In their defense, for someone who has never heard of Lemmy/the fediverse, it's reasonable for them to be cautious. So many other platforms are VC funded, do guerilla marketing, have hidden agendas, etc. It's especially bad on Reddit with all the AI astroturfing now.

I've seen a bit of that in the Canadian reddit comms, where new users are initially concerned that they're joining another american tech startup's platform. Once they learn how the network works, how the software is open source, and (specific to lemmy.ca) that the site is managed by a non-profit and the servers are in Vancouver, they're more excited about it :)

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Fair point. Good to see Canadian people being excited about Lemmy.ca!

[–] DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Don't forget about sh.itjust.works! But yeah it's nice to see some strong Canadian representation. And it's nice to see that Lemmy is slightly less US-centric than reddit.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I would even go beyond that, there's only one top 20 server hosted in the US, and it's not obviously US-centric (programming.dev)

[–] DonAntonioMagino@feddit.nl 7 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

The general atmosphere here is, though. There’s still lots of US defaultism over here.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 6 points 3 weeks ago

It would be interesting to see a geographic breakdown of the Lemmy population.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I'll never understand why !politics@lemmy.world and !news@lemmy.world are US-specific when LW is a European instance

[–] canihasaccount@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Maybe, but at least some folks have less of it. Me, for example. On Reddit, I generally assumed most folks were from the US, or bots. On here, I generally assume folks are equally--if not more--likely to be from a country in Europe, or Canada. I also see way more German representation here than I did on Reddit.

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

(I think Canadian representation really expanded a lot, and European too, after Trump got elected and Reddit started sucking elon’s dick)

[–] DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago

Now that you mention it, it has been a lot better lately. That seems likely given the explosion of Boycott US and Buy European communities lately. It has definitely improved since six months ago when US election discussion was shoehorned into every comment section.

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Less than Reddit, but still a fuckload.

I mean I guess the people who spend their times on english speaking internet forums has a large chunk americans, you know, given the US population is 300+ million, while Canada, Australia, New Zeland, Ireland and Britain don’t even make half the US population when added together.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 weeks ago

Most of Europeans speak English even if they're not from the UK, Ireland or Malta