I would guess because simply historically, we always were very private people. This was generally increased with the experiences during the second world war and after in East Germany, where there was widespread government spying and people spying on each other. Thus, we have lots of groups that are engaged with activism regarding privacy, and it's present in the collective consciousness.

Reddit is an advertising shithole and Lemmy is the more private/free alternative, so it's more likely more Germans come here.

Also in general, the internet lends itself for less social people, which I'd also characterize Germans to have a tendency for.

Germans invented the printing press. They seem always at the front of decentralized media distribution technology lol.

Germans were more vassalized post-WW2 and have therefore a higher adoption of english than e.g, the french. Another consequence of the marshal plan is that yankee's wanted Germany as a consumer market and hence german culture is more closely tied to yankee culture than other countries, a lot of our shows, books, movies, music etc. are translations from english or not even translated in some cases. So there is more in common to talk about. Add to that there are a lot more germans than finns or dutch and I think it makes sense that german is the most endemic non-english language on lemmy.

I want to know what the Spanish and French speaking internet users do instead. I’m Swedish and we definitely have a big presence on Reddit (and probably fediverse) relative to our population. So looks like another North vs South difference.

We have nothing elese do do because we never work and have to much money. 

How many germans do you need to change a lightbulb?

One. We are efficient and have no humour.

Wasn't also /r/ich_iel a big part of the reddit exodus at one point?

It's pretty much just that there are a lot of Germans.

The population of Germany is about 80 million.

All else being equal, there are 16 times more Germans online than us finns, for example.

Next to the USs 300 million people, that's still one German about every 5 people. Add to that that Germans are definitely online more than americans, and yeah...

A lot of Germans.

Shout out to dach und ich_iel for keeping me very confused and slightly glad I took German in highschool!

Germans are everywhere. Basically everywhere you go as a tourist, it's loud Americans and slightly less loud Germans using the Americans for cover to be lounder than they would normally be.

I don’t know, but I think more Germans per capita are fluent in English than French, Spanish, or Latino people are, and maybe that has something to do with it.

We (French speaking peoples) have several instances, the one I’m writing from is probably the most active on lemmy, the others are on piefed.

I’d say if you see a lot of them it’s probably because of your language settings or because of those German instance settings.

I had to block several of their communities as I don’t have German selected in my languages but they still show on all (and in German, not English posts hosted on a German instance), so they were just badly setup. Maybe it changed tho, I haven’t updated my blacklist in a while.

i for one welcome our new German overlords.

wait.. not that... :) but seriously 2 good german friends who are truly wonderful people.

HANS, GET ZE SPAMWERFER!

Also i think it’s because of germans having a bigger notion of data protection and that huge corporations are bad, which is why a lot more people are changing from reddit to fediverse.
in my personal experience, i can only compare it to spanish people, and i definitely see a lot more concern in german people.

another reason might be economic wealth, having the strongest currency next to the pound in the 80s and 90s, this could mean that early adoption of PCs and dial-up was more spread than in other European countries because of the relative cost difference of equipment. This early adoption could also mean that more people got to know the ‘old web’ and are more appreciative of non-standardised web content.
it’s only hypothesises, i have no data to support it (yet)

The real question is why are there so many Americans here.

Ive been wondering about that myself.

I think it was the same with reddit. Maybe these types of "forums" are just popular among Germans. But I also feel like on average Germans have a higher tendency towards english content than the rest of Europe. Especially France and eastern Europe are notoriously monolingual. I guess there are probably a lot of dutch or belgian people here (relatively speaking), but those countries are smaller so there arent many in absolute numbers.

good question

Not only in lemmy. They are all over the fediverse

Does it make the French and Polish nervous?