• @maynarkh@feddit.nl
    41•10 months ago

    I’m from another nation-oriented instance that has an outsized presence, right next to Duitsland.

    My guess is:

    • Germany is a big, populated country
    • People from DACH also gravitate towards feddit.de
    • The culture kinda gives itself to the project
    • The NL and the EU are the main funders of Lemmy
    • The government itself is embracing the Fediverse
      • @maynarkh@feddit.nl
        26•10 months ago

        German-speaking countries in Europe. Deutschland (Germany), Austria and of course the Confœderatio Helvetica (Switzerland).

      • Skua
        9•10 months ago

        It’s the country codes for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (Deutschland for the D, Confederation Helvetica for the CH). Those are the three countries with a majority of their people speaking German other than Liechtenstein, which is extremely small

        • @barsoap@lemm.ee
          4•10 months ago

          It also means roof and is reminiscent of Dachsprache. One of those unreasonably neat acronyms.

          And in particular it’s the vehicle registration codes, ISO 3166 for Austria is AT (hence also the TLD).

    • @nachtigall@feddit.deEnglish
      14•10 months ago

      I think one reason is the large number of German users on the Internet. With around 100 million speakers, German is the second most spoken native language in the West after English.

      According to the application texts, many users seem to come from various podcasts. We are also “endorsed” by one of the largest German-language subreddits on its front page (r/ich_iel). Our users have also started to watermark their memes, which occasionally attracts new users. Feddit also made it into an article in a popular IT magazine (heise).