The countries with the most Fediverse servers are rich and former/current colonial powers. One of the best true barometers of the success of the Fediverse is how quickly we can turn that on its head. (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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In the end I don’t think internet users in rich powerful countries are the users most likely to benefit and invest their time into in the fediverse. They might be the ones with the most free time, money and privilege around computers which makes being on the leading edge of niche technologies far easier, but I don’t think using the fediverse vs commercial social media is thattt crucial of a difference for most (add a million qualifiers here except if you are black, queer, trans etc… I am talking in relative terms here) livimg inside the borders of colonial powers like the US, France, Germany etc..

Speaking as a hetero white dude who grew up with a decent amount of privilege the fediverse isn’t for the countless versions of me living within the borders of colonial powers…

It might have been programmers living within the borders of colonial powers that did most of the labor to create the fediverse, and most of the early users might have come from within colonial powers but I think it is important to recognize that the gift that the fediverse represents to the world is the capacity to empower people living outside the borders of colonial powers to own and run their own social networks instead of having some random Facebook employee who doesn’t have the time or basic knowledge of a country to make major decisions about what news accounts to moderate as dangerous spam and what to allow.

From a 30,000 foot view, speaking in broad terms and specific values and priorities, what do you think are the best strategies for flipping the script on the fediverse being mostly a tool used by people within the borders of colonial powers to one used by without and within?

I wonder about the capacities of fediverse software being useful as a compliment to HOT open street mapping type initiatives in the wake of disasters and just in general?

(Are server costs just generally cheaper/easier in colonial countries to run or is it purely a money and time thing? I don’t really know)

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[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 45 points 3 months ago

its about mature infrastructure.

small, less mature countries have shit for internet resources.

[-] stanleytweedle@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yes but I admire OP's optimism in challenging the Fediverse to somehow deploy probably the largest and most complex human endeavor ever conceived to quickly achieve economic parity between non and former-colonial powers. That's like the Principality of Sealand saying they're putting a man on the moon. I love it.

[-] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 3 months ago

small, less mature countries have shit for internet resources.

Isn't US internet memetically bad (in particular the rural one) compared to a "shit country" like Chile, one of the ones the US got paid to sabotage with military dictatorships?

[-] GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

Our data centers and backbone internet/Tier 1 internet providers are basically the best in the world. The US Department of Energy maintains a network with 46 Tbit/s connections between its labs.

[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 4 points 3 months ago

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[-] brian@lemmy.ca 31 points 3 months ago

It's just a population map

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

China entered the chat

ok fair state probs won’t allow it idk?

India entered the chat

Hell fucking just Mexico City and the surrounding metro/megalopolis not even including the rest of Mexico entered the chat

just a casual 32mil

Sao Paulo is here representing the rest of Brazil but the rest of Brazil couldn’t fit into the chat

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Regarding specifically Brazil, I can answer that.

The most used pieces of Fediverse software are for microblogging (Mastodon, Misskey) and forum discussion (Lemmy). But when you look at the statistics for usage of social media platforms in Brazil, here's what it shows:

YouTube (89%), Instagram (85%), Facebook (84%), TikTok (49%), Pinterest (37%), Twitter (36%), Linkedin (35%), Snapchat (15%), Twitch (9%), Reddit (6%), Tumblr (5%), Hello (3%), Flickr (2%), Quora (2%), WeChat (2%), MeWe (1%), others (7%).

Neither microblogging nor forum discussion are popular in Brazil; the top contenders are video services (YT, TT), and the Meta cancer tendrils (IG, FB) behaving as Orkut replacement goldfish. So the main Fediverse services are alternatives for things that, locally, are not overly common to begin with, when people have their "motherfucking caramel" doing funny shit they beeline for TT or FB.

Another factor that I think that reduces Fediverse usage in Brazil is Anglocentrism. Brazilians are mostly monolingual; the exceptions are typically 1) from a colonial background, or 2) highly educated, and only (2) applies here. For most people in Brazil, English content is the same as nothing, or as "the skwerlficashun! throovy! afdsjkfdsa!".

That backtracks into your OP. I believe that Fediverse success requires

diversification of the platforms widely used and available in the Fediverse
better ways to handle language that reduce the "I don't speak it so it's noise" issue

Even with that in mind my city has a Mastodon server. I often lurk there because I'm a verbose fuck, not suited for microblogging; but it's comfy.

[-] Cochise@lemmy.eco.br 6 points 3 months ago

Brazillian here. Out biggest Mastodon instance (ursal.zone) is locally hosted, but is behind Cloudflare and appears as US in this list. Most of Brazilian instances are foreign hosted because of cost. This table means nothing in terms of fediverse penetration on Brazil. We have a huge population, and even as most of Brazilian are monolingual, the minority of bilinguals are millions that can read English. Even monolinguals are doing just fine using Brazilian instances, even if foreign hosted.

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 points 3 months ago

Out [Brazilian] biggest Mastodon instance (ursal.zone) is locally hosted, but is behind Cloudflare and appears as US in this list. Most of Brazilian instances are foreign hosted because of cost. This table [the one in the OP] means nothing in terms of fediverse penetration on Brazil.

That's why I'm not using OP's data on first place.

With that in mind, look at your own example, ursalzona. Acc. to you, it's "our biggest Mastodon instance"; it has 500 MAU. For comparison, the biggest Japanese instance has 23k, even if serving a smaller population (126M vs. 215M).

The data might be inaccurate, but OP is correctly highlighting an actual issue - the Fediverse has barely any impact outside a few highly developed countries.

We have a huge population, and even as most of Brazilian are monolingual, the minority of bilinguals are millions that can read English.

More specifically 5%/215M = ~11M. And my point still stands; for 95% of the population, it's pragmatically the same as if most content in the Fediverse was in Klingon. Here network effect kick us (Fediverse users) on the balls, ~~Merda~~ Meta is so pervasive that people don't see the point - "I can see caramel dogs being arseholes in Fezesbook, but in Mastodon it's just a handful of Portuguese speakers, why bother?"

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[-] kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I think GDP in this case, but yeah, same idea. It makes sense that wealthy countries with good infrastructure are going to be high on the list.

Country (nominal GDP rank)
USA (1)
France (7)
Germany (4)
Japan (3)
Finland (47)
Canada (9)
Netherlands (18)
Russia (8)
UK (6)

High-GDP countries that are notably missing are China (2, users are limited by the Great Firewall) and India (5, still building their infrastructure).

I wonder why Finland is so high on the list? Good for them, regardless.

[-] pmk@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 months ago

Things you can do in finland: tango, fight with knives, computer stuff.

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[-] DMBFFF@lemmy.world 23 points 3 months ago

The leaders of countries such as the PRC, Modi's India, Putin's Russia, ans Iran might not like the idea of decentralization.

Indeed, they might not like the internet itself.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

looks out my windows the corporate fascist hellscape of the US

Ommm yeah I genuinely not saying this to detract from the seriousness of oppression within the countries you are speaking of but…. nobody with real power in the US likes the internet either?

Did you see what Elon Musk did to Twitter? It wasn’t less a business acquisition than a public execution of an entity that subverted the ability of state sponsored propaganda to be effective all over the world (including specifically… Saudi Arabia and the countries it has business interests in). I mean I don’t know if Elon knows this or not, I really don’t care. The people that gave him the money to pay for the execution on the other hand I am more convinced knew exactly what the general impact of their “investment” was going to be.

[-] DMBFFF@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

What I find quite annoying is how people created these monopolies.

50 years ago, there were 3 (arguably 4) American car companies—still a de facto oligopoly, but 3 is better than 1. The Japanese and VW added to it.

Today we essentially have one search portal, Google; one social network site, Facebook; one video-hosting site, YouTube; and one micro-blogging site, Twitter/X.

If people spent perhaps 1/10th of their micro-blogging time on other sites, Twitter might not have been as attractive to Musk and his backers, but they chose ease over choice, and now they're wailing over what he's doing with it.

I'm off-topic.

I mostly agree with your statement. Maybe Amazon likes the internet, but probably most others in big business in the US don't: it might account a bit for the shitty websites of many of them.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago

There are obviously a million reasons for this, greed and corruption being obvious touchstones but I also think culturally we weren't raised to think this state of affairs was grotesque.

A lot just comes down to how people perceive the fediverse, is it just an alternative, another tool you can use that works just as well as corporate social media (lots of handwaving here) or is it a niche community for specific subsections of tech-ish nerds that becomes successfully codified as a tertiary, unimportant place by pop culture?

[-] wander1236@sh.itjust.works 22 points 3 months ago

I think you're overthinking this, and extrapolating limited data way too far.

For one, of course historically rich countries are going to be hosting more technology. Tech is expensive, and less developed countries are called that because they're less developed, which includes electricity grids, internet, economic power, and so on.

Another issue is that just because a Mastodon server is hosted in a particular country, doesn't mean only people in or from that country can make an account there. Sure, there are some servers that want to keep their communities specific to their local area, but the vast majority have no restrictions. Anyone from anywhere can sign up.

If you're trying to figure out how to make it so historically poor countries have the most servers instead, you're going to have to figure out how to fund and manage infrastructure expansion.

It feels like you're coming at this with the assumption of "every country has the resources to spin up hundreds of social media servers, but they're just not interested", which is kind of a weird conclusion to come to after recognizing the historical impact of colonialism and the privilege differences it's led to.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago

It feels like you’re coming at this with the assumption of “every country has the resources to spin up hundreds of social media servers, but they’re just not interested”, which is kind of a weird conclusion to come to after recognizing the historical impact of colonialism and the privilege differences it’s led to.

Do you realize how your rhetoric is boxing my opposing viewpoint into being an oversimplification? Nowhere in my language did I imply this was a simple question with a simple answer nor did I request a precise answer of any type.

I acknowledge all of your criticisms, this is a difficult question and I would welcome your input and knowledge if it is along a positive axis not a condescending one that attempts to frame my question as naive and thus fundamentally unserious (independent of whether the details are right or wrong).

[-] HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

You don't have to use a local server though.

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[-] Zerlyna@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

Dude.

[-] felykiosa@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago

I m happy that France is just behind the USA knowing that we are way less massive in number of people. I think that s cool , let democratize the fediverse nom Mather where you are ;)

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago

I think it is definitely something to be proud of! It really speaks to France’s long (of course complicated) history with leftism.

[-] neo@lemmy.hacktheplanet.be 6 points 3 months ago

Yeah, fuck those colonists with their colonial powers! 💪

[-] hitagi@ani.social 6 points 3 months ago

Are server costs just generally cheaper/easier in colonial countries to run or is it purely a money and time thing?

They are cheaper. Locations outside US/EU and very few countries in Asia are sometimes called "exotic" and can be a bit expensive. Lemmy also has this issue where servers that are distant from each other lag behind.

[-] BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 5 points 3 months ago

A good strategy is for you, and you specifically, to donate a lot of what sounds like your likely massive white-privledge trust fund to a tech charity of the country of your choosing.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago

Maybe...? As many have reminded me on this thread, be wary of your kneejerk assumptions.

[-] BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 6 points 3 months ago

Yeah your original post came off as pompous and offensive. Even though your intent was to be hopeful, optimistic and productive, you come off as arrogant and ignorant in your writing. Please do not take this as a non-sequitur, I'm simply calling it as we see it here.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago

I think that is a fair criticism, I appreciate your honesty and straightforwardness!

[-] BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 4 points 3 months ago

Apologies that we all came at you with swords. Keep at it, we can work together and find a solution.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago

Keep at it, we can work together and find a solution

I would say with -30 votes and 50 comments that I am clearly not part of this "we"

I think I am done participating here

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[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 5 points 3 months ago

the US

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1117092169/nebraska-cops-used-facebook-messages-to-investigate-an-alleged-illegal-abortion

France

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2024/05/24/the-tiktok-ban-in-new-caledonia-is-a-first-in-france-that-raises-rule-of-law-questions_6672574_13.html

So, not sure what you mean by this

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[-] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

What about the usage demographics within each country?

In underdeveloped/exploited countries, internet usage is more likely to be concentrated among the economic elites who formerly benefited from colonialism—so if increasing adoption in those countries just follows the pattern of other internet use, it could have the opposite effect from the one intended.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah that is what makes this shit so exhausting, at every step where you solve the immediate expression of a systematic problem you have to step back, evaluate your solution and shake your head at how clearly your biases tried to recreate the same problem in your solution.

I agree that we should always be asking questions like you are because this could easily be a future timeline the fediverse goes down.

How do you think we can reduce the chance of this happening?

Also, the interface between the oppressors and the oppressed is always multidimensional and unbelievably manifold. The daughters of ultra powerful oppressors funnel money to the oppressed in shades of moral complexities that are difficult to pin down as righteous or not. This is the way history has always been, what matters is the results, and how much members of the ruling class are willing to betray their class for the greater good of humanity shrugs.

[-] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago

It would be cool to have some Lemmy servers from some more obscure countries, like, I don't know, Mali, or something. Do they have any interesting top level domain names?

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago

Oh true you could probably get some sick domains for smaller countries not well represented on the internet (not me I mean someone from that country).

Honestly I think cities are cooler though they feel more local and human than country names to me.

[-] Zangoose@lemmy.one 5 points 3 months ago

Pretty sure that's a joke, Mali's TLD is .ml

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[-] Cistello@reddthat.com 3 points 3 months ago

Braindead

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[-] WebWizard@links.hackliberty.org 2 points 3 months ago

Cry about it

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Please refrain from low effort derisive responses like this when people are having an adult conversation you don't like, it is childish and makes you look like a fool.