Comment by qualeed
8 days ago
>Those numbers mean nothing without the baseline. What if before it was 1 person and now it’s 18x more, totaling 19 people?
They obviously don't mean nothing. Knowing absolute numbers would be much better, but knowing that the direction of the trend (people previously not caring now care) is informative by itself. It's safe to assume that more than 1 person had a VPN subscription previously.
I appreciate the link and additional insight. The way you phrased it before, I was expecting you to quote sub 10% or less. 35% is not inconsequential, especially considering the environment.
In the end, I'm not convinced you can extrapolate Chinese internet usage patterns to the UK, given the large cultural differences (specifically in regards to internet, history of censorship, etc.). Someone who has grown up their entire lives under the great firewall will react differently to censorship than someone who has grown up their entire lives under a mostly free internet that is now being censored.
> but knowing that the direction of the trend (people previously not caring now care) is informative by itself.
Sure. However, without baseline numbers how do you know who are the people signing up for VPNs? This is the whole point: is it the general public en masse, or some of tech people who had no VPN before?
> In the end, I'm not convinced you can extrapolate Chinese internet usage patterns to the UK, given the large cultural differences (specifically in regards to internet, history of censorship, etc.). Someone who has grown up their entire lives under the great firewall will react differently to censorship than someone who has grown up their entire lives under a mostly free internet that is now being censored.
Of course culture makes a huge difference, but you cannot strongly prove the opposite just based on the assumption about cultural differences. I think the the average consumer simply does not care enough. Remember, the expectation on average is that the access to the information is free.
I guess time will tell :)