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 is dein Schnitzel sonst gibt es keinen Nachtisch!

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.

SPRICH

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”.

Because there are many Germans on Lemmy.

• 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.

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.

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