this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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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:
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.
The assumption that the 51% of reddit constitutes a monolith of non-Americans is wildly reductive and offensive /s. The majority is irrelevant, Americans still constitute the plurality of users, and thus inevitably become the default.
I absolutely agree that it's a symptom of dysfunction, but I just think it's unfair to blame on the average American. We didn't ask for this either.
Wait, what?
We're talking about assuming that a site's default user is from the US. I'm saying if 49% are not, then that assumption seems ethnocentric. That doesn't require every other user to be part of a monolith of non-Americans, they all share the trait of being... you know, not American.
That's a big chunk of your users that don't conform to your default use case. If this was about anything else you would not a default at all in that scenario, but that's not what happens. Also, it's not blamed on the "average American", it's being blamed on Americans as a whole, culturally, on the aggregate, which is fundamentally different.
As I've already explained, you're talking about the general case of assuming where someone is from. Because otherwise, you're suggesting that we should assume someone is from a different country than the US? Which country? I honestly don't understand what your point is.
Yes, this is the most important trait among humans, it is known.
Alright, let me take a step back to the OP.
The claim here is that unless something is flagged as being "world" something, it's assumed to be specific to the US. The obvious example is politics forums with no qualifier in social media (including here and on Reddit) being about US politics where everywhere else is qualified with either "world" or a specific country/region.
That's the claim.
The counterclaim is that makes sense for US-based social media where most users are American. I dispute that because... well, most users are not American in many of those sites, or a large enough proportion aren't that the assumption is not justified.
The logical way to organize that would be for the US politics channel, forum, magazine or whatever to be flagged "US politics" while everything else keeps its own qualifier. There is no default nation for politics. If anything, "politics" without a qualifier should be fair game for all world politics. That makes logical sense, but it's often not what happens in social media unless the specific social media site is heavily restricted to a specific non-English language or territory.
That's the observation here.
Ok, good.
I'll respond to this tomorrow. Gird your loins.
As far as I'm aware, this only applies to /news and /politics. Those are the two communities out of thousands that have a default unlabeled US community and a separate community for world topics. /games isn't specific to the US, /film isn't specific to the US, and so on.
So the claim that "anything without 'world' in its name is just about the US" is obviously incorrect, or that the very least a huge exaggeration. If you literally only use Lemmy for politics and news, that's the only way it makes sense. And many people tend to do the opposite and try to avoid those communities.
So the claim is wrong regardless, but even to the extent that it is valid, I would still defend the counterclaim.
How do you define 'a large enough proportion'? I would argue that 50% is large enough to justify such an assumption by a significant margin.
I think it's certainly possible to argue that the US is the default nation when it comes to news and politics, because our domestic events have by far the most global impact of any nation. Due to the $25T GDP and 11 aircraft carriers, what happens here has massive implications for other nations. If Trump gets elected, that has huge ramifications for European politics, Middle Eastern politics, you name it.
However, I ultimately do agree that it would be more logical to have the communities be flagged US politics/news. Unfortunately humans are rarely logical creatures, and our behavior can often be better understood in social terms. And socially, this just kind of became the default because it was mostly Americans on reddit at first, and then there's never been a compelling enough reason for it to change.