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

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/

  • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    But if there were, say, an analog to !askuk@feddit.uk but for USA, that would free up other communities to not be dominated so much by content from & for it.

    e.g. if someone wanted to flee a state that did not provide abortion to one that did, they could ask the country specific one.

    Though super good point that even so, perhaps it should not be hosted inside the country, especially given recent events.

        • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgOPEnglish
          1·
          1 month ago

          I’m half thinking about creating AskUSA on lemmy.today just to centralize the US discussions somewhere 😅

          • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
            1·
            1 month ago

            Looking ahead, one difficulty might be that I don’t think that existed on Reddit (or if it did, surely it wasn’t well-known).

            And the community sidebar is quite hidden on Lemmy especially from mobile apps. Creating a post presumes that you know exactly where you’ll send it, without e.g. offering alternative solutions. I thought that Hexbear might be able to shunt posts made from one community over to another, but that probably took a modified codebase.

            Oh, I see a !askmidwest@midwest.social.

            Anyway if you see that there’s enough demand for it (I haven’t looked myself) then that sounds great!:-)

              • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
                1·
                1 month ago

                Hehehe, yes ofc.:-)

                But I meant that how much is temporary vs. a long-standing issue, and ofc much of that overlaps heavily with more general interest - e.g. “List of book and/or film titles dealing with resistance movements–organization, strategy, tactics, etc?” is most definitely not something dealing solely with USA politics.

                But also I know that you tend to have your idea on the ball regarding such matters, so even more than the above thought my reply was also my way of saying that I’ll take your word for it bc surely you know better than me:-).