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 )

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)

intensely_human ,

Yes Lemmy is a form of wealth. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a wealthy country

supersquirrel OP ,

Then how do we most effectively fight wealth inequality along the axis of software, fediverse software in particular?

Cistello ,

Braindead

supersquirrel OP ,

You can’t drop a mean comment like that and not expand on what you specifically mean by it.

What makes my post brain dead then specifically ?

hitagi ,
@hitagi@ani.social avatar

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.

threelonmusketeers ,

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 OP ,

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 ,

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

BaroqueInMind ,

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 OP ,

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

BaroqueInMind ,

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 OP ,

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

BaroqueInMind ,

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

supersquirrel OP ,

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

Badeendje ,
@Badeendje@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah.. those leeches from underdeveloped countries should be hosting fediverse servers with all that expendable income they have.

What a shit take.

supersquirrel OP ,

Please point to where I insinuated this? If people living outside the borders of colonial powers want to host their own servers great, if they want to join US, French, Japanese etc.. servers then… also awesome! How on earth are you taking from my read that the point of this line of questioning is to criticize underdeveloped countries or the people that live within their borders?

the whole point of this post is to ask about what ways we can best practically help those people without perpetuating the same structural power imbalances that got us into the present day problems and suffering we face

If you had interacted with my post in a genuine way you would have realized an essential part of my question is how best to help propagate the fediverse outside of its narrow niches, do you build fediverse servers in your own country and make them friendly to foreign users? Do you try to create resources and gather money to help people in those countries just host their own fediverse server?

What are the practical real world advantages and pitfalls of both strategies with respect to the fediverse in particular?

Badeendje ,
@Badeendje@lemmy.world avatar

I think I responded to the tone and then you see premise that insinuated that colonial oppressors are just using their advantage to once again oppress the poor indigenous people of wherever in yet another way. Which I don't agree with.

The concept of the fediverse seems to be that admins host instances and are pretty welcoming to new communities... So if someone from I dunno Togo would setup a lomé or togo-politics community it would be supported. Meaning anyone from anywhere can use the infra provided to setup and moderate their communities.

If anything the system allows people more advantaged with resources (time, money, know how) to provide an open space that can be used by everyone (within reason). Without being beholden to big tech and her hidden profit driven agenda.

I would be more concerned about accessibility and usability from the perspective of a lot of people. As many countries that are still developing have limited time and access. And I don't know if the current state of the fediverse in it's development is of much help.

I'llIncreasing the usability of the whole ecosystem with improved clients, moderation tools etc (the stuff that fediverse users are requesting, and those devs are working on) will help.

Once it is mature, more will come. And like with tech, financed by early adopters this seems similar.

In the mean time I see people from all over the globe post stuff about many things, including national interest stuff that would otherwise have passed me by.

And I don't see stuff posted in languages I don't comprehend because my profile filteres them out. I don't know if there are any Swahili/Papiamento/Mandarin/Indonesian posts on lemmy, but Lemmy supports many languages so that might be a thing.

Lastly the whole us vs them (colonial powers, oppressors etc etc) might be applicable to a lot of the world, however, garnering support for a cause by making accusations against the fediverse and the current generation of hosts and users does not help. I would advise a more constructive stance in general. If you see people actually being as you describe call them out and tell it like it is by all means, but this was not the way to get the ball rolling.

I'd probably gone with something like: the fediverse is growing, how can we help it develop in a direction better serving people in developing countries. To get them out from under the power hold and monopolies of the big tech conglomerates. .. or something.

In that case I would have stuck with an answer like above.. we need to foster and nurture it's growth so it becomes a good alternative and the people will come. Plus.. you know.. ask people from these countries or maybe even get devs from there involved using stuff like patreon. Getting feedback from people not using your product.. and finding out why they don't is hard.

But Lemmy for example already did a solid by making sure the platform supports a looooot or languages "out of the box".

Hope that's better :).

For the record, I did not downvotes your reply as it deserves an actual response.

supersquirrel OP ,

Lastly the whole us vs them (colonial powers, oppressors etc etc) might be applicable to a lot of the world, however, garnering support for a cause by making accusations against the fediverse and the current generation of hosts and users does not help. I would advise a more constructive stance in general. If you see people actually being as you describe call them out and tell it like it is by all means, but this was not the way to get the ball rolling.

I am a random fool with an internet connection, I have no power to define anything, and on the contrary I think the only way to get us on the same page is to just came out and say it how it is.

felykiosa ,

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 OP ,

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

Zerlyna ,
@Zerlyna@lemmy.world avatar

Dude.

AbouBenAdhem ,

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 OP ,

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.

wander1236 ,
@wander1236@sh.itjust.works avatar

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 OP ,

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 ,

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

supersquirrel OP ,

True!

My intention was to make it clear that my reference to these numbers was back of the envelope, I know there is a huge amount of complexity to this question.

Do you begin solving physics problem by making sure you start from answering the most complicated version of a problem including simulations of every single little expression of friction and wind resistance etc…. No you say the cow can be abstracted as a sphere and start from there. The question isn’t whether to abstract the cow or not, it is over the quality and consequences of the abstraction.

With that in mind, yes I do think it is worth asking the question of whether the best path forward is for fediverse servers within colonial borders to build open communities that users from without colonial borders can join and use or whether the better path forward is to instead directly help build local fediverse instances hosted outside of colonial borders. I don’t know, it is a massively difficult question to answer, I guess I should keep repeating that so people don’t keep assuming I am naively thinking this is a simple question and I have absolutist all or nothing views of things.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

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

supersquirrel OP ,

So, not sure what you mean by this

Nothing, do you honestly think I am watching what is happening right now in the US (where I live) and NOT thinking it is utterly terrifying?

Yeah the manufactured hysteria around TikTok doing the same shit western social media companies do is pathetic and absurd (and like, if republicans are up in arms about manipulation of kids, what about tobacco companies??????).

DMBFFF ,
@DMBFFF@lemmy.world avatar

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 OP ,

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 ,
@DMBFFF@lemmy.world avatar

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.

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

its about mature infrastructure.

small, less mature countries have shit for internet resources.

supersquirrel OP ,

What do you mean in as precise of terms as you are capable of by the term “mature” in this context?

I think the answer to that question is similar to the answer to my original question.

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

a mature infrastructure.. redundant fiber optic/satellite connectivity to Tier 1 providers, power generation and reliability, etc.

basic shit

supersquirrel OP ,

In terms of internet infrastructure, I think the biggest opportunities here are local grassroots municipal/community government spearheaded build outs of high speed internet that completely bypass the concept of the western business and foreign aid structure that involves pulling in some for profit or """non-profit"""" company with a complex set of incentives that mostly don't align with the communities they are ostensibly there to help build infrastructure for.

I suspect how effective or ineffective globally this method of funding internet infrastructure development is will have a major impact on the long term future of the fediverse as a whole... since it isn't within the borders of colonial powers where the inherent freedoms to the internet will be defended. It will ultimately be the "periphery" states and states far beyond the borders of colonial powers that shore up safe heavens for internet communities. Seeing where the US is going, I can only hope that my country will not block my access to those communities down the road...

lambalicious ,

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 ,

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.

brian ,

It's just a population map

supersquirrel OP ,

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

https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/25fb5b4d-456e-4a61-8d3d-ed8f1d90a8d8.webp

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 ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

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 ,

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 ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

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?"

supersquirrel OP ,

Yeah I should have been very clear to say that I don’t hinge everything I am saying on the fedidb numbers being literally accurate to any metric, of course they won’t be this is a very complex question and fedidb is a volunteer organization tracking a dizzying constellation of volunteer projects.

Like you said, that doesn’t mean the numbers don’t point to something very real and worth talking about however.

I am glad there are far more Portuguese speakers and Brazilians on the fediverse than the numbers appear to show at first glance! Good to hear even if the numbers are still small.

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