the program getting that, because that's not how the service works. They tell me 15 million people people use the program. I finally realise what's happening. "there are only 25 million people people in Australia....you're a lost American aren't you?" and sure enough ,they politely reply with "oh yeah, I'm not Australian so I don't know, maybe it's different over there".

And I just can't with that level of American stupidity.

You can came into an Australian forum and assumed I wasn't Australian, assumed I wasn't talking about Australia, then came to the conclusion that "maybe it's different over there" when I had explicitly just informed you that ,yes, the law is different here.

Now many times could I have used the acronym DES before the American thought to themselves "maybe this person isn't talking about SSDI".

And this is just the example from the last hour. I end up in a lot of international PD sessions for my work, and something like this is a daily occurrence, only with the Americans.

Canada, you are sadly not excused from this, nor sure why but it's always "okay, where are we all from? "Australia" "Belgium" "Brazil" "Indonesia" "Fort Freedom" "Edmonton"

Those are cities and provinces, clearly the rest of us are doing countries, some of us are big enough that we could name states if we wanted to, but we're being polite, you've got 50 (10+3 🇨🇦 ) of them and we didn't memorise a silly song in school to learn your states.

The fact that I know how many states the US has and how many provinces and tertories Canada has, but an American would be stabbing in the dark to guess how many states and territories Australia has, even though our biggest state is 3x bigger than Texas and Australia as a whole is a comparable landmass to the contiguous 48.

oh god, no

I find a squirrel climbing a tree a more interesting event

Could not disagree more.

It's a pathetic state of affairs that people here care and know more about US politics than our own country's, and I'm personally sick of it.

Glad everyone else is enjoying the show at least. Half of us here are terrified we're about to lose the country to maniacal egotists with a penchant for a bit of racism and monarchy.

I've heard this more times, and it's kind of baffling. The US isn't even the biggest individual country on Facebook. What do people who assume everyone is from the US think a non-US "forum" looks like? Where do Americans think everybody else hangs out online?

Ahh the United States of America. What a fascinating planet.

I’m sorry but this is nonsense. I’m in a lot of online communities where everyone uses English, despite it being nearly nobody’s first language. It just happens to be the only language that everyone there knows. Language is no indication of nationality, especially online.

And to be honest, in those places the assumption is usually that everyone is European, which I can imagine is just as annoying for the stray American.

Americans generate the majority of English-language Internet content.

Doubt.

There are 1.3 billion people who use English on the internet as a first or second language.

Consequently, Americans generate the majority of English-language Internet content.

False. Yes, it is larger than any other individual English speaking group but accounts for less than a fifth of the total English speakers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...

I wouldn’t have guessed Nigeria is the third largest English speaking group.

The more egalitarian principle would be to not assume. I won't deny that. People from more minority locales have every right to be upset at being marginalized.

But at the same time, whenever I read passive aggressive comments on socials from residents of crown countries or from EAASL people around the world bitching about US defaultism as if people are doing it just to be ignorant dicks, I can only think to myself, "Uhh, hello? What do you think the demographics of this space were? What did you expect?"

Americans are hardly the majority of the world's English speakers, but for all the reasons you listed, they tend to remain a massive plurality, if not an outright overwhelming majority, of any mainstream online English language platform. No, that's not a license to perpetuate US defaultism. But like... read the room, people. Your good fight is far more uphill than you seem to think it is.

Again, you are completely missing the point of the internet and English usage on it. People are using English as a lingua franca. There are a lot more non-native English speakers on the internet than native English speakers.

So no, odds are not that it is an American you are speaking to, just because that person speaks English. You are literally regurgitating the fallacy that OP is about.

FYI

According to Wikipedia the percentage of English speakers located in the US is lower that 20%. Does this mean that only 1 in 5 users is from the US?

Population of the US: 334.914.895, Population of Europe: 745.173.774. 334.914.895/745.173.774 = 0,449%

English Speakers in the US: 297.400.000. English Speakers in Europe: 260.000.000. So you have about 37,4M more English speakers in the US than in Europe.

To be honest I also find myself assuming this frequently. And I'm rarely incorrect

Oh. I'm shit out of luck then.

Terrible news, guy who just started posting on the Internet

ironically, tankies usually fall very deep into US defaultism, since everything everywhere is always the fault of the US

Oh yes I forgot I blocked Lemmy.ml, no russian representation

There was one on Reddit that had a rule that no more than 50% of a story could be about the US and if the US was one of two parties they preferred the other point of view.

I'm not even American, I find my thoughts defaulting to this.

Bleed Earthlings

Heavily inspired by the french Minitel but yes

One day, we will shitpost our way to freedom

I default to everyone sounding like Macho Man Randy Savage.

I don't read words in any voice other than the naturally subvocalisation that occurs when I'm reading, which is always in my voice.

Even when I read a quote myself Morgan Freeman, I'm hearing my voice, doing a Morgan freeman impression.

But in terms of who I picture? Nothing, people online are not even corporal beings to me until details are revealed. They are still human and have whole lives offline so that's not an excuse to be needlessly rude, but I know nothing of them so why would I randomly invent details unless I'm doing so as a "put myself in their shoes" thought experiment.

But then I have a degree of aphantasia so I'm not "picturing" anything, all I have is words anyway, so it's easy not to add in extra words that change my assumptions about a person.

We are trying to get along. We are already speaking English, which is a massive step in your direction. US commenters and posters don't even bother to convert to kilometres or something. Or the worst: write about something that happened in AK as if everyone knows postal shortages of the US.

I also understand the sentiment that the internet is effectively a US invention dating back at least to ARPAnet.

Yeah, but this is a website. Sir Tim Berners-Lee represent!

Plus also, English is an English invention.

But otherwise, you're good.

The World Wide Web is not an American invention. Who invented what is completely irrelevant in this context anyway though.

What? Like the World Series of Baseball?

Sorry, anything with or without / everything not ich_iel

The thing is we are not talking about visiting countries. We are talking about the virtual World Wide Web.

Tons of people speak English as a second language, on the internet

Your comment is very typical of that (fallacious) US centrism. People write in English on the internet because that is the universal language. There are far more secondary English speakers on the internet than primary English speakers.

Lemmy.dbzer0.com lemmy.blahaj.zone discuss.tchncs.de sopuli.xyz infosec.pub lemmy.ml midwest.social slrpnk.net mander.xyz are all not hosted in USA(according to fedidb.org)

Also, why would it matter in what country an instance is hosted in? I cant just assume everyone on midwest.social is german because the instance is hosted in germany

If any instance uses anything akin to cloudflare, Google, a cloud provider or a CDN then this question makes no sense because it's "hosted" all over the world.

Not that it ever made any sense because why would it matter where a website is hosted if it's equally accessible globally? It's not like you have to type a longer URL to hit it from Europe lmfao, and It's not like the internet is some sort of local US thing where you have to hear about it by word of mouth.

The word world is literally in the name… When I joined lemmy I started there because I assumed it would be a general instance. It’s like worldnews where 90% of posts are US politics. Also, it’s not an obsession, most times it comes up it’s just a joke (like this meme).

Many websites that are international are hosted in only one country.

It's hosted in Finland, by a German company, and has Dutch admins. Was that your point?

Edit: bonus, the Lemmy devs get paid from a Dutch grant and the ones whose nationality I know are not from the US

Nope https://en.wikipedia.org/...

Strangely enough English is spoken in countries other than the US and even more use it as a lingua franca.

It is interesting you think IPv6 is not widespreaad https://www.google.com/...

2016 is a little far, isn't it?

No, they highlight some problems with IP4: Bad distribution of IP4 ranges and bad usage of those ranges. So the graphs show the US has way too much IP actresses, some under used/unused and some overused. The blog post they are from is pretty clear about this.

These graphs do not give an indication of how many users per country there are. There are in fact statistics on that which expectedly show China and India on top. These however do not take into account that social media use way more popular in the U.S. for now.

The closest stat may be Reddit users by country which seems to indicate that about every 2nd user is from the US. (Not sure if Russian/Chinese bot accounts also count towards these though).

That would be 3 addresses per US citizen. You have some whales like MS in there, just because your companies can grow dangerously big.

I'd just like to mention that plenty of ESL users speak English more than their native, and that the country with the most people who use English for interacting with the Internet, it's probably India. Indians communicate to a lot of their compatriots in English, since they are also an ex-British colony, and have a large variety of native languages.

That sounds like America's problem. Big portion of western eu, especially non-boomer and non-french, comprehend English very well, so I dunno why you'd just dismiss it in a post about us-defaultism when almost everything is text based

What's your definition of first/second language if you grow up bilingual?

The majority of English speakers aren't from the US, though the US does have the most English speakers. Important distinction to make!