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Diese Kommentarsektion ist nun Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Bundesrepublik Schweizreich
Wow that flag is ugly. But now I’m wondering if it’s possible to combine the flags in a way that looks nice.
To try and answer the question of why so many of them. Please note this is broad generalizations:
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german people have large privacy and date security fears. This has kept them off of many other platforms. Most people in my friends circle never had a MySpace / Facebook… Being in an anonymous space like here is nice.
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they also are and have been technologically behind in many ways. Bringing them slower to other platforms that they would have started off on, making it so they didn’t use any. Ignorance and fear of technology and privacy fear combined with being technologically slower meant they were going on other platforms in a time when the platforms were getting known as “bad, mentally harmful, data mining & selling machines”.
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English language skills are lower in Germany (outside of Berlin). Many tourists don’t see this as they go to touristy things (hotels, attractions) where they speak English. It is easy in platforms like this or reddit to be in a German speaking bubble. People who speak lots of English like their neighbors the Dutch, would more likely just post in English as everyone can then understand it.
Source: my opinions - but I do live in Germany.
german people have large privacy and date security fears. This has kept them off of many other platforms. Most people in my friends circle never had a MySpace / Facebook… Being in an anonymous space like here is nice.
While this is true for me(*) - partially, it’s not a fear, it’s a certainty that my data is not secure anywhere online - I would be positively surprised (but kind of doubt that) if younger people actually think consciously about their online privacy.
* never had myspace, deleted all my facebook posts, comments, contacts & then account in 2012 when they changed the terms & conditions to own everything you upload - and before then I had never used my real last name there
The biggest reason you missed, German communities have already been big on reddit, and quite a few germans were involved in the initial discussion to move to Lemmy or Kbin.
Your data isn’t really more private on the fediverse, is it?
Everything you post is shared with myriad instances.
You might not end up just handing it to some large tech corp but you also give up any remnant of control over it.It’s more about people most people don’t know who are here unless you tell them rather than you’re data being secure. A different feeling then when posting with your real name and with all of you irl friends following you
2.: the other way around, UK & US are too fast about adopting new privacy-violating tech, think too less about the why and how. With companies, less regulation too; yes, you have more startups. But some of you guys are slowly starting to notice the dystopia you’ve created.
3.: doesn’t really apply, since lemmy is quite tech-centric and english is a required skill there.
Dont forget 4: Lemmy was created by a German (me)
Really? I didn’t know that?! Super cool and thx for commenting! Do you have any more info on this (something I can read somewhere)?
Also… I don’t know if I ever will have an opportunity like this again… I would love a feature like I had in RIF (Reddit is Fun), and that is to be able to collapse all child comments in the comment section! It removes a lot of clutter and you can then expand the child comments when you want more on that topic. I use Jebora for lemmy for reference.
Not sure what more you want to read, but Dessalines and me do AMAs once in a while where we answer all sorts of questions. You can find them in [email protected].
And I don’t work on Jerboa, you have to open an issue for this if there isn’t already.
Thank You (Or should I say Danke?).
Gern geschehen!
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While it’s true that Germans might value their privacy more than others, the fediverse is incredibly niche and most people either use the big corpo apps or nothing. Also lemmy is not anonymous, at most maybe pseudonymous.
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I really don’t get point 2. Isn’t being a member of the fediverse rather advanced? But also how are Germans technologically behind regarding common personal life?
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I’m Gen Z and almost all of my friends know English well enough to have a conversation online. Granted, I work in IT, but not all of my friends are technology people and this still holds.
Counterpoint: I think Germany is just a rather big Western country with many technologically interested people and people who value fediverse ideals like being free from corporate influence. There are dozens of us!
- […] But also how are Germans technologically behind regarding common personal life?
I bet you wherever in Germany you are, if you go to the website of your local city government right now they will have a still active fax number in their contact information. I guarantee it. Well if they have a website that is.
Which is a bit silly as an example but highlights the central problem, which is that adoption of new technology happens at a glacial pace, especially in public institutions. There are many reasons for that of course, some good, like the aforementioned inclination towards privacy, some bad like whatever allows fax machines to still be around.
And don’t get me started on internet infrastructure… In an international comparison we certainly aren’t leading the field regarding adoption of new technologies.
I feel like having fax listed in a public institution is really not a great example of the general population, and especially not of the people that would use the fediverse. Besides that, just because you have a fax machine doesn’t mean you can’t be technical. My father has one and he knows his way about using tech stuff, for example.
Internet infrastructure is of course a decades old problem, but then again, you don’t need highspeed Internet to post on the fediverse.
- hey - PlexSheep - wrong phraseing maybe from me. I don’t want to play semantics with how Anonymous is it is… But yeah, it is not 💯 anonymous so that is clearly too strong.
On here I have no friends, no connections, and my irl name is not attached to my account. So closer to anonymous than for example Facebook. It’s harder for just any user to track down things about specific users.
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lemmy is nich but not advanced nor hard to use. I like it because it’s super simple. The point has nothing to do with Germans being able to use lemmy, but rather they did not start off using other programs or apps (z.B. MySpace Facebook) in the 90s and early 2000s as soon as other people like Americans. When these apps started they were great and had no negative feelings to them. When Germans came around to start using them in larger numbers, they already had negative issues. So they never started with these apps like others did in other countries. This is likely very different for you, as you are much younger. All of this stuff existed already when you were coming into adulthood.
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sounds like you have a great friends group. I also have many experiences with German people who speak English very well… As well as many who can’t. I have both English and German only speaking friends. I spoke nearly zero german when I came here. It’s hard. Cashier at rewe, anyone working at Bauhaus, nearly anyone in the small town I was first in. Some cities aren’t much better. Some of my employees speak zero functional English and they are young. There is nothing wrong with that, but there is a big difference in Germany and somewhere like Holland.
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Yeah I get it, it feels somewhat anonymous, but if you look, it’s really not. I use my usual Internet Pseudonym and if you search for it you can probably find my personal website quickly. As a German, I’ve had to put an impression there even. Reminds me, maybe using my Pseudonym everywhere is something I should avoid, but then again, I’ve grown attached to it. I follow ich_iel on here and also read comments there. It’s a small community and you just know the regulars after a while.
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It’s not hard to use if you already know it, but I feel were forgetting the majority of the population that is absolutely not well versed in technology. I occasionally listen to a podcast that addresses the social media trends of the week, and in many episodes they addressed the fediverse once. And it was only mastodon for them, they didn’t even get the name right, and they didn’t really get federation too. I feel like it’s true that it’s not hard to use, but it seems like it’s still hard for the average person to get into the fediverse, presumingly caused by the network effect and the fact that corps can’t milk us dry and take all our data. The decentralized nature makes it hard to grasp for “normies”.
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Yes I have great friends and love them very much. I don’t have a lot of English only friends. Someone in my family is married to a man from England, and I got to know a few of his friends, it was all great. True that even in the younger generation there are groups with low english skills, I feel like we’d need statistics on it to be sure.
I don’t we’re arguing or anything. Thanks for the conversation :)
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It’s all one person, me and my other personalities.
Hi. Was essen wir heute am Abend?
Pizza, wenn das für @[email protected] in Ordnung ist
Boah, leiwand. Krosse-Krabbe-Pizza?
OK
I’m legitimately trying to learn German because of this
Weiter so! Ich lerne auch Deutsch.
Yes I do like German.
Sehr gut.
Oh, no thank you. I’m full.
Macht doch nichts, da geht noch mehr.
It matters to me :(
I’m genuinely trying to renaturalize to Germany eventually and all I need is to learn German, so this ended up being a happy accident
I still don’t know what ich_iel is and at this point I’m too afraid to ask
It started as a German version of me_irl (hence the name “ich im echten Leben”) and developed a culture on its own including bad translations from English and other insiders
It’s mostly ramen, cows and trains now.
It’s the German version of me_irl. Stands for “Ich _ im echten Leben” and is a direct translation of the English
Bless you sir or madam, you know not how long I have suffered
It also incorporates c/memes, basically
Omg I was reading it as “ich lel” not “ich iel” this whole time 😅 thanks
I’ve internally been saying “eesh eel”
… which now seems like calling it "me earl’
It is pretty close on the pronunciation, except ch is not sh. Unless you’re speaking certain regional dialects :)
The closest pronunciation you can get in English is probably eek.
I’ve only ever met a few native Germans in person, and understand just enough to get to the bathroom, so I don’t know if I just misheard, or they’re one of the few people who do say it that way.
I’ll take any native German’s word on their own language though! Lol or even anyone who’s studied.
I’m a German native who studied linguistics (ok, computational linguistics with a minor in phonetics and phonology), but I basically only speak my regional dialect well. I was visiting a friend in Berlin once and a stranger in a bar complimented me that I “speak good German for a foreigner”.
Hey that sounds like studying linguistics to me! Pun mildly intended.
That’s gotta be a bit of a gut punch though…
Aww, thanks! Consider me slightly more educated than when I awoke this morning :)
Oh my god, you’re woke!
Whoops, guess I’m now the enemy of a hundred million Americans
My bad
it is only me_irl in name though, it is a general meme / conversational community with the obnoxious (and over used to death) in joke that is zangendeutsch.
It’s not overused if its funny. And it is very funny
Dutchie who speaks German here, I hadn’t heard of the word ‘Zangendeutsch’ before. I get what it means, but why ‘Zangen’? Does it come from tongs or does it have another meaning? Tongs-German makes no sense to me
German here, no idea what it has to do with a Zange
“Zangendeutsch” means an aggressive way of removing the influence of english into the german language. But outside of ich_iel we write in english as everyone. Which is obviously a little bit weird, isn’t it?
What annoys me personally about it (to the point that i blocked the community) is that it is mandatory. That’s not humor, or funny, that is weird performative scripted humor. I often felt reminded of carnival speeches.
I’d also argue that it isnt very successful in clearing anglicisms from the german vernacular when it is all about making the most incorrect and cryptic literal translation imaginable to the point that nobody could understand unless they are well versed in those anglicisms.
They’re making English a linguistic dependency for German? lol
No, that’s wrong. Zangendeutsch is all about English influence and playfully literal translations even when there are better German words. So you need to translate it back to English and into German again to decode it and that’s the fun about it.
So is that the “Zange”? Because you need to go from the things you are holding (the information, in “German”) to the hinge (the literal English translation) and back down again (actual German translation) to understand (aka grasp it)‽
I’m not sure if I understood your deduction. The literal translation of “Zange” would be “tongs”, “pliers” or “pincer”. Hinges are the things that make doors swing and hold to a wall right?
Multiple source say the origin of the word isn’t documented but the best explanation they come up with is that pliers can be used to bend something into a different form.
My guess was it has its origin in the proverb “Das würde ich nicht mal mit der Kneifzange anfassen” which translates to “I wouldn’t even touch that with pliers” as in stuff you detest that much that you rather would stay away from it.
Happy to help
“War’s schon immer.”
As in “ze motorboat is full of iel”?
Hovercraft, but yes
I blocked that both on Reddit and here at the very beginning, without knowing what iel means, the posts were mostly unsympathetic and irritating.
The conflict between seeing so many German users but also wanting more people on Lemmy altogether. Alright Germans… You win this time
Moin!
He sie sorry abe äh!
[email protected] übernehmen Sie
Are we learning German now?
There are several steps between learning German and comprehending whatever the fuck we’re doing over there.
Would it help to have mental illness? Cause if so, I’ll dust off some of these old Rammstein CDs and meet you guys over there after I get more proficient.
If you use ich_iel to learn German, your next visit to Germany could be… interesting.
Schade.
To be honest… I would pay for a beer or two just to watch that.
Ich möchte diesen Teppich nicht kaufen. Bitte.
Ja
Actually I started before Lemmy but I’m bad at it still
I see more Dutch content than German.
That’s odd, I see more German content and I am Dutch.
I find the lack of “SPRICH” in here disturbing.
But there is a lot of “DEUTSCH” in here, so…
aber “DU”, da geht noch was!
HURENSOHN, hast du recht.
Durr heigen durr durr! See I can German too!
And this is my English:
9
Doch
Oooh
I filter non-english subs whenever I can (Sorry I want to be able to read things) ;v;
There doesn’t seem to be an automatic way to do this though
There doesn’t seem to be an automatic way to do this though
Actually there is a very simple way for doing exact this: Go to your profile -> settings -> languages
The only settings i see are these, and if I navigate to my own profile I don’t see any unique setting buttons.
default listing All default post sort Hot default comment sort Hot theme Dark endless scrolling auto load more hide instance names hide thumbnails collapse inline media open links in new window expand marks read
are you using a browser or any lemmy client? in a browser:
Desktop: click on your username, located on the upper right corner
Mobile: click on the menu icon in the upper right corner, then on your username.
Now click on “settings”
It should look like this now:
I promise I’m not stupid, but uhhhh, when I click on my name, it brings me to a page that looks like a community with an overview of everything I’ve posted, but there’s not an option to select a language.
That said, I was also spooked off by the “You won’t see most content” thing, which led me to believe that a lot of communities aren’t language tagged properly(?)
I promise I’m not stupid, but uhhhh, when I click on my name, it brings me to a page that looks like a community with an overview of everything I’ve posted,
Strange. I get that only when I click on my name and then choose “profile” instead of “settings”.
You are on lemmy.world, aren’t you?
It turns out old.lemmy.world doesn’t have it lmao.
I hate the newer style look so uh, yeah.
