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You can't literally see lights from space or whatever. If somewhere had less coverage on google maps you wouldn't think it's uninhabited, but for some reason, people irl seem to be constantly referring to this image as though it's a literal picture. Mostly for 'civilized' reasons, but also light pollution and just other stuff. Maybe this just made the rounds on reddit or something?
You CAN see the lights from space and light pollution is a big problem.
I'm bothered by the large bright spot in West Siberia.
looks like there's a lot of oil/gas wells in that region, they might have a lot of big lights set up for nighttime operations
It still seems way bigger than their energy production would require. That area is larger than all of Central Europe and just as brightly lit with a tiny fraction of the population.
to add to @Chronicon@hexbear.net's comment, that region is quite far north and the image is mercator projection. the size is significantly exaggerated relative to lower latitudes, and 6 months of the year it's "nighttime" so any industrial operations will need to be well lit.
oh wow can't believe I didn't even think of the fact that its like, arctic circle territory and spends so much of the year in darkness.
I mean, when has the fossil fuel industry ever cared about wasting energy or light pollution?
Here's a satellite view of like a 50km square (very ballpark) area:
every one of those white spots is some sort of extraction site, an oil/gas well, or a mine, or whatever, probably like 5 football fields in area minimum, and probably all brightly lit 24/7
Don't worry about it. This is not a request. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamalo-Nenets_Autonomous_Okrug
looks like its this area. Lots of resource extraction going on
i uhh, i thought you could see the lights from space?
https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=ISS028&roll=E&frame=33400
Those are taken with an 8-20 second shutter speed which takes in considerably more light. In some cases they actually take several dozen photos in the same spot then stitch them together as one picture, this brings out light considerably more than it is visible usually.
Here's live video, you will see little to no light: https://youtu.be/DfEr5XCFNWM
that's more bc of the poor quality the ISS main cam is versus the new EHDC camera, you can see lights at night on the higher res livestream camera
exactly. it takes quite a few seconds of exposure for most cameras to match a human eye's low-light perception.
this yeah 
Yes but this is still a tiny amount of light compared to the composite images and slow shutter speed images intended to capture light. It's the same technique as photographing epic pictures of stars and galaxies in the night sky.
okay but i was replying to OP saying you literally can't see them from space and you can?
you could use the same argument about the aurora borealis, just because it's darker in person doesn't mean you can't see it
I wasn't trying to be rude, sorry if I came off that way.
it's all good, i think i took your reply in the wrong way, so i'm sorry about that. I was replying to OP saying you can't see the lights from space, so I took the correction as an "um, actually you can't, you can only really see them in a camera picture", where after rereading, I think you were more responding to me responding to OP's entire post and saying that it would only look like the same brightness as the composite image with the high shutter speeds getting an exposure probably higher than the human eye could get, which is a fair assumption
that being said i just looked at the first ISS picture I posted again and you can see the metadata, which has it at a shutter speed of one second so 
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
city lights are most definitely visible from low earth orbit. astronauts aboard the ISS have said as much.
The most accurate map of light pollution regulations
whats this secret super metropole in Russia ?
Do they have a secret Megacity
You mean this 
?
It's the "shine" part in moonshine.
yeah what is that ? maybe they build a secret second soviet union , and then never told us about ?
oil rich area. probably just relatively more going on compared to the surrounding area
people irl seem to be constantly referring to this image as though it's a literal picture.
Did they forget about weather and time zones again?
This is Antarctica erasure!