I've been looking for explanations of how people who run Internet resources here in Kazakhstan deal with government control. Today, I got a story complete with details of each move and what happened and how things are managed. I wanted to post it here and suddenly realized that I can not because even if there is that vanishingly small possibility of this post being seen and read and figured out by someone from here that might do damage, I simply can not afford that chance. So I will simply contain my observations to generalized commentary and some stories of some less controversial that I had today. I guess like everyone who has done research in areas like this, at some point you encounter stories that explain a lot about what is going on, but turn out to be ethically untellable, unless in intimate company with a lot of drink, safely out of the way of any public forums. This place is complicated, the Internet IS politics and the people that talk to me end up trusting me if they tell me stories like this. I am lucky because I have what they call here 'a light hand' - that is in the course of hanging out with me people find that things, random events, seem to come out the right way and luck generally comes together. So people tend to trust me, they tell me that I am so American in being so open, but they enjoy it and somehow tell me things with little prodding and with minimal convincing that their stories are safe with me... But they are safe...
Aktau is in many ways unique because they are not one of the two main cities, they are a small town but they are fueled by oil money and a steady number of foreigners hang out here on that account. That means that there is a reason for developing the Internet and making it available and there is a steady base for internet-based businesses or at least one of them to develop and make money. The particular business in question is focused on providing a business directory to the local consumer and they have done well enough to generate a separate business (now owned by someone else) that includes a forum for discussions (because people desperately wanted to talk). The most interesting thing about the business directory is that it includes a system of comments by the users, where the owner spent a lot of time cultivating a culture of cogent, smart commentary, often even deleting comments that were within the rule boundaries but were basically nonsensical. After installing a rating system for comments, he finally got the space to the level the majority of commentary is of very intelligent level that is useful to others. Of course he constantly moderates comments and tells me that he basically does not sleep because a lot of commentary is made at night. He also drives around the town every couple of days because a lot of his business partners and clients require in-person TLC for the extraction of money owed for the services. This is an Internet-business with an intense in-person aspect which is typical of Kazakhstan in general but is probably even more important in areas outside Almaty and Astana.
Generally, in my conversations with average Internet users in Aktau, this particular site shows up among people interested in local events and in the goings on in the country in general. It was telling when the 20-year old I interviewed yesterday brought up the site and the most important, but then expanded on how she self-educated and is interested in the local developments in the country on the account of her chosen profession of international relations. The bunch of 20-year olds that I spoke to today, did not look at anything that did not initially smell and act like a major search engine (yandex.ru or google.kz) or a social network site (moimir.ru). Whereas their a bit older boss immediately brought up not only the local site but also several other very much kazakhstan-related news sites like nomad.su or zonakz.net and even admitted to occasionally checking respublika-kz.info (and given here bashful admission of occasionally checking this oppositional site I did not start pressing whether she might have checked the comments section to, since that section is actually normally blocked in Kazakhstan in most places although not in Aktau, but that is where the sharpest and the most oppositional opinions are discussed).
As she sat there, in her office, underneath the portrait of the president, I did not have the heart to press her about her political curiosities, given the amount of time that she had devoted to me. Instead we talked lightly about how the youth was less interested in the local and found the global connections so much attractive, how they are not yet interested in the place where they actually live. I wondered why that may be the case and when I asked the group what they would do if tomorrow someone had turned off the Internet for good, they all gasped in horror. But when I asked what they would do if tomorrow someone had turned off the SNSs and other socialization tools, the reaction was one of resignation- well then some of those connections will get lost... and that's not so good, but not so bad either, because the people you care about, you already have their phone number. Besides, everyone needs a break from SNSs from time to time anyway because they get boring, so that's ok.
The most fascinating thing about today though, was to realize just how scared people here are, especially people in business of the 'big guys' and how powerless they feel. All of the youngsters were talking about either Russian or Western sites like Yandex, Odnoklassniki, Vkontakte, Mail.ru, Facebook or Google as their main sources of social contact or information. Even if their eventual destination is some place inside the kaznet space, they start with the search engine anyway and it is always either yandex or google, where they normally get their news as well. The business owners are simply waiting for Google, Ebay etc to come into the market and take over, and they hope that they will be the logical choice for the local representative. I can no longer count how many times I heard the statement - we have no chance, we just have to hope we don't remain in the stone age for too long. I must admit the fear it logical because Kazakhstan has few resources and even fewer sources of knowledge and brilliance, given that education is for sale and the particulars of power make sales, contacts and immediate gain far more important than longer range planning. The fear, the desperation and the resignation is palpable... and then this morning I got woken up by a phone call telling me that the largest forum in Kazakhstan has been shut down... what gives?
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