this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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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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[–] inv3r510n@lemmy.world 43 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing since the EU had better data privacy laws?

-USAmerican

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Indeed, but an American admin team could still manage an instance hosted elsewhere.

[–] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 days ago

I have considered doing this, but I am perfectly happy with sopuli.

[–] yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 6 days ago

I would just like to say, thank to all instance admins for the incredible foresight

[–] andrew@pythag.net 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

I looked up lemmy.ml out of interest (I realise you aren't classifying it as generalist). Anyway: it says that the server is in France.

Also, if you're able to lookup by IP instead of URL, you can bypass any CloudFlare confusion, and confirm that LW is hosted in Finland.

[–] drake@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Cloudflare will proxy DNS requests as well, by the way, so I’m not sure how you would get the IP address if all of their host names are proxied through Cloudflare

[–] andrew_s@piefed.social 4 points 6 days ago

Hmmm. I'd imagine that's essential for cloudflare to work. You can get their IP addresses if you have a server that is federated with them and you look in your nginx logs (so that 'if' is a big IF).

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 6 days ago

Also

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/

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Unrelated question: new instance, is it yours?

[–] andrew@pythag.net 5 points 6 days ago

Yeah - it's what I use for testing stuff (it's a bit underpowered though: 1 core CPU, 1 GB Ram). I made that comment partly to verify how it would be announced back to me from .world (except I forgot to subscribe first). Anyway, now mastodon.social is aware of me, and is very keen on telling me about accounts that have been deleted (I swear that site has deleted more accounts that could ever have been created).

[–] LiPoly@lemmynsfw.com 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Last I checked, the Fediverse as a whole is kind of an European thing. Across the pond, nobody really cares. They have a very different understanding of privacy and freedom and therefore no real desire to use some decentralized crap with shitty UI and broken federation when there’s a perfectly good alternative out there that just works™️

[–] spiritsong@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Interesting. This actually puts into question why certain subs does not have countries assigned. Like news should be news, not a one country spesific news.

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[–] DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] Blaze@feddit.org 10 points 6 days ago

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

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 158 points 1 week ago (12 children)

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 57 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

.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!

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[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 68 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I think one reason has to do with digital sovereignty. Especially people in Europe are not happy with the dominance of US based social media sites and thus are more likely to invest time and effort into local alternatives. They are also more likely to be concerned about the near total lack of legal privacy protections in the US.

Came here to say that. I wasn't covered by GDPR under spez's site - but luckily their policies treated me like I was anyways.

I moved to kbin.social - which was probably the 2nd largest after lemmy.world. Also, it was Polish.

What I liked about that was - as per my understanding - since these are hosted in the EU, the GDPR applies to my data here even if I'm not the EU myself and am not an EU citizen.

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ive seen a bit of chatter about not trusting US hosting providers. also, prolly more expensive (conjecture).

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Isn't Lemmy.World based in the US?

Edit: huh. Netherlands.

[–] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I thought it was in Finland.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 4 points 6 days ago

Dutch admin using a Finnish VPS from a German hosting company

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Since they run their site through Clownflare, it looks like they are hosted in the US, but their server is actually in Finland (at least as far as I know, might have changed recently).

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Small correction: slrpnk.net is hosted in Portugal and not Germany, but we do have a German speaking admin and our founder is Italian.

[–] KryptonNerd@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 days ago

Much love to the slrpnk.net admin team

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