Fediverse

Our data centers and backbone internet/Tier 1 internet providers are basically the best in the world. The US Department of Energy maintains a network with 46 Tbit/s connections between its labs.

no

a mature infrastructure.. redundant fiber optic/satellite connectivity to Tier 1 providers, power generation and reliability, etc.

basic shit

I worked with and still know people living in Africa, let me tell you, if you think you have bad, expensive internet, go back a decade or two. The people I know work in tech companies or are otherwise somewhat affluent and even they struggle getting a stable internet connection to have a video call. An office building of an ex-coworker had a single 20Mbit line with multiple companies inside.
The people I know have to make due with 1-2Mbit home lines. The cell connections are better, but only marginally.

A former employer even worked with the governments of some African countries and they couldn't get a datacenter up and running. People were stealing the bricks and wires! The government was trying to move their infrastructure away from the previous colonizers and back home, but their own countrymen and women didn't understand the importance.

Also, it's not only internet infrastructure, but infrastructure in general is messed up there. South Africa is one of the wealthiest countries in Africa and has (had?) to content with rolling blackouts for years! Service operators struggle to keep their services running and have to move them abroad, which of course isn't great.

The reasons are diverse, but a large factor by far is corruption. Physical colonization with non-native governments are a thing of the past. What's trendy now is economic and legal colonization. Pay off as many people as possible to make laws (and also keep it that way) allowing all the riches (labor and resources) to be extracted from the country at laughable prices - which end up in the pockets of the wealthy and corrupt. Anybody who doesn't fall in line is merc'ed.
Boeing killed off a whistleblower or two and the government exiled another? That's cute! Politicians get shot while campaigning for a better future. The press isn't free, and fair voting circumstances are a dream. Controlling parties can own the voting booths and reward voters in broad daylight for checking the "right" box.

Anyway, while I do support the thought behind asking the question, IMO the only ways to expand the fediverse into ex-colonies are:

• making the fediverse so popular that it's "so hot right now" and the trend swaps over
• paying a trusted party to set up a server there and pay for everything (including bribes) to have a stable connection, then tell as many locals as possible
• going there, doing it yourself, teaching about it, and handing over the reigns to somebody there with the same vision and passion

That's of course if the circumstances are right for people there to even want it. Many foreigners have "gone down there" to "show 'em how it's done" without understanding zilch about their culture, needs, wants, and modus operandi. Only to leave a "white elephant" behind.

Anti Commercial-AI license

Regarding specifically Brazil, I can answer that.

The most used pieces of Fediverse software are for microblogging (Mastodon, Misskey) and forum discussion (Lemmy). But when you look at the statistics for usage of social media platforms in Brazil, here's what it shows:

YouTube (89%), Instagram (85%), Facebook (84%), TikTok (49%), Pinterest (37%), Twitter (36%), Linkedin (35%), Snapchat (15%), Twitch (9%), Reddit (6%), Tumblr (5%), Hello (3%), Flickr (2%), Quora (2%), WeChat (2%), MeWe (1%), others (7%).

Neither microblogging nor forum discussion are popular in Brazil; the top contenders are video services (YT, TT), and the Meta cancer tendrils (IG, FB) behaving as Orkut replacement goldfish. So the main Fediverse services are alternatives for things that, locally, are not overly common to begin with, when people have their "motherfucking caramel" doing funny shit they beeline for TT or FB.

Another factor that I think that reduces Fediverse usage in Brazil is Anglocentrism. Brazilians are mostly monolingual; the exceptions are typically 1) from a colonial background, or 2) highly educated, and only (2) applies here. For most people in Brazil, English content is the same as nothing, or as "the skwerlficashun! throovy! afdsjkfdsa!".

That backtracks into your OP. I believe that Fediverse success requires

• diversification of the platforms widely used and available in the Fediverse
• better ways to handle language that reduce the "I don't speak it so it's noise" issue

Even with that in mind my city has a Mastodon server. I often lurk there because I'm a verbose fuck, not suited for microblogging; but it's comfy.

Things you can do in finland: tango, fight with knives, computer stuff.

What I find quite annoying is how people created these monopolies.

50 years ago, there were 3 (arguably 4) American car companies—still a de facto oligopoly, but 3 is better than 1. The Japanese and VW added to it.

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Today we essentially have one search portal, Google; one social network site, Facebook; one video-hosting site, YouTube; and one micro-blogging site, Twitter/X.

If people spent perhaps 1/10th of their micro-blogging time on other sites, Twitter might not have been as attractive to Musk and his backers, but they chose ease over choice, and now they're wailing over what he's doing with it.

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I'm off-topic.

I mostly agree with your statement. Maybe Amazon likes the internet, but probably most others in big business in the US don't: it might account a bit for the shitty websites of many of them.

Cry about it