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Why are there so many Germans on Lemmy? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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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

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[–] [S] 23 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Ok, but if you consider that there are 80M Germans, there are also 60M French (+African countries), and 50M Spanish (+ LatAm). That would make for a language ratio of ~1:1:1 considering Europe alone. This clearly doesn't seem to be the case, so I'm just curious what the reason behind the strong adoption in German speaking countries could be...

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  • [–] 37 points 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (6 children)

    I'm probably quite biased being German myself, but I feel like that things like privacy and security tend to be more important to Germans than to other folks. And I don't speak just about the tech bubble, it shows everywhere.

    To give a random example, when a license plate has been blurred in a photo posted anywhere, chances are high it's been posted by a German. Despite the fact that there is no license plate lookup (like carfax for US, finnik.nl for Netherlands, car.info for Sweden etc) so a license plate wouldn't even reveal anything to anyone, yet we treat it like a secret on instinct. If you ask such a German why he blurred it, he probably won't have a reasonable response, he just does it because he feels like it.
    (Edit: Just look through the used cars here, most if not all will have their plates censored given they have plates on them lol)

    Getting back to topic, this might not be the only explanation, but I'm pretty sure it's a noticable factor why Germans are especially present on platforms like this, i.e. platforms that tend to respect the user's privacy more than the big tech corporations.

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  • [–] [S] 20 points 8 months ago* (5 children)

    Hmm that's fascinating. I didn't realize you guys had such a strong cultural tendency towards privacy. Do you think there's a specific thing that caused it, or has it always been this way?

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  • [–] 23 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    Hmm I don't know actually, but now I'm curious too. From quick search:

    As the newspaper Handelsblatt explains, β€œangst about potential surveillance is rooted in Germany’s past.” The combined legacy of the Nazi Gestapo and the East German Stasi are thought to be part of the reason Germany has been a pioneer in data protection β€” with legislation dating back to the 1970’s.

    https://www.codastory.com/surveillance-and-control/coronavirus-germany-privacy/

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Interesting, although seeing as being sensitive about privacy isn't as big in other post communist countries (at least not here in Czechia), I assume it must just be a generic cultural trait

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago*

    Well the German Democratic Republic is unique among the former USSR countries in that it was unified with the Federal Republic of Germany. The latter already had a strong focus on privacy laws resulting from the Nazi time (meaning there was strong mistrust towards the state, but Nazis trying to hide in plain sight was obviously also relevant). But when the sheer amount of information the communist intelligence services were storing on their citizens became known after reunification this pre-existing privacy bias was put into overdrive, it confirmed all the worst fears west Germans already had about the state becoming too powerful.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    Most of this privacy fetish is purely performative though. The Schufa is a dystopian data collector with information on every German and despite a token focus on data privacy politicians pass more and more surveillance laws like using Palantir for the police and crackdowns on free speech and protesting in general.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    60 millions Italian also.
    As a neighbour (and disliker) of that country I can't tell you how many German tourists I've seen immediately speaking germ and just assuming everyone needs to understand.
    Probably why they are the only ones posting in their language here

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