Re:China Blocks WhatsApp
by kbart on Tuesday September 26, 2017 @01:42AM
(#15336469)
Russia has had an unrestricted Internet access until recently. I still don't see booming tech sector (or actually, any) there or people revolting against authoritarian government. There's language and cultural barrier that must be taken into account -- free access to information won't do much if people still prefer their information and social bubbles and actively maintain them. Russians also have copy-cat versions of many western sites/services that are more popular than original ones, even though they can access these too.
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Re:China Blocks WhatsApp
by MichaelMoser123 on Tuesday September 26, 2017 @01:48AM
(#15336493)
What about Yandex and vk?
That's what I meant by writing: "Russians also have copy-cat versions of many western sites/services that are more popular than original ones". vk == Facebook, Yandex == Google.
C'mon. Yandex is older than Google. It's short-sighted and actually rather arrogant to see those platforms like "look at them, how cute, they're playing information society like the grown-ups!".
"look at them, how cute, they're playing information society like the grown-ups!"
Don't put words in my mouth, I've never said something like that. I just wanted to highlight the fact that most people still prefer local services, either due to language barrier or social/information bubbles to disprove the claim that China would somehow be magically different if there was no Great Firewall.
And by having that, they are better off than Europeans, who have nothing. Instead, they add their weight to the network effects of US services.