Unfortunately this is about the first time, I'd (almost) disagree with you. If the US bans something on, or makes a law about, the internet it almost always affects the rest of the world. The only difference is the rest of the world has no say in the matter :(
Pretty much, but I think originally it didn't even have subreddits. What set it apart from digg was really the community and comments - the quality of which were much better than digg. Similarly to Lemmy it was originally much more tech related too.