Reprinted from Facebook (2018/02/15):
Revealed preferences: The language settings on Vkontakte social network throughout Ukraine.
Revealed Preference
This Post about Demographics,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for Random Notes on December 3, 2013
Translation: The 35 Cyber-Friends of Navalny
This Translation about Politics,
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was written by Moscow Exile for Russian Spectrum on August 9, 2013
35 CEO’s of Russian Internet companies have signed a public letter supporting Navalny in return for his promise to ensure accountability and the rule of law.
Navalny’s 35 Friends
Small businesses get involved in politics.
Thirty-five representatives of Internet businesses are to speak publicly in support of the candidate for post of Moscow mayor, Alexei Navalny. This is a precedent, as “equidistanced oligarch” businesses used not to openly try to support the opposition.
A group of 35 Internet entrepreneurs has launched a manifesto in support of Navalny. “Instead of voting from our hearts, we have made a socio-political contract”, they wrote. “Our support is not an act of charity. We expect the protection of the rule of law from Navalny, support for independent courts, and real accountability of public officials. For our part, we will support Navalny’s policy by means of our reputation and our financial, organizational and other resources.”
“The Contract” has been signed signed by the founders/owners/top managers of, amongst others: The Internet-shop “Vikimart” (Camille Kurmakaev and Maxim Faldin); the discount service Groupon and the educational portal Eduson.tv (Elena Masolova); HeadHunter.ru (Yuri Virovets); the publishing house “Mann, Ivanov and Ferber” (Mikhail Ivanov); the polling site Votepoller (Valentin Preobrazhensky); and Sports.ru (Dmitry Navosha).
The Social Thaw: Change in Facebook Policy
This Admin Post about Blogging,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for AK's Blog on July 14, 2013
My response to Snowdengate, the new Graph Search, its inevitable integration with Google Glass? I will be minimizing my privacy settings and for all intents and purposes making my Facebook public.
So good ahead, look up my profile. Friend me. Whatever. I don’t mind.
Sounds counter-intuitive, huh? There’s a logic behind the madness. It’s now a safe assumption that in between the numerous bugs and the surveillance what you post on Facebook might as well be public. So I will treat it as public.
Which means no more denying friend requests on the basis that I don’t know you. No more purges of weirdos who happened to friend me. No more separation into “Friends,” “Acquaintances,” and other groups. No more photos of an excessively… personal nature, or confidential communications. That I believe is for email, Dropbox, and even older systems, like face to face meetings.
Some commentators are recommending people delete their Facebooks. But I find its social features to be quite useful, plus I am a publicist – so why on earth would I do that? That would just be stupid.
PS. There is also know a dedicated Facebook Page for this blog that’s automatically updated with every new post.
Russia is Now an Internet Society
This Post about Society,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for Russian Spectrum on May 21, 2013
The Russian Spectrum presents the results of Levada, FOM, and VCIOM polls over the past dozen years showing the rapid digitization of Russian society.
The Internet in Russia
The three questions used were all similar: “Do you use the Internet, and if so how frequently?”
Also in the latest Levada poll: “Do you use the Internet, and if so for what purpose?”
Delving Into Bitcoins And The Deep Web
This Post about Science & Technology,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for AK's Blog on April 19, 2013
Several days ago, the USD/BTC exchange rate soared to dizzying heights, reaching almost $250 for one unit of the virtual, decentralized currency. Then it crashed to $55. But since then, it has gone back up to $100.
I’d heard of them before, but I had assumed it was some sort of pyramid, and that the train had already passed. Pyramids are only good for those at the top. It’s the creators of currencies who get rich, not their users. In short, I was skeptical.
Still, as someone on a perpetual lookout for lazy and socially unproductive ways of making money, I knew I had to check it out.
And I discovered some rather interesting things.
First, Bitcoins can’t be just created out of thin air. Just like gold or other minerals, they have to be “mined” by solving complex cryptographic puzzles. In practice, some users pool their computing power for this task. There is a theoretical limit to the total amount of Bitcoins that can enter circulation: 21 million. So you can’t inflate it like you can with any fiat currency.
Second, they offer real advantages over conventional currencies. There are no banking or transfer charges, because you are your own bank. Your Bitcoins are held in an encrypted file on your hard drive, and can easily be transferred between your own accounts, or “wallets,” and other accounts. These transactions can be completely anonymous, because your wallet isn’t linked to your “true name” (paging Vernor Vinge).
This anonymity means that you can, in relative ease and safety, avail yourself of online black markets selling all kinds of cool shit of dubious legality.
For instance, on April 15th 2011 – since known as “Black Friday” in certain circles – the DoJ flunky Preet Bharara shut down the three biggest online poker companies operating in the US. In the ensuing panic, dozens of others left of their own accord, voluntarily restricting access to US players to avoid any legal ramifications. But a few continue to operate here. Perhaps the most interesting case is that of Seals with Clubs, a site where you gamble with Bitcoins. This is an example of an innovative and dynamic enterprise that has bypassed real life problems to create a product that people enjoy and that is likely to continue to grow, especially if governments start taking a harder line against online poker. (Incidentally, the games at Seals seem to be very soft, even at high stakes – or at least that is the impression I got from observing them for 15 minutes or so. Definitely something to look into if you get some portion of your income from poker).
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Investigating Bitcoins led me, of course, to the “deep web,” the Silk Road, and even weirder places. I will retrace the journey, should you wish to undertake it yourself.
Why De-Russification Isn’t On The Cards
My post last week on the increasing visibility of the Russian language on the Internet provoked a heated counter-attack from commentator Ildar Adi, who asserted (without much in the way of proof) that it is actually in significant retreat in Europe, the Near Abroad, and even Russia itself.
He believes that whereas there were almost 500 million Russian speakers in 1990, there will be just 150 million of them in 2030. If that were to be true, it would imply that practically nobody outside Russia would still speak Russian in 20 years time. Does this sound like a very likely prospect?
Not if the above map, linked to by commentator Glossy, is anything to go by. In this case, one image really is worth a thousand words. Quoting Glossy:
It seems that the only languages of the former Soviet Union that are used enough on Twitter to have merited their own colors on that map are Russian, Latvian and Lithuanian. It looks like Estonia isn’t tweeting much in Russian either though. The rest of the post-Soviet space is. On the map Catalans are tweeting in Catalan, but Ukrainians are tweeting in Russian. And that’s the young generation, the future. Who else is going to use Twitter? Kiev looks like the third-brightest Russian-tweeting city in the world, right after Moscow and St. Petersburg. Slovenian, Slovak and Albanian have their own colors, but Ukrainian doesn’t.
Russian Is The Internet’s Second Most Popular Language
In the wake of Russia’s Internet penetration breaking the 50% mark (now – 55%) and overtaking Germany in total number of users last year, we now have news that Russian overtook German as its second most popular language. It is used on 5.9% of all the world’s websites. It is projected that Russia will maintain this position for a few years. Also .ru has become the world’s most popular country-level domain.
This is quite a remarkable achievement considering Russia’s limited number of Internet users relative to the much more populous Spanish and Chinese speaking worlds (even if Internet penetration in the latter regions is a bit lower). I wonder why that could be the case? One theory is that Latin Americans simply don’t read much, while creating websites in China may be trickier than in the West because of greater controls over the Internet. (Also hanzi are much more space-economical than alphabet-based writing systems, so what might take a few pages in English may only require one page in Chinese; that is another possible explanation). That would also explain why the world’s less than 100 million native German speakers are also far ahead of those far more numerous nationalities. Alternatively, maybe there’s simply more spam blogs or pages hosting copied content in Russian.
Here is a trends graph. As of March 27 (the date of this article), Russian has clearly at 5.9% edged past German which is now at 5.7%.
US-Russia.org, New Site For Russia Watchers
This Post about Media,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for Da Russophile on September 22, 2012
It’s been a few months in the building, since the decision to launch it at the WRF 2012, and I feel it is now developed enough to make it more widely known. I hope it will become as prominent as the current best specialized English-language Russian politics resource on the Internet, Russia: Other Points of View.
US-RUSSIA.org will also have regular discussion panels featuring short commentaries on topical issues of the day by members of its think-tank, moderated by Vlad Sobell. The very first one will be out soon and will focus on the assaults on the US’ Middle East embassies and what it implies for US relations with Russia.
It is the brainchild of Edward Lozansky, Soviet dissident turned promoter of US-Russian cooperation. (He also has an excellent restaurant in Washington DC which I highly recommend you visit anytime you’re there; it’s on the pricey side, but service, atmosphere, and – unusual for traditional/”Soviet” Russian eateries – the food itself are all top notch).
What Is The Point Of Articles Like These?
Mashable tells students about 12 things they should never do in social media.
By now this doesn’t apply to me, as between my non-anonymous Russophilia, HBD-ing, gaming, and AGW-ing I’ve long ostracized myself from both liberals and conservatives and torpedoed myself any hopes of “respectable” employment anyway.
I do however wonder about the point of such articles even for more normal people.
(1) Of course unprovoked harassing/bullying of people is bad. Threatening violence is just idiotic. But you see, the kind of people who’d benefit from such advice aren’t really the sort who’d be reading these articles anyway.
(2) Quite aside from the inherent cowardice of gagging oneself to increase one’s attraction to corporate vultures, it is actually – objectively – useful. You read that right. From the same article:
“Whenever I evaluate a potential employee, I always take a look at what is publicly visible on their Facebook profile,” says Ryan Cohn, vice president of social/digital operations at What’s Next Marketing. “On two separate occasions, I have rejected entry level prospects (finishing their senior year of college) for featuring firearms in their profile picture. Both were qualified in terms of experience and otherwise would have been worthy of an interview.”
Would you want to work for a hoplophobic asshat like that anyway? Fact is expressing opinions in print and on the Internet doesn’t only degrade your job prospects with certain managers and companies – it allows you to screen out BS managers and companies.
In other words, it’s a two way street, in which benefits outnumber disadvantages. After all, as long as you view the job market not through a scarcity model, but an abundance model – which is what it really is – it’s not like you’re losing out on anything. Filter out the trash, I say.
Russia Is Now An Internet Society
This Post about Society,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for Da Russophile on September 3, 2012
One of the most common arguments made to explain why Russians don’t finally overthrow the evil Putin in a bloody bunt is that they are brainwashed by the regime’s TV propaganda stations.
This isn’t actually very accurate at all. Russian TV isn’t any more propagandistic than in the West, and on some issues, less so; but that is for another time.
The more relevant issue that is presupposes that there few Russians have means of accessing the “free information on the Internet, which even Western propagandists acknowledge is not controlled in Russia. But today this is no longer actual, as revealed by this history of polls on Internet penetration from FOM.
As you can see, Internet penetration in Russia as of Spring 2012 went over the 50% mark. Those people can read all the Navalny, Snob and Echo of Moscow they want to.
