Comment on Why is Lemmy only popular in the western World?
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Social media in general (as we think of it) is much more popular in western nations. Thats not to say those outside the west don’t use social media, but it tends to be much more dominated by group-chats (IE WhatsApp, Telegram) and by more isolated platforms or sections of platforms. Of the social media platforms we’ll be familiar with, it tends to be mostly just the most popular and established ones like Instagram, Facebook, and now Tiktok, rather than something still relatively niche and nerdy like Reddit (nonetheless Lemmy).
All that said, again, this is a massive oversimplification talking broadly about trends. We’re talking about thousands of different cultures in entirely different countries and enviroments.
I can tell you, most of South East Asia operates on Instagram and Facebook. And Chinese people’s obsession with Weibo (like Mastodon) and Douyin (Chinese TikTok) are also on their whole own level!
Reddit, what Lemmy aims to replace, is very much Western.
Stuff like Weibo are what I was refering to when I was saying more isolated platforms. A lot of regions have their own smaller social media platforms dominated by one or two cultures. As for Instagram and Facebook, those two are largely world-wide but often (again, massive generalization) less ubiquitous compared to social media in the west.
Really? Because Weibo is much like Twitter or Instagram in China; everybody and their grandma is on it, it has everything from memes to politicians posting their thoughts. It seems very public to me, albeit if you have an account (which just about everyone there does)
What did you mean by isolated?
Isolated as in only used by a specific region or culture. So in Weibo’s case, only in China with little connection to other countries. Another example would be 2Go, which was quite popular in Africa for years, but unlikely be to be known from anyone outside the region.
MemmingenFan923@feddit.org 1 week ago
Interesting point. Didn’t know about this cultural difference.
jbone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Group chats and telegram as a quasi social network (you can comment on a feed of news in a public group chat channel) are extremely popular in Eastern Europe too.