Nothing against Germans, I’m just wondering why, outside of the English internet, it got such high adoption in Germany compared to eg. France or Spain. I see next to no French/Spanish/etc. content on here in comparison

  • e8CArkcAuLE@piefed.socialEnglish
    5·
    1 hour ago

    HANS, GET ZE SPAMWERFER!

    Also i think it’s because of germans having a bigger notion of data protection and that huge corporations are bad, which is why a lot more people are changing from reddit to fediverse.
    in my personal experience, i can only compare it to spanish people, and i definitely see a lot more concern in german people.

    another reason might be economic wealth, having the strongest currency next to the pound in the 80s and 90s, this could mean that early adoption of PCs and dial-up was more spread than in other European countries because of the relative cost difference of equipment. This early adoption could also mean that more people got to know the ‘old web’ and are more appreciative of non-standardised web content.
    it’s only hypothesises, i have no data to support it (yet)

    • e8CArkcAuLE@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      5 minutes ago

      this part is about the early adoption hypothesis, and relies on one (!) table about the internet usage in Europe from 2000 to 2007

      https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Internet-usage-in-Europe-2000-2007_tbl9_4891139

      N6F8s7qsfNiwjBu.jpeg

      we can distinguish a few groups:

      1. relatively wealthy countries with high percentages of internet adoption but with a small population size which translates into relative small proportions (green)
      2. relatively less wealthy countries with lower percentages but with bigger population size which makes for bigger proportions (red)
      3. relatively wealthy countries with high percentages with a big population size which translates into big proportions (violet)

      as we can see from the statistics, Germany is sporting the biggest total amount of internet users relative to the other European countries.

      another relevant aspect is the percentage of growth, and Germany has one of the lowest growth rate compared to other countries while having a high percentage of users, which implies an early adoption of internet users.

      linear regression could probably be used to find the relation between wealth and internet usage.

      the case of Portugal is really interesting though, as it’s a less wealthy country but sporting a high percentage of internet users. Maybe there was some government subsidies?

      • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.mlOP
        2·
        46 minutes ago

        That is actually a very compelling explanation. Although I guess the data it is based on would be a bit less relevant considering they are from 19 years ago…

        • e8CArkcAuLE@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          4 minutes ago

          yeah, i looked for old data,because my whole point was the early adoption of internet usage which might translate into preferences of the old web and by extension to the fediverse.
          i edited my post to reflect that, thanks for the feedback :)