Not to take all the credit, but a factor might be that I, as the top mod of the second largest German Subreddit, promoted Lemmy heavily to the point where the admins banned me "for breaking reddit".
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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That's some damn fine work, sir.
That's pretty funny and if I were in that German subreddit I would probably have migrated out of solidarity
Du machst das sehr gut. Ich bin stolz auf dich!
Danke, das weiß ich zu schätzen 🙏
Hubi🥰
:D
Thank you for your service o7
you deserve a trophy 🏆 🥰
I wouldn't go that far :D I just really enjoyed throwing a wrench into reddit's gears after they killed 3rd party apps.
you made us proud!
How dare you, Sir
lol great job
Everyday act of heroism. Thank you!!!!
Because there are many Germans on Lemmy.
Hallo
Wie ghets?
Tag!
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(1 replies)
Yes but why specifically german? Is the founder german?
Not sure what the core reason is, but Reddit also had a big German population.
I guess Germans are rather privacy focused so they might have been disproportionately migrating during the reddit exodus.
I guess Germans are rather privacy focused so they might
3rd Reich then east Germany gave Germany a hard lesson about privacy, so indeed they're very sensitive to that topic
not that the recent governments care, they want to centralize most of the data of citizens now with pretty poor protections in a lot of cases. sads
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Sounds plausible
Two reasons, Germans are very privacy focused and at the same time pretty tech affine. Also, sprich Deutsch du Huso
The guy who made Mastodon is German, so maybe that was a fediverse on-ramp.
At least one of the two Lemmy maintainers is also German or at least a native speaker as far as I know.
That’s a bingo!
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To give a more serious answer:
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Germans are a bit more privacy focused than most other nations (if you want to know how much read up on the google street view controversy). Germans tend to be much more aware how Meta/Google,etc. abuse their data (and while the average German won't care there are enough of them that you actually note it)
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There is a very strong "antiITestablishment" subculture that is very active since the 80ies. The Chaos Computer Club and its congresses,etc. but also the recent trend toward digital sovereignty has increased the amount of people who see Reddit and (to a much much larger extent) Twitter in a critical light - and due to the close links of Mastodon to Lemmy that helps both.
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German speaking people, especially in the,on Lemmy, overrepresented Tech field tend to understand English fairly well (but underestimate their ability to speak it themselves often). That enables them to consume English speaking content as well, not forcing them into other media formats that do cater more for smaller languages.
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And let's face it: There are a freaking lot of German speaking people. Around 100 Million people speak German in Europe - and while that of course is nothing compared to other India or China it's the largest non-english language block in Europe. That gives one a large enough "crowd" to actually find an audience for a sub - while it's rather hard to get enough people for an Italian speaking niche sub it's far easier to do so if it's German speaking.
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There are also some cultural issues at play - to quote an old German saying that says: "Three Germans meet - they found an association (Verein)". Germans tend to self-organise extremely proactively. Which is often tiresome, believe me. Additionally some Germans tend to find the Americocentrism on Reddit, but also to a lesser degree, on Lemmy, boring and at times nerve wrecking.
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There is a big IT industry that is focused on mid size companies - some with a strong open source mindset.
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Lastly the German main instance, Fediverse.org is operated by a pretty robust foundation who knows what it is doing. Which of course keeps the community more stable and hosts a lot of European (non German) subs as well.
Source: Am German, lived abroad for quite some time.
Yes, I am fully aware this question wasn't totally serious.
No, contrary to common believe we don't have to go to the basement to laugh. Germans go to the basement for sauerkraut and to watch German dungeon porn, Swiss to clean their bunkers and Austrians,well, I'd rather not talk about that.
Funny story about the language ability. I had a German-native friend in college. He had moved to America 1 month prior and never lived in an English speaking country. He had a perfect English accent and was overall better than some of my native born friends. I thought he was making it up. As an American I honestly can't comprehend it, it's like someone doing a double backflip and earnestly thinking it's normal. And very bashful about his incredible language ability!
Recently I met a Dutch-native person traveling in the US for a week. He had a flawless Southern Californian accent, my friends and I didn't believe him, thought he was Californian. His language skills were literally better than most Americans.
I can say the same about many India-natives I've worked with as well. Not just language but communication skills in general. The different accents are gorgeous.
I think non-American education is generally superior.
some Germans tend to find the Americocentrism on Reddit, but also to a lesser degree, on Lemmy, boring and at times nerve wrecking.
Based. I concur and approve. Wish I could do the same and steer away from it all. Not easy, though :(
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Wanted to comment with a few of these points but this comment is way better than anything I could've written. This is the right answer!
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- there are many germans on reddit
- germans tend to be more privacy aware in my opinion
- and I also think Germany has a large and very dedicated open source community.
- then there are just many german speaking people. lemmy is popular in the west and together with austria and switzerland (and some other areas) you have almost 100 million native speakers.
German community was huge on reddit. There were also a lot of users that were unhappy with the biggest german subreddit and reddit in general.
I guess quite a lot jumped ship when reddit started banning third party apps.
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They failed to take over the world using violence, so now they are secretly taking over peacefully using some open source code.
Prepare to be assimulated, resistance is futile.
Oh no! Gently places gun ground We fought the good fight. I surrender.
A huge group moved from ich iel subreddit (meirl but almost like 196 in practice)... most german redditors were there. The main German instance was called feddit.de but the frontend and database got very messed up. The main admin was MIA so feddit.org was made instead.
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I want to read the German language posts. Is there a translate button on Lemmy? I tried the "Select Language" button but nothing happened.
You'll have to read in German...
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.world is hosted on Dutch servers, and the Netherlands are adjacent to Germany?
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Because Germans are more educated and has a higher level of consciousness than Americans
Denn Lemmy ist sehr gut but not very good
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