Why are there so many german communities on Lemmy?

Dieser Faden ist nun Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Must be all the German people.

Because they can.

I can't read a single word of german but I'm glad to randomly stumble on a german post.

Makes the fediverse more pluralist.

Idk but I need to learn German. A goth German wife sounds pretty nice. She can sing Die Arbeiter von Wien to me.

German community was huge on reddit. There were also a lot of users that were unhappy with the biggest german subreddit and reddit in general.

I guess quite a lot jumped ship when reddit started banning third party apps.

On point!

It is possible to block all of the primarily foreign language communities, but the bad news is you have to do it one at a time. When I see posts from a community in a language I do not speak, I block it so it does not clutter my feed.

Usually they are entire instances and you can just block an instance.
- I have looked and not found that option.

To give a more serious answer:

Germans are a bit more privacy focused than most other nations (if you want to know how much read up on the google street view controversy). Germans tend to be much more aware how Meta/Google,etc. abuse their data (and while the average German won't care there are enough of them that you actually note it)
There is a very strong "antiITestablishment" subculture that is very active since the 80ies. The Chaos Computer Club and its congresses,etc. but also the recent trend toward digital sovereignty has increased the amount of people who see Reddit and (to a much much larger extent) Twitter in a critical light - and due to the close links of Mastodon to Lemmy that helps both.
German speaking people, especially in the,on Lemmy, overrepresented Tech field tend to understand English fairly well (but underestimate their ability to speak it themselves often). That enables them to consume English speaking content as well, not forcing them into other media formats that do cater more for smaller languages.
And let's face it: There are a freaking lot of German speaking people. Around 100 Million people speak German in Europe - and while that of course is nothing compared to other India or China it's the largest non-english language block in Europe. That gives one a large enough "crowd" to actually find an audience for a sub - while it's rather hard to get enough people for an Italian speaking niche sub it's far easier to do so if it's German speaking.
There are also some cultural issues at play - to quote an old German saying that says: "Three Germans meet - they found an association (Verein)". Germans tend to self-organise extremely proactively. Which is often tiresome, believe me. Additionally some Germans tend to find the Americocentrism on Reddit, but also to a lesser degree, on Lemmy, boring and at times nerve wrecking.
There is a big IT industry that is focused on mid size companies - some with a strong open source mindset.
Lastly the German main instance, Fediverse.org is operated by a pretty robust foundation who knows what it is doing. Which of course keeps the community more stable and hosts a lot of European (non German) subs as well.

Source: Am German, lived abroad for quite some time.

Yes, I am fully aware this question wasn't totally serious.

No, contrary to common believe we don't have to go to the basement to laugh. Germans go to the basement for sauerkraut and to watch German dungeon porn, Swiss to clean their bunkers and Austrians,well, I'd rather not talk about that.

Und nun iss dein Schnitzel sonst gibt es keinen Nachtisch!

"Three Germans meet - they found an association (Verein)".
This is especially funny because feddit.org actually is a verein.
- I know. But an Austrian one.
  One could say they are more German than the Germans, but.... well...that didn't work out well before...so we don't say that anymore I think.
Das Schnitzel is oder is nicht? Was denn nun?
- Verdammte Autokorrektur!
  Verdammte Grammatischeafdler!
  Verdammt!
some Germans tend to find the Americocentrism on Reddit, but also to a lesser degree, on Lemmy, boring and at times nerve wrecking.
Based. I concur and approve. Wish I could do the same and steer away from it all. Not easy, though :(
- Yeah. Personally I try to visit non-American subs for that quite often here. Australia, Canada,etc. provide different views and influences as well and are English speaking.
Wanted to comment with a few of these points but this comment is way better than anything I could've written. This is the right answer!
Funny story about the language ability. I had a German-native friend in college. He had moved to America 1 month prior and never lived in an English speaking country. He had a perfect English accent and was overall better than some of my native born friends. I thought he was making it up. As an American I honestly can't comprehend it, it's like someone doing a double backflip and earnestly thinking it's normal. And very bashful about his incredible language ability!
Recently I met a Dutch-native person traveling in the US for a week. He had a flawless Southern Californian accent, my friends and I didn't believe him, thought he was Californian. His language skills were literally better than most Americans.
I can say the same about many India-natives I've worked with as well. Not just language but communication skills in general. The different accents are gorgeous.
I think non-American education is generally superior.
Can you elaborate on the self organizing thing? I don’t think I have a strong intuition on what you mean.
- Germans have a tendency to associate in a formal association (called Verein). From sports clubs (often even the smallest rural villages have multiple), allotment plot gardening, hiking, environmental protection, neighbourhood based one, as parental associations, cars owners, professional ones to old folks and widows, etc. etc. These are all registered with the local court (e.V.), have a formal operations charter,etc.
  As people tend to be multiple clubs/associations there are far more club members than people in Germany. Germany holds the world record in that regard since 1945. (Personally I am a member of...12 I think. Maybe more. Car, School of the kiddos, sports, sports of the kiddos, a few very niche professional ones, environmental ones, a local food one,etc.)
  This tendency to formalize things also sometimes is visible online in terms of subcommunity formation.

Not to take all the credit, but a factor might be that I, as the top mod of the second largest German Subreddit, promoted Lemmy heavily to the point where the admins banned me "for breaking reddit".

That's some damn fine work, sir.
That's pretty funny and if I were in that German subreddit I would probably have migrated out of solidarity
Du machst das sehr gut. Ich bin stolz auf dich!
- Danke, das weiß ich zu schätzen 🙏
Everyday act of heroism. Thank you!!!!
Thank you for your service o7
Hubi🥰
- :D
you deserve a trophy 🏆 🥰
- I wouldn't go that far :D I just really enjoyed throwing a wrench into reddit's gears after they killed 3rd party apps.
How dare you, Sir
lol great job

I want to read the German language posts. Is there a translate button on Lemmy? I tried the "Select Language" button but nothing happened.

"Select language" is to mark the language you are using in your posts and comments. Don't know for what, maybe for others to filter stuff out?
The problem is, that a lot of the more memey communities are using Zangendeutsch, which is basically militantly and very literally translating English words into German. Translation tools will have a hard time translating those correctly
You'll have to read in German...
Firefox has a built in translator, and there are add-ons you can install if you want a different version. Won't work on image posts though

Because there are many Germans on Lemmy.

G U T E N T A G
Dabei bin ich nichmal Deutsch
Hallo
But what if a lot of them are Austrians in disguise!
That’s a bingo!
Yes but why specifically german? Is the founder german?
- Not sure what the core reason is, but Reddit also had a big German population.
  I guess Germans are rather privacy focused so they might have been disproportionately migrating during the reddit exodus.
- Two reasons, Germans are very privacy focused and at the same time pretty tech affine. Also, sprich Deutsch du Huso
- The guy who made Mastodon is German, so maybe that was a fediverse on-ramp.

Denn Lemmy ist sehr gut but not very good

Because Germans are more educated and has a higher level of consciousness than Americans

..and has more educationer, languagely.

They failed to take over the world using violence, so now they are secretly taking over peacefully using some open source code.

Prepare to be assimulated, resistance is futile.

Oh no! Gently places gun ground We fought the good fight. I surrender.

there are many germans on reddit
germans tend to be more privacy aware in my opinion
and I also think Germany has a large and very dedicated open source community.
then there are just many german speaking people. lemmy is popular in the west and together with austria and switzerland (and some other areas) you have almost 100 million native speakers.

We are legion for we are many?!

There are literally dozens of them.

A huge group moved from ich iel subreddit (meirl but almost like 196 in practice)... most german redditors were there. The main German instance was called feddit.de but the frontend and database got very messed up. The main admin was MIA so feddit.org was made instead.

feddit.org
That's a Zionist server
- oh, is it? 👀

.world is hosted on Dutch servers, and the Netherlands are adjacent to Germany?

interestingly, most commenters here don't seem to be on .world 🤔
- I'm only on world because lemm.ee got shut down for whatever reason
I thought it was Finland
- Well, that's compelling. Why not just lead with that?
- I MIGHT be misrembering. Shortly after Luigi Mangione was wrongly accused of having done nothing, admins said they would be removing any content that glorified violence and were required to do so under Dutch law.
Can confirm, I'm instinctively drawn to servers in my geographic proximity despite that being a completely opaque property of the internet like a moth to a flame

SPRICH

DU HURENSOHN

How often can that same question be asked without it being stupid?