• Herding Llamas@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    To try and answer the question of why so many of them. Please note this is broad generalizations:

    1. 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.

    2. 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”.

    3. 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.

      • Herding Llamas@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        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.

        • nutomic@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          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.

    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      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

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      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.

    • vxx@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • Herding Llamas@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Very true. Lemme is reddit… Or how reddit was when it was good. They liked reddit then for the same reason I did and why I don’t use it and why we are here.