[HN Gopher] 37% of the world's population have still never used ...
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37% of the world's population have still never used the internet
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 157 points
Date : 2021-12-26 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.itu.int)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.itu.int)
| vvoaterr wrote:
| Well don't tell Facebook, those greedy bastards. They'd probably
| provide the people in those countries with Facebook-only
| smartphones, or Facebook-only Internet connections, or something
| else horrible and dystopian like that.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| I think people go way too hard on these Facebook-sponsored
| internet deals.
|
| Like, yeah, they help build Facebook's brand and place it in a
| position of market dominance... but they're doing that by
| providing low-cost internet to vast populations that otherwise
| couldn't afford it.
|
| There are millions of people that can talk to their relatives
| and have better access to government services and communicate
| with people they've never met, that would still be cut off if
| not for Facebook.
| sofixa wrote:
| But it literally results in genocides (Rohingya) because
| those people aren't technically literate and Facebook can't
| be bothered to hide moderators for exotic (non-english)
| languages.
|
| The benefits are great, but it's not among the things that
| should be done by a for profit company, let alone one that
| lives on "engagement".
| cyberlurker wrote:
| The key point is moderation is a requirement if they are
| going to offer these services in new places. Hire locals
| that speak the language to remove problematic content or
| don't do this at all.
|
| I don't think being technically literate has anything to do
| with it. We in the developed world are just as susceptible
| to misinformation.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > but they're doing that by providing low-cost internet to
| vast populations that otherwise couldn't afford it.
|
| This is a tad misleading. Your sentence implies they are
| given access to 'the internet', but in reality it's a select
| list of Facebook-approved sites that are slimmed down.
| Obviously, this sets a bad precedent and is anti-competitive
| (other social media platforms on Internet.org, etc.). This is
| far from the internet: this is a locked-down Facebook-
| controlled vision of what _they 'd_ like the internet to be.
| iszomer wrote:
| If I could give an analogy: if facebook is the hammer,
| everything would look like a nail and we (in a civilized
| society) would know the difference whereas people new to such
| platform may not.
|
| The UN may be the arbiter of global politics but what they
| might be exempting are people whom are part of the "opt out"
| crowd or, would rather not have to explicitly opt out of such
| (free) services.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > They'd probably provide the people in those countries with
| Facebook-only smartphones, or Facebook-only Internet
| connections, or something else horrible and dystopian like
| that.
|
| Have you heard about internet.org[0]?
|
| [0]:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| (there are so many articles on what's wrong with it / public
| outcry, I'm just going to link the search results.)
| wackro wrote:
| The problem with getting the remaining communities connected is
| that there are no AOL CDs left, and even if more could be
| supplied, devices tend not to have CD drives.
| dreyfan wrote:
| That's a lot of people who haven't had the opportunity to invest
| in bitcoin, defi, or nfts!
| vmception wrote:
| Or use any SaaS tool that solves problems they dont currently
| have
| ssss11 wrote:
| Or tell Google, Facebook and Amazon everything about themselves
| for free!!
| kingcharles wrote:
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Even after all these years using the internet, it still
| manages to make me to say 'whathefuck' once in a while.
| spiderice wrote:
| That made me jealous of the 37%
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Does that mean the Eternal September[1] is almost over?
|
| We're about at what, September 20th or so? Maybe later in the
| month if we account for people too young to use the internet, or
| unable to do so for some reason.
|
| Or maybe it has already ended, if we define it as a ratio of new
| internet users joining per month compared to the existing user
| base [2].
|
| Question: What will be the effect of the majority of internet
| users being EXPERIENCED internet users, increasingly so over
| time, compared to the last 10-20 years where a higher proportion
| has been new, inexperienced users?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
|
| [2] "Whereas the regular September student influx would quickly
| settle down, the influx of new users from AOL did not end and
| Usenet's existing culture did not have the capacity to integrate
| the sheer number of new users" (from [1])
| vlovich123 wrote:
| It's about the size of the network, not the size of the
| Internet. There are many community networks that run atop the
| Internet. Each one will have an eternal September if they move
| from niche to popularity and have their culture changed. In
| fact this phenomenon isn't even new to the Internet. As
| companies or countries grow many bemoan about how "the
| organization just isn't what it used to be" while ignoring that
| this is kind of the "success" state where others are coming in
| and contributing their own piece of it.
| kbenson wrote:
| The whole idea of a culture being a static thing that
| shouldn't change has always seemed rather shortsighted to me.
| What people are complaining about is that it's changing fast
| enough for them to notice before they've become crotchety old
| people (who always complain about the youth...). People act
| like cultural identity is so tied to these traditions that if
| you took their grandpatenys and introduced them to their own
| ancestors from 10 generations back that all their traditions
| would be the same. My guess is that they would both be aghast
| at what each other does, for different reasons.
|
| The internet is just a continuation of this, in myriad
| different subgroups with their own norms, and like everyone
| else, they don't like change (but usually only when it
| inconveniences or is easily extrapolated to situations they
| see to do with themselves).
| acover wrote:
| Internet culture has changed permanently.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This statement of yours will be complete if someone weighs in
| to disagree, attack you and finishes by flagging your
| comment.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Once we're done with that, we can move on to the real
| substance and start arguing about which one of us is more
| like Hitler.
| makk wrote:
| And then let the algorithms amplify the most infuriating
| of those arguments.
| id wrote:
| It will continue to change, as all things tend to do.
| tester756 wrote:
| How many great hackers we're losing, damn.
| Zababa wrote:
| We're not losing anyone. We may not be getting them, but that's
| not the same thing.
| westcort wrote:
| Frequent exposures to infrequent events tend not to occur even
| once in 37% of populations. The ratio is the same as 1/e. I
| wonder if that is what is going on here?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| How much of that 37% is young children? Toddlers or infants?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assumed kids started using internet at 2 these days, based on
| my anecdotal data, and assuming apps like Khan Academy Kids and
| PBS Kids count. Or, unfortunately, YouTube.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| How much of that population is seniors who've decided they
| don't get it or don't know about it?
|
| Heck, how much if this population is imprisoned or
| incapacitated?
| [deleted]
| notimetorelax wrote:
| Around 20% judging by this data:
| https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Consistent with this line from the article:
|
| > On average, 71 per cent of the world's population aged
| 15-24 is using the Internet, compared with 57 per cent of all
| other age groups. This generational gap is reflected across
| all regions. It is most pronounced in the LDCs, where 34 per
| cent of young people are connected, compared with only 22 per
| cent of the rest of the population.
|
| LDCs : Least Developed Countries
| [deleted]
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| AGES 0-17 IN THE UNITED STATES
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| Under 5 years old they should be about 8.5% (678 million):
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/under-5-population?countr...
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'd love to see some comparisons on rates of mental illness in
| these no net places vs the wealthy west.
| waterlaw wrote:
| Honestly been struggling with mental illness and think the
| majority of it has come from internet use.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Do not take internet advice seriously.
|
| But they do have no internet retreats you can try. You can
| also just leave your phone at home and ride an Amtrak for 3
| days.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| Ignorance is bliss.
| RGamma wrote:
| Except if you live in the third world. Then it's a curse.
| simplestats wrote:
| The point is, whatever is happening, is shockingly bad.
| Please accept our cookies and click on 'read more' to load
| more ads and outrageous facts.
| notahacker wrote:
| _At least the poor, the illiterate and North Koreans don 't
| have to deal with the horror of ad retargeting and
| listicles_ is the most HN perspective ever!
| frontman1988 wrote:
| North Sentinelese seem pretty content though
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Is that really that bad though? Internet should be a tool and not
| an addiction.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| You are free to leave the internet.
|
| But most people who did not used the internet, probably had
| other reasons for not being online, yet.
|
| So why not give them a chance to explore the internet as a tool
| and not addiction?
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Maybe for the better? The internet hasn't been the positive life
| force many in the global south have needed. WhatsApp rumors,
| TikTok, crypto scams... there's nobody warning them about all
| these things.
| leovailati wrote:
| People tend to emphasize the negatives, like you mentioned, but
| WhatsApp has revolutionized communication in the low-income
| country I came from. And I think ultimately creating a net
| benefit for society (even though the conspiracy theories are
| really bad). Calling/texting using the cellular networks is
| still pretty expensive, so a lot of mom-and-pop shops conduct a
| significant portion of their business over WhatsApp (for a
| fraction of the cost of an equivalent 1-800 number).
| kingcharles wrote:
| TikTok always get a lot of negativity because it's a cheap,
| easy joke to throw out there. Even I am guilty of abusing it
| this way. If you open a new account you get a lot of retarded
| videos, but if you stay for a while and let the blackbox
| algorithm work its magic then you can find some incredibly
| insightful videos, especially around topics of neurodivergence,
| mental health and gender/sexual diversity.
| yosito wrote:
| > The internet hasn't been the positive life force many in the
| global south have needed
|
| As someone who's spent a lot of time in the global south and
| met a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on the internet,
| I'm curious what evidence you have to back up your claim.
| vanusa wrote:
| The commenter made a perfectly reasonable observation,
| actually, which could apply just as well to any sweeping
| modernization (for example the advent of mass-scale global
| trade, the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe, or
| even colonialism). Each of these transformations have created
| winners and losers within the affected countries, and a heck
| of a lot of social churn to boot. It's pretty superficial to
| just say "net overall benefit, nevermind the losers" any of
| these cases.
|
| So I'd say the onus is on _you_ to provide comprehensive data
| to support your sweeping claim that the number of losers has
| been apparently negligible in the countries (including all
| factors, not just economic). And that 's _data_ , not your
| pile of subjective observations from the biased selection of
| people you met, here and there.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Every technical development has its social downsides"
| isn't a very deep or original observation.
| vanusa wrote:
| That's the whole point - it's kind of obvious actually.
|
| Yet the commenter above was treating like a bold
| proposition that needs mounts of evidence to support.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The internet has made a lot of things more convenient
| (sending mail, ordering goods and services for example) but
| there were solutions to these problems before (postal mail,
| catalogs, phone/mail order, etc).
|
| The new stuff (social media in particular, and the
| instantaneous, always-connected nature of things in general,
| and the privacy-invading tendencies of online providers) is
| what we haven't figured out yet, and where most of the
| negative effect is coming from.
| yosito wrote:
| > there were solutions to these problems before
|
| Are you talking about the global south?
| jarenmf wrote:
| As someone coming from a failed state, the Internet is probably
| the recent invention with most tangible positive impact on
| people's lives. Even with Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, ... etc
| the pros hugely outweigh the cons.
| Guest42 wrote:
| True, I feel like removing 90 percent of my non-work internet
| usage would be very helpful.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Try quitting social networks and reading more on educational
| sites such as Wikipedia. There is a lot of amazing things out
| there.
|
| One does not have to be dragged into the "OUTRAGE OF THE
| DAY!" mud that is Twitter or Facebook.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| 31% of the world's adults are 'unbanked' and rely on cash and
| dark credit. In the 1970's a similar amount lacked electricity.
| It's global ways of living are remarkably diverse, and I for one
| hope they stay that way. Homogeneous is bad for our species.
| keewee7 wrote:
| I want to know which countries had the biggest rise in laptop and
| desktop computer users.
|
| In many 3rd world countries people only use the Internet to
| access Facebook and WhatsApp on their smartphones.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| What hellishness. Hope the world gets it shit together to end
| such immiseration someday.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| vbezhenar wrote:
| In my country Instagram is nightmaringly popular. I hate it,
| but I'm forced to use it, because more and more businesses have
| their Instagram account as their webpage with prices, contacts,
| etc. It seems ridiculous. UX is so terrible. It's not indexed
| by Google. I can understand when some girl publishes her
| selfies, probably Instagram is good for that, but not for
| business web presence.
| sweetheart wrote:
| It's clearly fulfilling something important for the
| businesses.
| indigochill wrote:
| The "developer" experience is pretty great compared to the
| alternative, though. If you can set up your corporate
| presence on a social media platform that means you're paying
| nothing for (and not dealing with the hassle of) hosting or
| domain name registration or even email (if you only
| communicate via your platform of choice). Sure, you're a
| slave to Instagram, but -practically- that doesn't matter to
| most businesses that choose this path.
|
| The only way to break this I can imagine would be for someone
| to provide a pipeline that seamlessly automates the domain
| name registration and hosting for these businesses (similar
| to how Let's Encrypt popularized HTTPS by reducing the
| technical hoops to jump through). It would probably have to
| be funded similarly to Let's Encrypt as well, because in
| countries where Instagram is the de facto business platform,
| they're certainly not going to pay for this service.
| sofixa wrote:
| Wix, Squarespace already do this pretty well, and some
| alternatives like WordPress.com have free hosting and
| (sub)domain.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The UX might not be great, but at least it establishes a
| floor for how bad the company's web presence will be. I can't
| count the number of supposed company websites I've
| encountered that are totally broken, or replaced by a parked
| domain because they probably haven't paid their bills for 10
| years, or literally using a flash embed that browsers don't
| support any more, etc. I'd honestly rather see the social
| media profile. It's unlikely to be broken and it's more
| likely to be up to date.
| londons_explore wrote:
| This is key. For small businesses, their web presence must
| require no ongoing costs, be in the same walled garden that
| the users look in, and no expertise to set up or edit.
|
| Small businesses that have paid a web developer to make
| them a website rarely get a good return on their
| investment.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > Small businesses that have paid a web developer to make
| them a website rarely get a good return on their
| investment.
|
| What if they make their own website? It's relatively easy
| these days, depending on what you want to do (and if it
| isn't, there are packages to help!).
| type0 wrote:
| Let's say a barista have to update the instagram account
| their cafeteria, requiring them to update a WP site is
| millions more effort taxing on the employee and means
| they won't do it (at least not on their private phone as
| it's expected). Must be one of the reasons I often see
| those overly huge signs "follow us on instagram" so
| often.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I've been in this position myself (as someone with an
| engineering background!!), and it's a matter of effort
| vs. return.
|
| Far fewer customers care about a website than an active
| social media profile, and the effort required to maintain
| them, secure them and set them up is orders of magnitude
| higher.
|
| If you're a growing small business, there are typically
| much better ways to invest your time.
| frereubu wrote:
| Have to admit, my first thought was "lucky them".
| INTPenis wrote:
| Seems to me that 37% could easily encompass small children, old
| people, tribes, prisoners and some living under oppressive
| regimes. So in other words, pretty much everyone uses the
| internet.
| jfax wrote:
| Don't know why we should casually dismiss these people? Small
| children in developed countries use the internet. Old and
| tribes people deserve access to knowledge. And prisoners/those
| under oppressive regimes.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I'm not saying this number won't grow. It will absolutely
| grow, if only because we will all get older.
|
| But it's likely that the number is relatively maxed out,
| which is kinda interesting. Everyone who can uses the
| internet.
|
| And among those who can't are children who will soon use it,
| rural people who might soon use it and oppressed people who
| might experience a revolution, migration or whatever reason
| to then use the internet.
| waterlaw wrote:
| The internet has a lot of benefits.
|
| My issues aren't with the internet, but advancements made with
| social media.
|
| The addictive nature of many platforms. The hivemind and lack of
| free thought I've noticed in many avenues of the internet.
|
| Having upvotes vs downvotes or likes vs dislikes encourages
| conformity. It encourages group think.
|
| This group think is ultimately what's driving me off the larger
| platforms on the internet and away from social media in general.
| rconti wrote:
| Isn't that basically how society works? Social pressure
| encourages groupthink.
| btmiller wrote:
| Access to audiences beyond a handful in size are much rarer
| than what you can easily find online.
| loceng wrote:
| Peter Wang in the recent Lex Fridman interview -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0-SXS6zdEQ - gave me names for
| concepts I'd been noticing but couldn't quite put my finger on,
| essentially the pitfalls and externalized costs of "homogeneous
| demand" that's created via ads and algorithms - driving
| consumerism through making economy of scale easier to reach by
| generating more buyers at same time, and similarly leads to
| ideology or group think as you mention.
| tqi wrote:
| What do you do to avoid groupthink outside of larger platforms?
| makk wrote:
| Stay away from social media in general, is what they said.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Read other groupthink. Pick a topic and read multiple views.
| Even horrible ones. Then you can understand, synthesize, and
| rebut views.
| lettergram wrote:
| It may be controversial but I believe 3 things can be done:
|
| 1. Government grants for open source alternative development.
| Aka fed oversee and what not can apply for grants.
|
| 2. Label all social media and phones common carriers.
|
| 3. Require common carriers to be subject to FOIA and audits
| by citizens. This would include source code. They can still
| profit from being centralized for the time being, because of
| networking effects that likely won't change.
|
| My final thought is that social media shouldn't be tied to
| ones public identity.
| Retric wrote:
| The Overton window is a form of group think that's
| pervasive across what people think of as the political
| spectrum. Outsider views isn't simply pro and anti X, or
| even flat earth whack jobs it's the full realm of
| possibilities.
|
| It's easy to think of say communism in reference to the
| horrors of recent history, but it showed up before the US
| civil war. In the context of slavery and the often stated
| "need" to compensate people who owned slaves before freeing
| them it suddenly seems very different. Which just
| demonstrates how ideologies are shaped by the time period.
| clavicat wrote:
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| I'd love to see a study comparing the attention spans, anxiety
| level, and overall mental health of that 37% relative to the
| other 63%. They might be slightly less informed, but I'd bet
| significantly healthier (mentally).
| framecowbird wrote:
| This would be a terrible study to try to ascertain the impact
| of the internet on mental health. You would be comparing two
| populations who are completely different in many many ways.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I know poor people getting into 200% APR loans because of not
| getting a job during COVID and no math knowledge for
| refinancing smartly. If you think the bottom 50% is not anxious
| all the time, you are lucky to live in the 1st world.
| drdeca wrote:
| While I can't imagine how this could be anything but a
| coincidence, but it still strikes me that this 37% is
| approximately 1/e .
| hickoryswindle wrote:
| mwattsun wrote:
| I hope someone has selected a control group to see how the
| internet and especially social media changes people
|
| My favorite example is how when missionaries contacted the Piraha
| people, there was a missionary who was a language expert to learn
| their language quickly to do Bible teachings. He postulated their
| language didn't have recursion, which caused quite a bit of
| debate with Noam Chomsky and others. My take away from learning
| about this is that the Piraha people didn't have a notion of past
| and future ("It's always been this way") and how they were
| totally transformed for the worse, in my opinion, by watching and
| seemingly becoming addicted to watching television
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Pirah%C3%A3
| [deleted]
| kazinator wrote:
| What is the definition of "internet" or "online" here?
|
| Suppose the definition includes the concept of "social networking
| application on your mobile device that works over the Internet
| even though you don't have a data plan due to a special
| arrangement".
|
| I would not count that as online.
|
| It's likely that more than 37% are offline according to a proper
| definition of online which means that you have a device with a
| data plan which lets you use whatever Internet-based applications
| you want and visit whatever websites you want.
|
| By the "visit whatever" criterion, entire nations are offline.
| All of China that doesn't have a foreign VPN is offline, and so
| that's about 1.4B right there.
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(page generated 2021-12-26 23:00 UTC)