Assumed by Americans which is an important detail.
To be honest I also find myself assuming this frequently. And I’m rarely incorrect
As an American who just wants things organized clearly, I find it annoying too
If I was using a website called “Facebloke” that was well known to have been made and ran in the UK, I’d assume everyone on it was British.
I’m ready to discuss maple syrup on HoserLoonieSorryEh
Or the Australian version “Matebook”, full with Aussies.
Mate.
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We call it Cuntface down here.
I wonder if a news community with a “no mentioning the US” rule would work. Not out of any hate, just as something arbitrary like “don’t use the letter E”.
Don’t be so self-involved. Try visit China for once and you will get sick of the word “China”, it’s literally in everything there :), like communist party’s intelligence service :)
The thing is we are not talking about visiting countries. We are talking about the virtual World Wide Web.
It does make it fun to stir the pot
I completely understand the sentiment.
I also understand the sentiment that the internet is effectively a US invention dating back at least to ARPAnet.
I guess what I’m suggesting is: can’t we all just get along? At least we can now all communicate with each other.
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.
The crazy irony is that those from outside the US probably know way more than those in the US, in terms of stories about Alaska.
No hate here. There will be ups and downs.
At the end of the day, I’m happy to communicate with you.
Don’t ever talk about kilometres in here. Are you trying to spark an international incident?
FWIW ich habe Deustch gelernt. Aber ich habe die meistens vergessen 😔
Dein Deutsch klingt richtig gut 😄
Danke schon 🙃
If it makes it any better youre more likely to get an American who can convert Miles into Leagues before they even think about kilometers. We dont really use metric for anything, unless youre military or something.
The World Wide Web is not an American invention. Who invented what is completely irrelevant in this context anyway though.
Not on Lemmy. Om Lemmy you’re 50% German, 50% American unless proven otherwise.
I assume 70% European 30% whatever else, although that depends on the instance. Of the instance gives any indication I just assume that.
𝕯𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖊 𝕶𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖐𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖎𝖘𝖙 𝖓𝖚𝖓 𝖟𝖚 𝕱𝖚𝖊𝖓𝖋𝖟𝖎𝖌 𝕻𝖗𝖔𝖟𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝕰𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖚𝖒 𝖉𝖊𝖗 𝕭𝖚𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖗𝖊𝖕𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖎𝖐 𝕯𝖊𝖚𝖙𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖑𝖆𝖓𝖉!
There was a fair amount of French language posts too, not sure how much quality and engagement they have.
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.
I have filtered out some terms: elon musk and donald trump
SPRICH DEUTSCH DU HURENSOHN
Nej, jag kan inte Tyska, men om du vill kan vi prata Svenska! (:
Ik versta daar dus allebij helemaal niks van. Wel leuk, zo’n internationale draad.
Fel språk är jag rädd, försök igen! (:
akkor a kurva anyád
jach ki’imak in wóol yo’osal Google Translate
Moerasduits. Is dat goed genoeg?
Tja, da verpasst du was…
Just learn German. Just do it
Äh, du kan väl lika gärna lära dig Svenska, det blir enklare för oss båda! (:
I was thinking of doing that if I actually move to Finland.
Having been to Finland before I know that it’s not very useful in everyday situations but it’s still useful and way easier to learn than finnish. Especially as I speak German.
There are parts on Finland where Swedish is the primary laguage even over Finnish.
Well, then have some proof:
G E K O L O N I S E E R D
Als een warm bad
SPRICH
Du irrst dich, Brudi - niemand spricht Deutsch hier.
Da hast du wohl recht, ich habe noch kein einziges “du hast mich” bis jetzt (Verwenden Sie für den zitierten Teil nicht Google Translate)
ich habe noch kein einziges “du hast mich” bis jetzt
Auch weil alles Liebe in Lemmy ist, ja? /witz
das oder neunundneunzig Luftballons 🎈
Yo no hablar alemàn
Se hablás castellano entonces complica, ya que no hablo. Excepto cuando borracho*. Aún asi, no es castellano, es más como portitañol…
*de veras, che. Una vodca hoy sería genial.
Just like Reddit was back in the day.
I mean, we did invent this cursed network. It’s our job to ruin it.
i live in DC and we get tagged for everything world politics.
forgive me for not caring if fvey countries get lumped into uspol.
There are tons of tankie subs where you can masturbate to false expectations of the planet and openly hate people who you’ve never met before, check it out!
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
Tbf it seemed to make more sense for the likes of Reddit, Facebook, etc. Similarly if I go to a Chinese forum I would not assume that everyone there was from the USA.
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?
Given how many people choose to speak their native language in the US (myself included), I guess they assume they post to forums that are in their language.
So like Facebook and Reddit? Social media isn’t in English specifically. People who speak other languages often post in their native language for some things and in the lingua franca for more international conversations. The Internet is the Internet regardless.
NOW, but when Reddit started, and therefore the now infamous subreddit names were first doled out?
I am fairly sure that the rest of the world already existed. And those formats keep being in use in newer places, too. This is not just a Reddit thing. Even you mentioned Facebook, which was instantly popular globally.
instantly popular globally
There are 8 billion people on this planet, nothing happens instantly.
Facebook took a long time to spread around the globe. Same for reddit, this is a quote from the Wikipedia article:
As of August 2024, Reddit is the 9th most-visited website in the world. According to data provided by Similarweb, 51.75% of the website traffic comes from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom at 7.15% and Canada at 7.09%.[6]
More than two thirds of reddit traffic still comes from Anglophone countries to this day, and that percentage was surely much higher back in the early days.
I think you’re severely overestimating how many people from other countries actually use Western social media. Between the language barrier and the technology barrier, most people on this planet simply don’t have any opportunity or desire to use a site like Reddit or Lemmy. Facebook has slowly but steadily made global inroads, but by the time it got popular in non-western countries, Americans had largely moved on.
… I am a non-anglophone who, at the time of Facebook’s raise to social media dominance lived in multiple non-anglophone countries. I was there.
In one of the places I lived there was briefly a popular local Facebook alternative. It lasted maybe a couple of years before entirely capitulating and getting absorbed. That place does still have a local Reddit-like alternative, and Reddit is certainly more US-centric. You are right that Facebook stayed popular much longer outside the US. It has started falling off in some of those places, but I did keep a Facebook account for work purposes for a lot longer than you’d expect because work relations in those territories would share Facebook credentials as a way to establish professional contact. Twitter may as well have been a lost ancient civilization, though.
There’s also a lot to unpack in the assumption that on a thread about “why do Americans default to assuming everyone is from the US” you’re reflexively lumping the entire anglosphere as part of the US, but honestly, I’ll let the recently annexed English-speaking countries deal with that one on their own.
That’s interesting, thanks for sharing. I don’t mean to diminish your experience, but the world is simply too massive for anecdotal knowledge to apply when attempting to make sense of it. In other words, it’s impossible to gather a balanced understanding of global phenomena via primary experiences. I’m not as well traveled as you, but I’m analyzing the statistics rather than relying on personal experiences, which is much more informative when trying to recognize the big picture.
I’m not reflexively lumping anything in, I’m simply recognizing the reality that the cultural life of anglosphere countries is heavily mixed, and that US culture dominates that mixture due to its size and economic position. It’s not a controversial statement to say that Canada and the US are peas in a pod.
I left the original assumption unchallenged, but I don’t agree with it tbh. There are a ton of Europeans on Lemmy and also reddit, and it’s quite obvious to notice as an American. Furthermore, the entire premise is faulty. Rather than ask why people default to the US, the question is why people are assuming anything at all about anonymous accounts. And the answer is because of human nature, which isn’t something unique to Americans.
Well, yeah, but it’s not anecdotal. There is data to tell you how big Facebook is and was outside the US, in what territories and by how much relative to their US popularity at what point. My personal experience just happens to match those numbers (India, by the way, is Facebook’s current biggest market).
I would also point out that by your own data, which is accurate as far as I can tell, 49% of Reddit is not American, so even with its more US-focused audience the assumption that users are American unless proven otherwise is wildly ethnocentric.
Now, I agree with you that assuming things about anonymous accounts, and especially anonymous accounts writing in English, is foolish. Lots of people are fluent in English who are not native speakers and definitely who are not from the US. Most, in fact, depending on how you define your parameters.
I disagree that this is “human nature”, though. I don’t assume the same thing from people who speak my native language online. I also don’t assume the same thing about English speakers. The reason the OP is asking is that US ethnocentrism stands out. That’s not to say it’s not natural. We non-native dwellers in anglocentric social media will often comment on US cultural and political minutia, because US cultural and political minutia is present and relevant to us in a way ours isn’t to Americans (thanks for that, cultural imperialism). We pass for Americans in more situations than some American lurking in a German-language forum would, and we’re likely many times more numerous than… well, Americans lurking in German-language or Chinese-language socials.
But it being natural doesn’t mean it isn’t notable or an issue or a symptom of a dysfunction. Which it is, and it does annoy me for that reason.
I am fairly sure that the rest of the world already existed.
No way - at least not back then! Source: am American, and therefore entirely confident that no other nations existed prior to my hearing about them (Christopher Columbus told me so! 😛). And maybe even then… which reminds me, are you so sure that you are real? Maybe you too are in America and just forgot? 🫠
Also, just so we are clear, “American” = “USAian”, definitely no other nations exist on the American continent, nope, no way! (Except Canada and Mexico, and they get a pass as wannabe USA states) 😜
I mean the us dwarfs other english speaking countries
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.
because that is the universal language*grince des dents*
because it is the international language of this days and time.Le français était à un moment donné, hein
Yeah XD Now english is the lingua franca
Tons of people speak English as a second language, on the internet
Yeah like India
135 million english speakers is less than 300 million
Mr Blott really really really likes to denigrate Americans. Don’t rain on his parade
What on Earth are you on about? “denigrate Americans”. They are pointing out facts. That you apparently are so fragile that you consider that denigration is entirely on yourself.
as a person that came from 3rd world country, i relate T_T
network invented in America look inside Americans
How could this have happened?
