23
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
23 points (100.0% liked)
AskTransgender
446 readers
1 users here now
A place to ask transgender people questions and get answers about the trans experience.
Rules:
-
Respect other people's identities
-
No Fetishizing Trans people
-
No Gatekeeping about not being "trans enough"
-
No Inciting Drama
-
No personal Agendas
-
Posts should encourage discussion
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Assuming we're talking specifically about platforms like Reddit and Lemmy here, and as far as non-US people go, in my country most people are still sharing forwards from Grandma on Facebook. When I first joined Reddit, I'd barely ever come across someone from the same country as me and it's only in recent years that more people have been joining. If I want to find people like me that actually live in the same borders as me, I have no choice but to use Facebook unfortunately.
Even with the fairly large South Africa community on Reddit, it was more people that want to talk about braais and post pictures of Table Mountain at sunset than anything else. Like everyone there is putting on a big show for the rest of Reddit and trying to attract tourists. Just more fuel to make me feel even more like an alien in my own country.
So this is just how it is. Platforms like this are just used more by Americans and Europeans than anyone else. And if a community for your country does start up, it'll be all the averages and normies first before there's any noticeable amount of a specific demographic.
Sorry if this is invasive to ask, but how does South African presence/internet usage works? You mentioned the great dominace of Facebook over there.
Not sure I completely understand the question but as far as infrastructure goes, it's probably half half old school telephone wires and fibre optic cables at this point. I think most cities have switched to fibre optics at this point but rural areas still have the old telephone poles. Some people on farms and in one horse towns will use satellite internet. There's also cellular networks but mobile data is unreasonably priced as far as I'm concerned and I'm not sure how people without wifi even manage to keep their apps up to date without breaking the bank. Although the majority of the country probably uses mobile data to access the net.
As far as social media goes, I get the impression that most South Africans prefer mingling with other South Africans. Which is kinda fair, there's 12 official languages here and quite a few distinct cultures, so I think a lot of people wouldn't get much value out of US and Euro dominated platforms like Reddit with walls of English text and Western references and in jokes. So places like Facebook and Twitter that try to keep you in your local bubble and circles make the most sense for a lot of people.