Russia and the Internet
According to New Media Review, in the second quarter of 2006 only 19% of Russia's adult population ever accessed the internet, and of those only 6% accessed it every day during the quarter. Less than 3% of those using the Internet worldwide are Russians, roughly equal to Russia's share of the world population. Only a puny $600 million in sales was generated by the Russian internet in 2004, and 80% of the revenue was collected in C.O.D. transactions (Russians have virtually no access to credit). 50% of the sales took place in Moscow.
This shows that the hope of the Internet somehow serving as a bulwark against dictatorship in Russia is farfetched, and demonstrates how paranoid the Kremlin is in feeling it needs to prosecute those who write on it.
Labels:
economics,
neo-soviet failure,
russia
1 comment:
UGLY:
Some day, when you have nothing better to do, you really must learn how to read.
The whole point of the post is to illuminate the figures you quote which are tossed about by russophile nutjobs all the time and the useless goo they are.
The definition of "user" for purposes of "40 million users in 2006" includes anyone who comes into contact with the Internet for a second. When you look at actual regular users, as the article clearly shows, you find that virtually nobody is doing it (a pathetic 6% of Russians in the second quarter of 2006) and that virtually all of them are in Moscow (accounting for half the internet commerce).
In the second quarter of 2006, 94% of Russians had no regular contact with the Internet. It was totally irrelevant to their lives. Of the tiny 6% who did, virtually none had broadband and all were reading an Internet subject to SORM and the arrest of bloggers like Rakhmankov and Zelenyak.
It's really quite pathetic that you pay so much attention to detail when you encounter facts you don't like, and totally ignore detail when you find a fact you do. It's the sign of a very sloppy, lazy mind, the kind easily led astray by a propagandist, the sort of slop you are blindly repeating as your country is utterly destroyed by its people.
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