this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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(Originally published earlier today on mastodon.au)

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[–] RunawayFixer 30 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Cool map. And I especially love Portugal for once again confirming that it's actually an eastern European country.

Edit: and also Kosovo really jumps out as a regional outlier. I wonder what caused that.

[–] RunawayFixer 4 points 7 months ago

I looked for an answer for my Kosovo question and it's probably because of: "The Kosovo Digital Economy Project (KODE) was launched in 2018 with the goal of ensuring that all Kosovars have equal access to digital opportunities."

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/06/kosovo-high-speed-internet/

[–] rockSlayer 18 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Cool, another way to map out the poverty distribution

[–] Windex007 14 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yes/no/maybe

Like most things, it's difficult to shake it all out to one variable.

An obvious example being Italy, whos demographics skew very old. Poverty or not, you'll find many 90 year olds who've never used the internet (and if they did, they maybe didn't even realize that it was)

[–] rockSlayer 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's a fair point, but it maps pretty cleanly. Please note that this is the most recent map I could find

[–] RunawayFixer 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Actually, no, I don't think it shows that. A few examples: Your map shows that in Serbia, Kosovo and Romania there's some of the most people at risk of poverty, but most of their regions have higher internet adoption rates than the surrounding regions. It shows southern Spain to be much worse of than Portugal, but in the internet map Portugal had much lower internet adoption. West-Poland is apparently richer than east-Poland, but one of those richer western provinces had some of the lowest internet adoption rates in Poland.

[–] rockSlayer 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I think you're missing the forest for the trees. An entire country at a fairly high risk for poverty is very different from one high risk region and one low risk region of a country, in regards to the distribution of internet access. Additionally these maps are measuring different things, not everything is going to line up perfectly. You have to look at the overall trend, which shows a general tendency for Internet access to be linked to wealth.

[–] RunawayFixer 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm not trying to read something that isn't there. Poverty does cause negative consequences and it will show in statistics, but here at least, poverty does not seem to be the dominant factor.

The internet adoption map mostly shows 3 correlations:

  1. A political one along national borders. That for example Romania and Kosovo have relatively high internet adoption and Greece + Portugal don't, is caused by government policy, not because of wealth: Greece + Portugal are still far wealthier than the other two.
  2. A division within countries whereby the capital region has higher internet adoption rates than other regions. The capital region usually has a higher gnp per capita (not in Poland apparently though), but it also usually has more immigration of young people.
  3. And another trend within countries, whereby regions with declining + aging populations (Fe Saarland + southern Italy + former east Germany) score lower.

But the one that clearly dominates is 1) Government policy. You can have 2 regions with similar demographics + wealth and a national border between the 2 regions, and the internet adoption rate between the 2 can be vastly different, a far bigger difference than between 2 regions within the same country.

Your attempt at discrediting my obversations as looking at trees in a forest is cute, but it's not going to fly. You can't claim that a forest is boreal and then if someone observes that it contains palm trees, proclaim that they're not allowed to look at the trees.

[–] rockSlayer 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Agree to disagree then. I'm not interested in arguing with someone who chooses to take offense over a metaphor.

[–] RunawayFixer 2 points 7 months ago

Again you resort to a personal attack instead of trying to argue with facts. Cute.

[–] RunawayFixer 2 points 7 months ago

Bayern is also a good example counter example against the poverty argument. Very wealthy region, but in 2021 they apparently had lower internet adoption than most other west-german regions. Saarland could be seen as an example of the poverty argument, but also of the age argument: it's young people that move away.

Galicia in Spain is also wealthier than average in Spain iirc, but the map also shows them as having lower internet adoption than the rest of Spain.

[–] guy 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Also the heat distribution? People in hotter countries actually go outside?

[–] AnUnusualRelic 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wouldn't it be hotter out of the shade? This makes no sense.

[–] guy 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well, I was joking, but if we're going to analyse it: up here in the cold parts, people avoid going outside much until summer comes around, because it's cold and wet. We stay inside with our warmth, computers and TVs. In the warm parts, people enjoy the outdoors and the beach year round.

[–] AnUnusualRelic 2 points 7 months ago

And that, children, is why Linux is from Finland instead of Greece.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

At least 68% penetration everywhere is pretty good imo.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Oh… Look at all those poor people in the grey countries that have “no data” left on their cell service… /s

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

PORTUGAL CYKA BLYAT

[–] Matriks404 1 points 7 months ago

Doesn't seem to be that high, so that's a good thing.