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Is there any reason why there is no large generalist Lemmy instance managed from the USA? Is this just a coincidence? (feddit.org)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/fediverse

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Thinking about this lately, especially in the context of the UD elections getting discussed a lot all over Lemmy.

If you look at the top 20 instances https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy

Lemmy.world and feddit.nl are Dutch
Lemm.ee is Estonian
Feddit.org, discuss.tchncs.de are German
SJW and lemmy.ca are Canadian
Lemmy.blahaj.zone, aussie.zone and Reddthat are Australian
sopuli.xyz is Finnish
slrpnk.net is Portuguese
lemmy.dbzer0, infosec.pub, mander.xyz, programming.dev, lemmy.sdf.org are thematic
Beehaw is USA-based, but defederated from LW and SJW and still on 0.18.3, so not sure they're even that interested in Lemmy anymore

Out of the top 20, there is Midwest.social and Lemmy.today but they are quite small (326 and 201 monthly active users).

On the other hand, a lot of other countries have their own instances

feddit.uk
jlai.lu
feddit.dk
szmer.info
lemmy.eco.br
feddit.cl
feddit.it

With the USA population and the Internet presence of the USA citizens, you would expect at least one large generalist instance based in the USA, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Any ideas what the reasons might be? Is this just a coincidence?

Edit: for Lemmy.world:

The website and the agreement will be governed by and construed per the laws of the following countries and/or states:

The Netherlands
Republic of Finland
Federal Republic of Germany

https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago

I'm in the US and was specifically drawn toward European instance because my (admittedly very lightly informed) understanding is Europe just has better laws on internet freedoms. IIRC a US-based Mastodon instance (Mastodon maybe?) was seized by cops at one point for pretty questionable reasons. Our legal system gives far too much power to police and corporations to enact spurious searches and punishment.