If I was using a website called “Facebloke” that was well known to have been made and ran in the UK, I’d assume everyone on it was British.
Or the Australian version “Matebook”, full with Aussies.
Mate.
I wonder if a news community with a “no mentioning the US” rule would work. Not out of any hate, just as something arbitrary like “don’t use the letter E”.
Howdy y’all bros. My name is Todd Bonzalez and I am from one of the great American places foreigners know from your TV shows.
I mean the us dwarfs other english speaking countries
Your comment is very typical of that (fallacious) US centrism. People write in English on the internet because that is the universal language. There are far more secondary English speakers on the internet than primary English speakers.
Tons of people speak English as a second language, on the internet
Yeah like India
135 million english speakers is less than 300 million
Mr Blott really really really likes to denigrate Americans. Don’t rain on his parade
What on Earth are you on about? “denigrate Americans”. They are pointing out facts. That you apparently are so fragile that you consider that denigration is entirely on yourself.
its just the loudest voices that seem to drive the world.
Well Al Gore invented the internet so the internet is more a.USA thing 🤣🤣
To be fair, the US has the largest number of English-speakers of any country in the world. As a first language, it has five times as many native English speakers as second place (the UK). It also has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the world, meaning most of those English-speakers are also Internet users.
The US is a single country that is three-quarters the population of the entire continent of Europe, and nearly all of its inhabitants speak English and use the Internet. So yes, if you pick a random user on an English social media page, odds are very good that person is an American. If you were to guess any random English-speaking Internet user’s nationality, “American” is the best possible guess. But go on a Spanish language forum or a French language forum and nobody will assume you’re American.
Consequently, Americans generate the majority of English-language Internet content.
Again, you are completely missing the point of the internet and English usage on it. People are using English as a lingua franca. There are a lot more non-native English speakers on the internet than native English speakers.
So no, odds are not that it is an American you are speaking to, just because that person speaks English. You are literally regurgitating the fallacy that OP is about.
FYI
According to Wikipedia the percentage of English speakers located in the US is lower that 20%. Does this mean that only 1 in 5 users is from the US?
Population of the US: 334.914.895, Population of Europe: 745.173.774. 334.914.895/745.173.774 = 0,449%
English Speakers in the US: 297.400.000. English Speakers in Europe: 260.000.000. So you have about 37,4M more English speakers in the US than in Europe.
I’m sorry but this is nonsense. I’m in a lot of online communities where everyone uses English, despite it being nearly nobody’s first language. It just happens to be the only language that everyone there knows. Language is no indication of nationality, especially online.
And to be honest, in those places the assumption is usually that everyone is European, which I can imagine is just as annoying for the stray American.
I think you misunderstand.
What I am saying is that of all Internet users that use English, Americans are by far the largest group due to it being a very large country, (third most populous in the world) with a high Internet penetration (97%), and whose residents speak English as their main language (78.3%).
What I am saying is that of all Internet users that use English, Americans are by far the largest group
No, they didn’t misunderstand. It is you who are massively misunderstanding. You are suffering from the erronous assumption that people who speak English on the internet are native English speakers when that it is not so at all. People speak English on the internet because it is the largest commonly understood language. So people from non-English speaking countries are using it as well. And there are a heck of a lot more non-native English speakers in the world than native English speakers.
So you are most likely at any time on the internet to be speaking to a non-native English speaker, and thus definitely not an American.
But I would argue that the rest of the world also uses primarily English online. And just by virtue of being the rest of the world, outnumbers the Americans.
In other words, of all Internet users that use English, the vast majority is likely not American.
Of course I don’t have data to back this up, except anecdotally.
Americans generate the majority of English-language Internet content.
Doubt.
There are 1.3 billion people who use English on the internet as a first or second language.
Not all Internet users generate the same amount of content. In addition to Americans being proud blabbermouths in general, people from wealthy countries generate more content than those from poorer countries. The US is among the wealthiest countries in the world.
Although it is not the most representative, nearly half of all Reddit users are American. American media outlets have immense global reach. You can probably name four or five American media outlets just off the top of your head, even if you’re not American. The USA’s geopolitical power means people are always talking about American politics or what America’s leaders are doing, which draws engagement from Americans like a lamp draws moths. 7 out of the top 10 English-language YouTube channels are American (fully or partially).
It’s pretty much impossible to prove, but I think the claim that Americans generate most of the content on the Internet is likely true or very close to true.
It’s even more convincing if you exclude English Internet users from India, as a quick visit to any forum dominated by Indian users will cause you to quickly realise that the language used there is not really English but a mix of English and Hindi which is not comprehensible to non-Indians.
Again, the numbers you linked shows that you are more likely to speak to a non-American on reddit than an American. Your entire premise is flawed from the beginning.
The more egalitarian principle would be to not assume. I won’t deny that. People from more minority locales have every right to be upset at being marginalized.
But at the same time, whenever I read passive aggressive comments on socials from residents of crown countries or from EAASL people around the world bitching about US defaultism as if people are doing it just to be ignorant dicks, I can only think to myself, “Uhh, hello? What do you think the demographics of this space were? What did you expect?”
Americans are hardly the majority of the world’s English speakers, but for all the reasons you listed, they tend to remain a massive plurality, if not an outright overwhelming majority, of any mainstream online English language platform. No, that’s not a license to perpetuate US defaultism. But like… read the room, people. Your good fight is far more uphill than you seem to think it is.
Don’t be so self-involved. Try visit China for once and you will get sick of the word “China”, it’s literally in everything there :), like communist party’s intelligence service :)
The thing is we are not talking about visiting countries. We are talking about the virtual World Wide Web.
It does make it fun to stir the pot
I mean, we did invent this cursed network. It’s our job to ruin it.
One day, we will shitpost our way to freedom
Haha. Like anyone lives outside the US
I completely understand the sentiment.
I also understand the sentiment that the internet is effectively a US invention dating back at least to ARPAnet.
I guess what I’m suggesting is: can’t we all just get along? At least we can now all communicate with each other.
The World Wide Web is not an American invention. Who invented what is completely irrelevant in this context anyway though.
We are trying to get along. We are already speaking English, which is a massive step in your direction. US commenters and posters don’t even bother to convert to kilometres or something. Or the worst: write about something that happened in AK as if everyone knows postal shortages of the US.
If it makes it any better youre more likely to get an American who can convert Miles into Leagues before they even think about kilometers. We dont really use metric for anything, unless youre military or something.
The crazy irony is that those from outside the US probably know way more than those in the US, in terms of stories about Alaska.
No hate here. There will be ups and downs.
At the end of the day, I’m happy to communicate with you.
Don’t ever talk about kilometres in here. Are you trying to spark an international incident?
FWIW ich habe Deustch gelernt. Aber ich habe die meistens vergessen 😔
Dein Deutsch klingt richtig gut 😄
Danke schon 🙃
I’m from Australia and don’t mind engagement with the (mostly) US content.
Let’s face it, the US election is the most interesting event on the planet anyway.
I just wish Americans would have a little self awareness when engaging in foreign content.
I was in a comment thread for a video on a report by the ABC about ADEs. Now I will give Americans the benefit of the doubt, we both have ABC networks, but ours clearly says “Australia”, the news presenter has a Australian accent, and was talking about the Australian minimum wage, there were references to Centrelink and the Australian government repeatedly. If you watched the video and couldn’t tell me what country the video was about, you need to go back to primary school, your media comprehension level is dysfunctional .
I mentioned a clarifying point in the the comments about ADE being different from DES and giving numbers for each (you don’t need to know anything about these acronyms), and someone starts arguing with me that when they were in the disability program they got xyz and they didn’t have to do any of this. I replied saying that these processes have been unchanged for 20 years, I don’t know how they’re getting what they’re getting, they have a unique case. They come back telling me everyone gets that, that’s how it is, I need to do my research before I make stuff up. I explain that I work in the sector, I’m looking at the cases software, if they are indeed getting those services through that program, they are the only one of 40,000 people in the program getting that, because that’s not how the service works. They tell me 15 million people people use the program. I finally realise what’s happening. “there are only 25 million people people in Australia…you’re a lost American aren’t you?” and sure enough ,they politely reply with “oh yeah, I’m not Australian so I don’t know, maybe it’s different over there”.
And I just can’t with that level of American stupidity.
You can came into an Australian forum and assumed I wasn’t Australian, assumed I wasn’t talking about Australia, then came to the conclusion that “maybe it’s different over there” when I had explicitly just informed you that ,yes, the law is different here.
Now many times could I have used the acronym DES before the American thought to themselves “maybe this person isn’t talking about SSDI”.
And this is just the example from the last hour. I end up in a lot of international PD sessions for my work, and something like this is a daily occurrence, only with the Americans.
Canada, you are sadly not excused from this, nor sure why but it’s always "okay, where are we all from? “Australia” “Belgium” “Brazil” “Indonesia” “Fort Freedom” “Edmonton”
Those are cities and provinces, clearly the rest of us are doing countries, some of us are big enough that we could name states if we wanted to, but we’re being polite, you’ve got 50 (10+3 🇨🇦 ) of them and we didn’t memorise a silly song in school to learn your states.
The fact that I know how many states the US has and how many provinces and tertories Canada has, but an American would be stabbing in the dark to guess how many states and territories Australia has, even though our biggest state is 3x bigger than Texas and Australia as a whole is a comparable landmass to the contiguous 48.
Glad everyone else is enjoying the show at least. Half of us here are terrified we’re about to lose the country to maniacal egotists with a penchant for a bit of racism and monarchy.
oh god, no
I find a squirrel climbing a tree a more interesting event
Not to worry, I’m sure that there are websites around that cater to your squirrel tastes
also one of the most concerning ones
My favorite answer when internet Nazis asked “How could the Nazis have won?” used to be “Be America.”
It’s not as funny anymore. They listened.
I hear you and am guilty of it myself. I feel like it’s due to the anonymous nature of the internet. I think everyone immediately falls into the category of “peer” before putting a touch more thought into who the actual person (bot/ai) is that wrote the reply. Add that to the fact that most Americans see themselves (as a country) as the king of the world.
Maybe you can try typing with an accent, but I think that’d probably just be seen as a racist American.
This is why:
The US has more allocated IPv4 addresses and more users per allocated IPv4 address than any other country, by wide margins - and IPv6 adoption is not that widespread yet. It is entirely rational to assume that an English-speaking person on the Internet is from the US, given no other information.
That would be 3 addresses per US citizen. You have some whales like MS in there, just because your companies can grow dangerously big.
Nope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users
Strangely enough English is spoken in countries other than the US and even more use it as a lingua franca.
It is interesting you think IPv6 is not widespreaad https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
Of course English is spoken in other countries, and other countries have high numbers of internet users, but it does not follow that English is a commonly used language for internet users in other countries. Most Chinese are probably speaking Chinese, most Indians are probably speaking Hindi.
The IPv6 graph you linked shows that adoption is still less than 50%, and I’m not clear on their methodology… does “users that access Google” mean users with Google accounts? or individual users that use google.com? or does it include all of their cloud services? do web servers linking content from Google Ads count? does this data represent mostly end users, or also infrastructure connections?
When non-native English speakers are navigating in a non-national internet setting we use English. I have gathered from the many American comments in this thread, that that fact is apparently incredibly difficult for Americans to gauge. Nevertheless, it is a fact.
2016 is a little far, isn’t it?
I would love to see a more recent source if you have one.
Regardless, possession of IP addresses doesn’t change all that much. In the early days a company could buy an entire Class A (1.X.X.X) address space comprising 16million+ addresses for their private use. There are still many companies holding large blocks of addresses, and most of those companies are in the US, and they don’t just give up those addresses.
The point being, there’s significant resistance to redistributing addresses once they’ve been allocated. They don’t change hands terribly often (and keep in mind we’re talking about actual internet addresses, not local network addresses that are being dynamically assigned and NATed across router domains).
No, they highlight some problems with IP4: Bad distribution of IP4 ranges and bad usage of those ranges. So the graphs show the US has way too much IP actresses, some under used/unused and some overused. The blog post they are from is pretty clear about this.
These graphs do not give an indication of how many users per country there are. There are in fact statistics on that which expectedly show China and India on top. These however do not take into account that social media use way more popular in the U.S. for now.
The closest stat may be Reddit users by country which seems to indicate that about every 2nd user is from the US. (Not sure if Russian/Chinese bot accounts also count towards these though).
These graphs do not give an indication of how many users per country there are. There are in fact statistics on that which expectedly show China and India on top.
Well sure, but people from those countries are far less likely to be speaking English, which is why I said:
It is entirely rational to assume that an English-speaking person on the Internet is from the US, given no other information.
The prevalence of internet use in countries with primary languages other than English has no bearing on this statement.
The point of using the IP address statistics is to show that the vast majority of websites on the Internet were created in the US for the US market, and that is still true today.
On a side note, the distribution of addresses is unbalanced but it isn’t “bad”. It is a consequence of a system growing over time. Communications infrastructure cannot pop into existence everywhere all at once, and realistically not many people outside the US had any interest in the internet in 1983.
Sorry, are you trying to prove beyond a doubt that you are dishonest and statistics-illiterate?
which is why I said:
It is entirely rational to assume that an English-speaking person on the Internet is from the US, given no other information.
No, you wrote:
**The US has more allocated IPv4 addresses and more users per allocated IPv4 address than any other country, by wide margins **- and IPv6 adoption is not that widespread yet. It is entirely rational to assume that an English-speaking person on the Internet is from the US, given no other information.
So your assumption is based on a gross misinterpretation of the statistics you presented. Your incorrect interpretation of the graphs would put US participation at about 99,99%, which is obviously ridiculous.
Also according to Wikipedia the percentage of English speakers located in the US is lower that 20%. Does this mean that only 1 in 5 users is from the US?
The point of using the IP address statistics is to show that the vast majority of websites on the Internet were created in the US for the US market, and that is still true today.
That’s not at all what these graphs show though. While I agree that most websites might be US targeted towards the US calling that ‘vast’ is bit of a stretch.
… and realistically not many people outside the US had any interest in the internet in 1983.
I gather you’ve not been around then. Almost none had any interest in “the internet” until the mid 90s - this includes the US. Partly because what you refer to as “the internet” was called WWW back then and started only 1989. People had been very anal about this until about 2005 - I guess you haven’t been around then either.
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