While Americans hoarded toilet paper, hand sanitiser and masks, Russians withdrew $13.6 billion in cash from ATMs: Around 1 trillion rubles was taken out of ATMs and bank branches in Russia over past seven weeks...amount totaled more than was withdrawn in whole of 2019.

It makes sense, doesn't it?

a.) Although it's not >90% American like it used to be, Americans are still a comfortable plurality on Reddit. It hovers between 45-55% these days. I don't know what country you're from, but if it's in the Western hemisphere, Americans are going to dominate because you're on Reddit at the same time we're awake, and the other side of the world is either sleeping or getting read for work.

b.) We're the biggest English-speaking website on a website that's 99% in English. Language-specific subreddits like /r/de, /r/arabs, or /r/sweden don't interact all that much with the rest of Reddit.

c.) My country is still the most powerful and connected in the world by far. China's technically bigger and richer, but they're behind a national firewall that bans Reddit. Any event that happens anywhere in the world is going to be somehow comparable to something happening in America, or have some effect on America. On an English-speaking, plurality-American site where the most activity occurs at times when Americans are awake, which includes the afternoon or evening on in most of Europe, we'll never run out of things to talk about.

Realistically, any English-speaking social media platform is going to be dominated by Americans. If you want to discuss things that don't pertain to America, you need to balkanize. Create your own subreddits, Facebook groups, and group chats, use them exclusively, and issue a no-appeal insta-ban to anyone who types your language less-than-perfectly because they could be an American. It's great that we're trying to learn other languages, and we shouldn't be punished for that, but there's no avoiding the fact that we'll never fail to make everything about Trump and our particular region's culture and economic situation, even if we try not to. Every non-English-speaking country needs its own version of Vkontatke, or to just dominate a platform that isn't very popular in America the way India and Brazil have done with Whatsapp.

/r/worldnews Thread Parent Link - newsweek.com