> (which btw is a continent, not a country)

North America is a continent. America is absolutely a country. What do you mean?

There is no continent called America.

they are talking about the americas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas which is sometimes called america. (mostly in non english native countries i suspect)

No, certainly the USA (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States). The author is most likely Austrian or German and it is quite common to say "Amerika" for the USA there.

it is also equally common there to have an argument about that, just like on HN ;-)

i was referring to this btw: America" (which btw is a continent, not a country)

アメリカ (the romanization of America) is also how the country is referred to in Japanese. There are many languages (including English) that use America as the common name for the United States of America.

A notable exception, and where much of the disagreement comes from is Spanish. I generally try to follow the convention of the language I'm speaking.

No. In English, "America" refers to the country, "North America" and "South America" each refer to a continent and "the Americas" refers to the two continents.