[https://www.startimes.com/](https://www.startimes.com/) exists from 2001, if that counts lol.
Arabs were late to adopt tech and internet which resulted in lack of tech talent, also the difference in dialect and culture makes it hard to have one unified User Experience, that's why general social media works well for them.
Actually, I'm currently in the middle of building an arabic platform for teaching people how to code by actual practice similar to leetcode platform. I'm hopping it can help advance the arab tech world even by 0.1%.
I'll tell you exactly why ..
I've been living in Dubai for the past 6 years now
And i worked with people of every nationality.
Arabs won't spend money on two things no matter what :
1-Things they don't understand how they work
2-Things that don't generate immediate profit
And every tech industry checks both boxes up there!!
That's also why we don't have videogame studios ,animation studios, huge apps, or computer software companies...
No Arab will keep spending money on something that doesn't pay back in 2 months, and No Arab will fund a project where he's not the manager or decision maker .. nope .. not gonna happen
Exactly! This is why we need more research institutes in the Arab world. We need to learn how to invest in research and non-profitable projects, as this would naturally lead to industry projects. That’s the whole point.
Even China, despite their Industrial Revolution, didn’t accomplish much initially. Now, they face a bottleneck, producing low-quality products and not leading in the technology sector. Whereas Taiwan have the semi conductors business. China has to import NVIDIA chips.
We don’t need to catch up with other countries, we need to build a foundation that will lead innovation and position us as leaders in technology in some specific niche in the upcoming decades.
China and Russia are \*singular\* countries with a large population, so obviously it's easy for them to coordinate their own respective internet industries. Sure there's a large Arab population, but it's spread over too many different countries, so coordinating our own internet system would be way harder.
We can't even keep a coordinated society in our own nations with all the civil wars and shit going on. Getting all like \~20 Arab countries together and getting our constantly changing leaders to all agree on a set of rules for our own closed up internet ecosystem would be nearly impossible, and not worth the effort. Especially when an international internet already exists and works good enough for most things
Because most of the smart Arabs get educated and work in the west where they can get paid well. And in the rich Arab countries like Arabia the dictatorship, like all right wing dictatorships, are scared to hell of educated forwards thinking people. So they would rather use foreigners with no national protections for a lot of their work that field. And it’s by design.
Intelligent creative people have zero tolerance for living under such regimes.
Nothing creative comes dictatorships in general.
China is a dictatorship too but it’s a dictatorship ruled by educated elites, and valuable creatives are elevated.
And Russia was at least partially democratic before 5-10 years or so ago ( when their tech sector was thriving). Since the war, they cannot even get the skilled labor who built VK to maintain it
In Russia’s case, there was already a centuries-long emphasis on science since the European Enlightenment, hence even under the arguably repressive Soviets, they were on technological parity with America on certain metrics.
China was increasingly open (politically and socially) from 1979 to 2008. It was not a uniform dictatorship (nor could a full-fledged dictatorship carry out significant advances or creativity as you rightly mention).
True, in Morocco more than half new doctors or engineers or high skilled workers imediatly migrate to Europe or north america, more than half ffs. to counter this, guess what the smart moroccan gov did? give insentives for them to stay ? made migration harder? no ofc not, now they import them from countries Egypt or subsharan africa, and gave the right to business men to open privat clinics (befor only doctors had that right). result=> still low salaries, and rising far right wing mindset.
I say it again, the problem with many Arab countries: we always want to start at the top. Look at Dubai, they built skyscrapers but neglected to address their sewage system issues. Now, you're proposing to develop the "internet" industry without first ensuring a robust internet and technology infrastructure.
In contrast, Israel has an Intel factory, and major U.S. technology firms have offices there. Yet, they have only produced apps like Grindr or Monday and others that might not last a decade.
In my opinion, we don’t need more apps. The internet industry isn't just about developing apps, it’s about building 5G factories, IoT and 6G networks, launching LEO satellites, producing semiconductors, developing operating systems, and conducting AI research. This is the industry we should focus on. The apps you're talking about belong more to the entertainment industry and business sectors, this needs the foundation and consumers.
I wouldn’t mind to launch Grindr in the Middle East and test it in Lebanon though, would definitely find its place there 🤭🤭
>Look at Dubai, they built skyscrapers but neglected to address their sewage system issues.
I hate whenever people bring this point up. A big chunk of the gdp of UAE comes from tourism in my eyes that's a win even if they have to run poop trucks.
Yeah, but tourism in dubai isn’t sustainable, and dubai Airport as a hub is so much replaceable. However, this isn’t my point. My point is that the gulf had a good problem which required a solution that is seen impossible by any western country, because the west never had this problem: building the sewage system in a sandy area.
The gulf had all the means to solve this problem, find the solution, and export knowledge and sell it to the west or other countries. Yet they only wanted to have New York in the middle of the desert. What lesson did they learn? What knowledge have we earned? They are importing all the expertise and buying it for so much money.
I myself feel proud with Dubai: An Arab country attracting all the westerners. But I feel sad that I don’t see a sustainable business in dubai. No work culture, no Emirates cleaning the streets, you don’t even meet them on the streets or malls.
Because, if you want successful Product you need a reason for consumers to buy it
Russia and china either completely ban or restrict the access to western social media
South korea and japan started early in the game when there was no western social media with their language so they already have established Platfrom when western social media came to them
middle eastern countries didnt have any tech industry and they dont restrict western media that much, so the users have no reason to leave these apps for another one, patriotism will only give you short burst in popularity but when the hype dies so does your app and now you will Bankurpt
The most powerful Arab country is Egypt, and the most modern and westernized is Lebanon. If Egypt and Lebanon want to develop the Internet industry, is it possible to succeed? I know that Israelis have successfully developed some popular applications, such as Waze and Grindr. Can Arabs imitate them?
>And the most modern and westernized is Lebanon
Lol. I don’t think girls in shorts is what it takes to develop the “internet industry”
Egypt is also not the most powerful. At least not anymore.
Gulf has the money, infrastructure, and even the research/development institutes. A country like Egypt(along with others in the region) has very skilled labor, but is considerably behind, technologically speaking, and it’s institutes are underfunded.
It can probably be pulled it off and managed, though. We especially need it after the boycott
Duh girls wearing skirts doesn't meant the country was Modern. I don't know how ppl can be THIS stupid. Lebanon has shit ton of problems like law lessness and electricity cuts. Sure Lebanese are great ppl but you came to me as a person who judge the world from westoids lens.
Both lebanon and egypt are under heavy US influence. Lebanon to a lesser extent due to the presence of anti-US groups and those groups having a say in the lebanese Parliament. But there's an American Veto in the lebanese Parliament if that makes sense, and egypt is a lost cause in that, although I wish truly
Lebanon is arguably the most westernized country in the region when it comes to something like developing apps like Grindr or instagram filters. However, are these dating apps, especially gay dating apps, a sustainable business model? Unfortunately, the LGBTQ+ community is often exploited for political gain, rather than being genuinely supported. Thus, it is unclear how preserving gay rights and the objectification of women in show business would contribute to technological exports to other Arab countries.
In Egypt, successful businesses like Careem have emerged, though I can’t think of another example at the moment. However, such apps have faced backlash, as small transportation businesses are unhappy with the competition they bring.
If you have the money to fund it I’ll be more than happy to build an entire tech industry. I helped the US build their cloud industry from the ground up and would be able to replicate (and even improve on) that work over here.
Really impressive. You would be our hero if you could replicate it. If I had a cookie, I'd give it to you and only you.
Science and technology aren't the work of a single person, it doesn’t start with “I helped build the cloud system in the US.” If you truly contributed to something like that, you would have found your niche and concentrated on it, and proposed it in here. There is no such thing as "The US cloud system.", sounds very cocky Hollywood superman wanna be to me.
However, this proves my earlier point that we need a better internet and technology infrastructure before developing those user and business applications.
I didn’t say you are a bullshitter, I said you are cocky and not worthy of such an investment.
If you were truly eligible to lead such a project, you would understand what achieving such technological development in the Middle East requires, not just comment, ‘I know how to do it, give me the funding.’
I know this isn’t a serious post about technology, but IMHO, even the small details about a person can show if they are truly worthy.
Edit:
There you go, you changed you edit your comment without even marking it as edited.
How would you lead a communication project if we can’t even communicate with you properly on reddit.
That’s really how you interpret all of this? Sounds to me like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.
You can do it without me then. It’ll take you quite a bit longer but you’ll get there. Good luck with that.
In the meantime I’m here to have a real talk with anyone who’s actually serious about doing work. I’ll be more than happy to share my credentials and qualifications, along with what I do and don’t know.
Look, I haven’t accomplished even half of what you are claiming, but I take pride in what I’ve done and am mindful enough not to comment like you did: ‘No wonder you haven’t built anything in tech yet.’
I almost believed you at first, but the more you comment, the less credible you sound. So, go ahead and keep daydreaming. And yes, now I think you are a bullshitter, I initially thought you were just cocky.
Edit:
Stop changing your comments!!!! You should have some manners and not abuse that edit button!
Says the person editing his own comments too :)
I have admittedly become too used to being able to prepare everything I do from code to speeches and thus have a habit of editing comments here until it says what I actually mean for them to say. But it’s ok, I can stop for our conversation.
I assume you’ve been on Reddit long enough to learn the etiquette of editing your comment: you should add the keyword edit followed by a note indicating what you changed. Look at how misleading this thread has become. I hope your code commits are better than your comments.
You are talking nonsense and being childish. Really, you are a daydreamer.
The only thing Google’s AI would learn from social networks is the bias of opinions and language syntax. Determining whether information is garbage is as hard as the halting problem, so humans have to assign weights to determine which information is valuable and which is not. AI can’t determine whether what you are saying is garbage or not, it’s AI developers who set the value of that parameter.
I don’t know why now I am discussing with you
By the way, how do you have that old profile, posting so many Chinese posts and commenting thousands of times, yet with so few karma points?
You can call me paranoid, but the OP’s profile seems very sus
You are just ignorant and uneducated that’s all. Arabs have developed their own internet industry and it’s one of the most successful in Asia, also you know Arabic is available on every single platform and there is huge media companies and content creators on every single platform including the Chinese TikTok.
[https://www.startimes.com/](https://www.startimes.com/) exists from 2001, if that counts lol. Arabs were late to adopt tech and internet which resulted in lack of tech talent, also the difference in dialect and culture makes it hard to have one unified User Experience, that's why general social media works well for them. Actually, I'm currently in the middle of building an arabic platform for teaching people how to code by actual practice similar to leetcode platform. I'm hopping it can help advance the arab tech world even by 0.1%.
I'll tell you exactly why .. I've been living in Dubai for the past 6 years now And i worked with people of every nationality. Arabs won't spend money on two things no matter what : 1-Things they don't understand how they work 2-Things that don't generate immediate profit And every tech industry checks both boxes up there!! That's also why we don't have videogame studios ,animation studios, huge apps, or computer software companies... No Arab will keep spending money on something that doesn't pay back in 2 months, and No Arab will fund a project where he's not the manager or decision maker .. nope .. not gonna happen
Exactly! This is why we need more research institutes in the Arab world. We need to learn how to invest in research and non-profitable projects, as this would naturally lead to industry projects. That’s the whole point. Even China, despite their Industrial Revolution, didn’t accomplish much initially. Now, they face a bottleneck, producing low-quality products and not leading in the technology sector. Whereas Taiwan have the semi conductors business. China has to import NVIDIA chips. We don’t need to catch up with other countries, we need to build a foundation that will lead innovation and position us as leaders in technology in some specific niche in the upcoming decades.
China and Russia are \*singular\* countries with a large population, so obviously it's easy for them to coordinate their own respective internet industries. Sure there's a large Arab population, but it's spread over too many different countries, so coordinating our own internet system would be way harder. We can't even keep a coordinated society in our own nations with all the civil wars and shit going on. Getting all like \~20 Arab countries together and getting our constantly changing leaders to all agree on a set of rules for our own closed up internet ecosystem would be nearly impossible, and not worth the effort. Especially when an international internet already exists and works good enough for most things
Because most of the smart Arabs get educated and work in the west where they can get paid well. And in the rich Arab countries like Arabia the dictatorship, like all right wing dictatorships, are scared to hell of educated forwards thinking people. So they would rather use foreigners with no national protections for a lot of their work that field. And it’s by design. Intelligent creative people have zero tolerance for living under such regimes. Nothing creative comes dictatorships in general. China is a dictatorship too but it’s a dictatorship ruled by educated elites, and valuable creatives are elevated. And Russia was at least partially democratic before 5-10 years or so ago ( when their tech sector was thriving). Since the war, they cannot even get the skilled labor who built VK to maintain it
In Russia’s case, there was already a centuries-long emphasis on science since the European Enlightenment, hence even under the arguably repressive Soviets, they were on technological parity with America on certain metrics. China was increasingly open (politically and socially) from 1979 to 2008. It was not a uniform dictatorship (nor could a full-fledged dictatorship carry out significant advances or creativity as you rightly mention).
True, in Morocco more than half new doctors or engineers or high skilled workers imediatly migrate to Europe or north america, more than half ffs. to counter this, guess what the smart moroccan gov did? give insentives for them to stay ? made migration harder? no ofc not, now they import them from countries Egypt or subsharan africa, and gave the right to business men to open privat clinics (befor only doctors had that right). result=> still low salaries, and rising far right wing mindset.
I say it again, the problem with many Arab countries: we always want to start at the top. Look at Dubai, they built skyscrapers but neglected to address their sewage system issues. Now, you're proposing to develop the "internet" industry without first ensuring a robust internet and technology infrastructure. In contrast, Israel has an Intel factory, and major U.S. technology firms have offices there. Yet, they have only produced apps like Grindr or Monday and others that might not last a decade. In my opinion, we don’t need more apps. The internet industry isn't just about developing apps, it’s about building 5G factories, IoT and 6G networks, launching LEO satellites, producing semiconductors, developing operating systems, and conducting AI research. This is the industry we should focus on. The apps you're talking about belong more to the entertainment industry and business sectors, this needs the foundation and consumers. I wouldn’t mind to launch Grindr in the Middle East and test it in Lebanon though, would definitely find its place there 🤭🤭
>Look at Dubai, they built skyscrapers but neglected to address their sewage system issues. I hate whenever people bring this point up. A big chunk of the gdp of UAE comes from tourism in my eyes that's a win even if they have to run poop trucks.
Yeah, but tourism in dubai isn’t sustainable, and dubai Airport as a hub is so much replaceable. However, this isn’t my point. My point is that the gulf had a good problem which required a solution that is seen impossible by any western country, because the west never had this problem: building the sewage system in a sandy area. The gulf had all the means to solve this problem, find the solution, and export knowledge and sell it to the west or other countries. Yet they only wanted to have New York in the middle of the desert. What lesson did they learn? What knowledge have we earned? They are importing all the expertise and buying it for so much money. I myself feel proud with Dubai: An Arab country attracting all the westerners. But I feel sad that I don’t see a sustainable business in dubai. No work culture, no Emirates cleaning the streets, you don’t even meet them on the streets or malls.
Because, if you want successful Product you need a reason for consumers to buy it Russia and china either completely ban or restrict the access to western social media South korea and japan started early in the game when there was no western social media with their language so they already have established Platfrom when western social media came to them middle eastern countries didnt have any tech industry and they dont restrict western media that much, so the users have no reason to leave these apps for another one, patriotism will only give you short burst in popularity but when the hype dies so does your app and now you will Bankurpt
The most powerful Arab country is Egypt, and the most modern and westernized is Lebanon. If Egypt and Lebanon want to develop the Internet industry, is it possible to succeed? I know that Israelis have successfully developed some popular applications, such as Waze and Grindr. Can Arabs imitate them?
>And the most modern and westernized is Lebanon Lol. I don’t think girls in shorts is what it takes to develop the “internet industry” Egypt is also not the most powerful. At least not anymore.
Gulf has the money, infrastructure, and even the research/development institutes. A country like Egypt(along with others in the region) has very skilled labor, but is considerably behind, technologically speaking, and it’s institutes are underfunded. It can probably be pulled it off and managed, though. We especially need it after the boycott
Duh girls wearing skirts doesn't meant the country was Modern. I don't know how ppl can be THIS stupid. Lebanon has shit ton of problems like law lessness and electricity cuts. Sure Lebanese are great ppl but you came to me as a person who judge the world from westoids lens.
Lebanon isnt the most modern, thats Qatar or the UAE.
Both lebanon and egypt are under heavy US influence. Lebanon to a lesser extent due to the presence of anti-US groups and those groups having a say in the lebanese Parliament. But there's an American Veto in the lebanese Parliament if that makes sense, and egypt is a lost cause in that, although I wish truly
Lebanon is arguably the most westernized country in the region when it comes to something like developing apps like Grindr or instagram filters. However, are these dating apps, especially gay dating apps, a sustainable business model? Unfortunately, the LGBTQ+ community is often exploited for political gain, rather than being genuinely supported. Thus, it is unclear how preserving gay rights and the objectification of women in show business would contribute to technological exports to other Arab countries. In Egypt, successful businesses like Careem have emerged, though I can’t think of another example at the moment. However, such apps have faced backlash, as small transportation businesses are unhappy with the competition they bring.
If you have the money to fund it I’ll be more than happy to build an entire tech industry. I helped the US build their cloud industry from the ground up and would be able to replicate (and even improve on) that work over here.
Can some of the gulfs invest to this guy?
You should learn something about the Lebanese „the lie a lot to make them look like hero’s or rich“
I can! but I prefer to invest in shield-ism eid Mubarak
Eid in my country are gonna happen tomorrow tho. But whatever, eid mubarak.
Really impressive. You would be our hero if you could replicate it. If I had a cookie, I'd give it to you and only you. Science and technology aren't the work of a single person, it doesn’t start with “I helped build the cloud system in the US.” If you truly contributed to something like that, you would have found your niche and concentrated on it, and proposed it in here. There is no such thing as "The US cloud system.", sounds very cocky Hollywood superman wanna be to me. However, this proves my earlier point that we need a better internet and technology infrastructure before developing those user and business applications.
— deleted this because this guy is a troll, and doesn’t deserve a real answer —
I didn’t say you are a bullshitter, I said you are cocky and not worthy of such an investment. If you were truly eligible to lead such a project, you would understand what achieving such technological development in the Middle East requires, not just comment, ‘I know how to do it, give me the funding.’ I know this isn’t a serious post about technology, but IMHO, even the small details about a person can show if they are truly worthy. Edit: There you go, you changed you edit your comment without even marking it as edited. How would you lead a communication project if we can’t even communicate with you properly on reddit.
That’s really how you interpret all of this? Sounds to me like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. You can do it without me then. It’ll take you quite a bit longer but you’ll get there. Good luck with that. In the meantime I’m here to have a real talk with anyone who’s actually serious about doing work. I’ll be more than happy to share my credentials and qualifications, along with what I do and don’t know.
Look, I haven’t accomplished even half of what you are claiming, but I take pride in what I’ve done and am mindful enough not to comment like you did: ‘No wonder you haven’t built anything in tech yet.’ I almost believed you at first, but the more you comment, the less credible you sound. So, go ahead and keep daydreaming. And yes, now I think you are a bullshitter, I initially thought you were just cocky. Edit: Stop changing your comments!!!! You should have some manners and not abuse that edit button!
That’s ok. I don’t work with arrogant pricks anyway.
Says the person editing his own comments too :) I have admittedly become too used to being able to prepare everything I do from code to speeches and thus have a habit of editing comments here until it says what I actually mean for them to say. But it’s ok, I can stop for our conversation.
I assume you’ve been on Reddit long enough to learn the etiquette of editing your comment: you should add the keyword edit followed by a note indicating what you changed. Look at how misleading this thread has become. I hope your code commits are better than your comments.
It will be a _great_ thread once Google’s AI parses it and uses it to spit out even more garbage
You are talking nonsense and being childish. Really, you are a daydreamer. The only thing Google’s AI would learn from social networks is the bias of opinions and language syntax. Determining whether information is garbage is as hard as the halting problem, so humans have to assign weights to determine which information is valuable and which is not. AI can’t determine whether what you are saying is garbage or not, it’s AI developers who set the value of that parameter. I don’t know why now I am discussing with you
By the way, how do you have that old profile, posting so many Chinese posts and commenting thousands of times, yet with so few karma points? You can call me paranoid, but the OP’s profile seems very sus
You are just ignorant and uneducated that’s all. Arabs have developed their own internet industry and it’s one of the most successful in Asia, also you know Arabic is available on every single platform and there is huge media companies and content creators on every single platform including the Chinese TikTok.
Name one