The USA/West-EU countries make up about 12% of the world’s population, yet have about 80% participation on Reddit. Statistics do not differ much for other sites, as I used to have a decent non-anonymous tech blog years ago, where Google and WordPress offered me similar statistics of 70-75% of the visitors being from the Anglosphere.
Is it because the citizens of these countries are drenched in individualist capitalist societal culture, and easier access to fast internet? What else could be the reasons, and cultural cues?
I have felt that it is the core reason for this chaos and toxicity on the internet, where this very kind of immoral self-centered culture became a virtual hegemony over the decades.
It is a thought that strikes my mind often, as someone from India/Asia, and there is almost non existent discussion about this anywhere.
Was your blog in English, though?
If you take Internet access…
…and cross reference against English speakers…
…then I think that’s enough explanation, no?
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Yes, English. It was a tech blog about comparison of software for Windows, Linux, Mac and Android.
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To be fair there are a lot of English-speaking nazis that end up on VK after they get canceled from other platforms.
Things get complex when you understand Ukraine and not Russia is a nazi country.
To my knowledge there’s plenty of nazis in both countries. I don’t know much about Ukraine, but i know for sure nazis and other fascists are NOT enemies of Putin, and the Russian governments has some policy points that align with fascism: restriction of sexuality/queerness, censorship, anti-demonstration…
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Fair points but I have not seen particularly Nazi flag hoisting nationally in Russia, unlike in Ukraine where it happens openly.
Russia is not a national socialist country, but has authoritarian undertones and partially enforced inequality as you say, so a very light shade of fascism.
The political refugees i know who have been subjected to torture from the FSB and other secret services do not consider russian fascism “a very light shade”. Electric torture in particular is very cruel. Also neonazi groups in Russia are not exactly uncommon. Looking for “nazi russia” or “russian nationalists” on any video platform will prompt videos of nazi bands beating up folks they deem too gay or too brown in public spaces like the subway
The defectors who you rely on also defected to Anglo colonialist nations that brainwash them just as well, so Russian fascism is not exactly a thing.
You can search “Nazi USA” or “Nazi Africa” or even “nazi India” and can find absurd stuff. These are NOT factual cemented examples of fascism. Provide proper sources.
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as Facebook made a deal with mobile ISPs to have Facebook access not count towards the data-cap
This is so annoying. The internet here is pretty much only the most Popular Apps nowadays. Very hard to move to other platforms (and convince friends & family to switch too) when they literally cost more money to use >:/
“Why use
SignalMatrix, when WhatsApp is free?” UghI kind of love the Japanese Internet. Those old-school sites where everything is in plain HTML. That period before the iPhone where Japan was producing all kinds of futuristic flip-phones was great.
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I know that, as an internet dinosaur myself in India. I have my Apple cousin that thinks my Linux ThinkPad is a control command battlestation (yes those are his words at 18 age).
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Decentralisation will be the future for non Westerners, and Africa will be helped out of Facebook hegemony as they get out of the slavery relationship with Europe and USA, via China’s BRI.
But there has to be initiatives like Lemmy and Mastodon for multiple types of internet platforms that are mainstream.
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Yes, tell me more about how China is not (yet another) colonial empire with its Belt Road Initiative /s
Not that i’m defending other colonizing nations. But the whole “civilizing mission” of “superior cultures” to build useful infrastructure and such is so cliché in the history of colonization.
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Because we have not had non divide and conquer style civilisations that helped other nations at this scale yet. India was always its own thing, and USSR/Russia was isolated as well, both not fit enough to be leading superpower with globalisation plans.
There are only so many key powers, USA, EU, India, China and Russia. EU is divided into two parts, where West EU is like little brother to USA. That leaves China that has a history of being colonised and imperialised and suffered loss in the two Opium Wars thanks to illegal British drug smuggling during Qing dynasty.
A non US/EU country must be given a fair chance, which I support since US/West EU (not East EU) opposes this due to their hegemonic collapse.
Literally all the countries you have cited have a history of conquest, subjugating people, and repressing popular movements. Yes, even India, China and Russia. India has hindu nationalism. China has han nationalism. Russia has whatever they call their brand of christian-orthodox authoritarianism. All three countries have severe political repression against minorities.
There is a big difference between nationalism in imperialist countries, and nationalism in colonized countries. Carl Zha has a good video about this.
India has ultra nationalism not for all Hindus but for the 15-30% upper caste section of all Hindus. Hindus consist of Brahmins/Pandits (general), 50-70% lower caste (SC/ST/OBC/others). Hindus make up for 80% of the population of 130 crore (100 crore =1 billion).
China has over 300 dialects and multiple classes of people, where Han make up 91% of the 150 crore population. If there was Han supremacy, Uyghurs would not be allowed to produce more than 1 child, compared to restrictions on Han Chinese majority.
Russia has a different style of population, 71% Orthodox Christian and 10% Islam. Russia does have some limitations, that criticism is known.
You should research before accepting and advocating such absurd groupthink stereotypes as a foreigner.
As someone who grew up in an African country and spent sometime in North America, I would say there are various reasons one can point to [language, economic conditions, nature of available technology etc]. Most conversations in my growing up were ephemeral + oral. Mobile phones started changing the landscape. Facebook and Messaging apps like Telegram, Viber, and WhatsApp changed a lot of conversations from peer-to-peer to ‘mediated’ ones. I would say that most African-based folks are every social and active in discussions. They are just not in the platforms Westerns frequent, and increasingly so with closed-messaging platforms like WhatsApp groups.
I am so glad this post served the purpose exactly for folks like you.
I see the reason in language, people just want to communicate and especially consume content in their native language. So any service with predominant english cannot be truly global.
Could be that western cultures have more free time and/or being physically present has been trained out of people via marketing
I think this is the case. Virtual presence has been feeded to be more valuable than real relationships.
