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/

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.meEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I think a part of it is that english is just the default language and strongly leans american already, so there’s just no demand for a USA instance and people just use the popular or thematic ones for that content. There’s no advantage in laws to prefer US hosting.

    The country ones make sense because they’re also a different language, like jlai.lu in french, and the feddits for European languages.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I’m in the US and was specifically drawn toward European instance because my (admittedly very lightly informed) understanding is Europe just has better laws on internet freedoms. IIRC a US-based Mastodon instance (Mastodon maybe?) was seized by cops at one point for pretty questionable reasons. Our legal system gives far too much power to police and corporations to enact spurious searches and punishment.

    • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      But if there were, say, an analog to [email protected] 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
            0·
            2 months ago

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

            • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
              0·
              2 months 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 [email protected].

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