
The Tragedy of Ethiopia's Internet - zeristor
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-tragedy-of-ethiopias-internet
======
lincolnq
Posting this from Addis. I have internet. The Ethiopians I know all have
smartphones and internet. Viber is similarly popular to text messaging. I am
very confused about this article. Lots of things are restrictive here but the
article is super overblown. Maybe only 3.7% with wired internet? I'd believe
that, everyone uses mobile here.

~~~
selectodude
I find Vice is super interesting until they do a story on the place you're
from and you realize they have zero idea what they're talking about and the
entire article is nonsense.

I've stopped reading anything they put out.

~~~
differentView
This is the same reason I stopped reading The Economist. Great witty writing,
until they write about my country and get lots of things wrong. I have to
assume it's the same with their articles about industries and places I am not
familiar with.

~~~
nickysielicki
My browser history over the past few months is riddled with 20-minute bursts
of trying to find the wikipedia page for a certain cognitive fallacy that is
related to what you and your parent comment are talking about.

The gist of it is that we tend to trust the authority of the media, up until a
point where the the media incorrectly or disingenuously reports on something
that we are an expert on. This theory disagrees with what you and your parent
comment are saying and instead contends that as soon as they switch to another
story, we continue to trust their authority on other topics without any kind
of diminished reputation.

I feel like I'm going crazy, but I am almost certain this page exists and my
google-fu is continually failing me.

~~~
hga
How about this: [http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-
gel...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-
amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you)

~~~
nickysielicki
Yes! That's it! Thank you!

I'm amazed that this is actually not an established theory, as I believed it
to be. It explains why this doesn't have a wikipedia article, because it's
really just the musing of some guy.

[http://english.stackexchange.com/posts/244277/revisions](http://english.stackexchange.com/posts/244277/revisions)

~~~
hga
I think it's pretty well established, for example, Heinlein writes about the
same concept in his 1980 _Expanded Universe_ (and it might have been from the
text in an earlier version), saying the news magazine _Time_ , I think it was,
had never gotten it right in the situations he had eye-witnessed.

Thing is, it's just not going to be acknowledged by large groups of people;
for example Wikipedians won't like it because it totally undercuts what what
they base verifiability on.

------
davidu
Just as a counter datapoint, my experience in Ethiopia was very different. I
was sometimes three hours from the nearest paved road and yet I would have
full cellular signal, and often even 2G or 3G connectivity.

I had no issues browsing the web, using my VPN, or doing anything else. I was
with a group of about 40 people, and we had about 10 or 15 local Ethiopians in
our group. None would be considered privileged or rich, and they also all had
regular Internet access either on their phones or at Internet cafes. Their
nearest real city was Mekele up in the North. Almost all of them folks in our
group had Facebook.

Even at the top of the Gheralta mountains we had strong signal. It was
actually mind-blowing how much cellular coverage we had in the country.

[https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10100191249027242&se...](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10100191249027242&set=a.10100191248972352.1073741825.3101830&type=3&theater)

[https://scontent-sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-
xfa1/v/t1.0-9/2...](https://scontent-sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-
xfa1/v/t1.0-9/252500_10100191249057182_439081566_n.jpg?oh=86f57b582960181ff0887592fe85bea0&oe=572E7FBD)

[https://scontent-sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-
xfa1/v/t1.0-9/4...](https://scontent-sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-
xfa1/v/t1.0-9/480443_10100191249256782_531346896_n.jpg?oh=209746a0d67e8f5de174f67811067443&oe=57375A9B)

~~~
theandrewbailey
I've never been there, but many stories I've read have mentioned good cell
signals in the middle of nowhere, Africa.

------
marcus_holmes
I don't get this bit: "...Security experts told me that there is no evidence
Ginbot 7 has ever undertaken terrorist activity, and the organization is not
on the US State Department’s list of terror organizations.

Ginbot 7 is largely a collection of exiled Ethiopians who operate outside the
borders of the country they wish to change. According to an ESAT report,
Ginbot 7 has attacked government soldiers, which Zeleke confirmed to me."

Surely attacking government soldiers qualifies as a terrorist activity?

~~~
gpvos
No, it counts as military activity. Attacking _civilians_ with the intent to
scare the populace at large counts as terrorist activity.

While there is no single definition of terrorism, attacking civilians instead
of soldiers is a common theme among the most popular definitions.

~~~
mercurial
This really depends on the spin the government in place puts on it.

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YoanJ
This is from Addis, the capital. Its a very common experience that not only
the Internet but electric power too is intermittent, sometimes for days.
People use mobile data carefully, because its expensive. Also, sites are
filtered based on political content. There is no commerce or whatsoever
business activity using the Internet due to restrictions and/or service
reliability issues.

------
Jrthomas
I used to be in Addis a while back (happy to see so many people in the
comments posting from A.A)

Decent internet can be tough to find outside the capital and the local telco
generally reacts to service interruptions with "meh, they'll just have to deal
with it" e-commerce is starting to pick up slightly but definitely has a ways
to go.

The surveillance is real. I know people who are not politically active have
their phones tapped, would get their new text messages read (couldn't open
their inbox and would see the counts of new messages go up and down randomly)
to the point where they were physically surveilled in broad daylight with
plainclothes and uniformed people tailing them and entering their home (they
eventually left)

There's also blame to go around for the Diaspora as well. Often times some
will believe they know best just because they were educated in the West and
have the false confidence to think that only their perspective is correct and
will voice it adamantly (to the point where I've seen "evidence" that was
clearly fabricated). Theres very little compromise when it comes to political
perspectives which squashes meaningful discussions before they ever happen and
exacerbates things further.

Access to the internet just isn't as high a priority there as keeping everyone
on the same page when it comes to developmental priorities. There's certainly
some positive signs when it comes to the speed at which things have changed in
the last 10 yrs but it's important to recognize diminishing returns when you
see them. I wonder if a state-led development model like Ethiopia's will be
equipped at all to spot that when it happens and adapt quickly enough.

