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Is there any reason why there is no large generalist Lemmy instance managed from the USA? Is this just a coincidence? (feddit.org)

submitted 15 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) by Blaze@feddit.org to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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Thinking about this lately, especially in the context of the UD elections getting discussed a lot all over Lemmy.

If you look at the top 20 instances https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy

Lemmy.world and feddit.nl are Dutch
Lemm.ee is Estonian
Feddit.org, discuss.tchncs.de are German
SJW and lemmy.ca are Canadian
Lemmy.blahaj.zone, aussie.zone and Reddthat are Australian
sopuli.xyz is Finnish
slrpnk.net is Portuguese
lemmy.dbzer0, infosec.pub, mander.xyz, programming.dev, lemmy.sdf.org are thematic
Beehaw is USA-based, but defederated from LW and SJW and still on 0.18.3, so not sure they're even that interested in Lemmy anymore

Out of the top 20, there is Midwest.social and Lemmy.today but they are quite small (326 and 201 monthly active users).

On the other hand, a lot of other countries have their own instances

feddit.uk
jlai.lu
feddit.dk
szmer.info
lemmy.eco.br
feddit.cl
feddit.it

With the USA population and the Internet presence of the USA citizens, you would expect at least one large generalist instance based in the USA, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Any ideas what the reasons might be? Is this just a coincidence?

Edit: for Lemmy.world:

The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed per the laws of the following countries and/or states:

The Netherlands
Republic of Finland
Federal Republic of Germany

https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

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[-] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 126 points 15 hours ago

I never missed a US instance because LW is so US focused I assumed it was the main one.

We don’t need a US instance, we need more users to support active local communities.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 48 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

.World not being hosted in the US is news to me (as an American member of it, no less). It's definitely welcome news, though!

[-] abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us 14 points 14 hours ago

With a tld ending like .world you'd think it's for the whole world, not just europe (.eu) or a specific country.

feddit.org itself is a bit of a curiosity since the .org doesn't make it obvious that it is German - but someone posted the full story of how feddit.de fell apart and feddit.org became the successor.

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 19 points 14 hours ago

With a tld ending like .world you’d think it’s for the whole world, not just europe (.eu) or a specific country.

Indeed. It always surprises me that !politics@lemmy.world is specifically US-only. Why not !uspolitics@lemmy.world?

[-] davidgro@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

I assume it was just named after r/politics - like most of the other communities here during the migration.

[-] abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us 17 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

That confuses me too. I've never really understood that. Likewise, /m/news is for US news while world news goes into /m/world and US news isn't allowed.

Maybe that's another reason why folks thing it's US-based - because the magazines are clearly so US oriented. But I'm not sure how that happened.

On the brain bin for example it's PoliticsUSA - https://thebrainbin.org/m/PoliticsUSA

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 9 points 13 hours ago

Maybe that’s another reason why folks thing it’s US-based - because the magazines are clearly so US oriented. But I’m not sure how that happened.

Probably people creating the community soon after the instance creation

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 7 points 14 hours ago

Feddit.org is only majority German speaking (it's actually run by an Austrian foundation) because people from feddit.de needed a new home. It is not per se only for German communities, for example /c/europe@feddit.org is in English.