
Just Say No to Facebook's Internet.org, Says Inventor of World Wide Web - giis
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Just-say-no-to-Facebooks-Internet-org-says-inventor-of-World-Wide-Web/articleshow/49257003.cms
======
gfodor
I'd have much less of a problem with this if it wasn't being branded as
"Internet". The whole premise of the Internet is that it's, well, the
Internet. As in, a singular global network of connected machines.

If they want to launch FacebookNet or MiniNet or FooNet or whatever, more
power to them, but this isn't the Internet and shouldn't be branded as such.

~~~
userbinator
Reminds me of this...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_(network)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_\(network\))

 _Upon a request, whole websites may be downloaded from the Internet, undergo
review and censorship, and be published on Kwangmyong_

------
exacube
Why are people so insistent that Facebook's Internet.org is a bad thing? Is no
internet really better than limited internet? These people have almost no
internet right now. A lot of these countries can now use Google and Wikipedia.
It's either total freedom for free, or no freedom at all?

~~~
deftnerd
In my opinion, no internet is better than a limited internet. With no
internet, people WANT the internet very badly. With no internet, ambitious
entrepreneurs see a market willing to pay for their services.

No internet births wireless ISP's and Co-op internet and mobile providers.

If there is a free, but limited, internet then customers might not be willing
to pay money for internet service anymore and there won't be enough demand for
a business to try to bring real internet to those areas.

~~~
sa1
> In my opinion, no internet is better than a limited internet.

All of the proposed charitable objectives(as opposed to Facebook's own
interests) would be served by just providing free internet with a limited data
cap.

Customers would want more data badly, local entrepreneurs would be free to
make any kind of app to serve the poor, rather than being restricted by
Facebook's guidelines, and can even be not disallowed to compete with
Facebook.

The problem with internet connectivity in India is that rural areas do not
have good coverage or fiber or even copper. Internet.org doesn't address any
of this, so this is NOT aimed at the poor.

It is instead aimed at teenagers, who can't pay for their own data packs yet,
but still have access to smartphones. Facebook is trying to ensure that no
startup ever takes mindshare away from Facebook.

~~~
exacube
I don't know if this is practically true for a lot of these countries. In a
lot of these countries, a vast majority of the population doesn't have easy
education, and are often poor. Countries like India have a much better
percentage (but still small) of the population that can afford the internet,
that ISPs are incentivized to grow and expand. Countries like Zambia -- not so
much (I don't actually know if internet.org is in Zambia). I don't know that a
small business in Zambia has the capital to expand considering how many people
can afford it.

~~~
sa1
Interesting question.

Should foreign companies be allowed to create monopolies, because potential
local competitors do not have enough capital currently?

I guess the obvious answer is no, but its still an interesting line of
discussion.

------
ape4
Facebook is a parasite of the real internet. Videos from other sites are
embedded in your Facebook feed. You watch them on Facebook, comment on
Facebook.

~~~
krapp
That's not parasitism, embedding content is the way the "real internet" is
supposed to work. And all of that embedded content on Facebook links back to
the original site, anyway. People add meta tags and social graph tags to their
sites for a reason.

And anyway, that seems an odd criticism to make on a forum built around the
same basic principle - people link content here, and discuss it here as well.

~~~
pen2l
It's parasitic because of its particular approach. For example, it could embed
youtube videos... so that the real creators get their pay, but no, Facebook
would rather that the videos be Facebook videos, thereby the original creator
getting zero profit from his hard work.

See
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6A1Lt0kvMA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6A1Lt0kvMA)
for a first-hand account of the situation.

------
mtgx
What bothered me most about some recent headlines was that they kept saying
how Zuckerberg is trying to bring the "Internet" to Africa and whatnot, when
in fact they were referring to "Internet.org", i.e. only about 50 websites of
the whole World Wide Web - 50 websites that are completely "curated", per the
local governments' wishes. Is that the kind of "Internet" we want the other
2-3 billion people to get?

If Zuckerberg actually felt as philanthropic as he pretends to be, he should
try to bring the _real_ Internet to everyone, with no other hidden agendas (he
is trying to portray Internet.org as a philanthropic thing not as a Facebook
global domination strategy, after all).

~~~
benwerd
I agree with you, but also: right now Facebook is effectively the main web
browser for millions and millions of people. Even without Internet.org, those
50 websites are all a lot of people see. How can we change this model in a
realistic, attractive, non-techno-utopian way?

(Also, in light of Internet.org, Instant Articles seem like a pretty
democratic thing to do - bringing external content that would otherwise be
blocked into this context.)

~~~
thrownaway2424
Isn't Google's approach "realistic"? They're just pulling fiber in Africa,
without walled gardens. They now have better networks in Uganda than we have
in the Bay Area.

[https://www.google.com/get/projectlink/](https://www.google.com/get/projectlink/)

~~~
jzd
Despite a lot of fiber in Africa, connectivity is hampered by ISPs refusing to
pay for bandwidth, ultimately resulting in super slow connection speeds and
horrible latency.

------
dheera
So in China, Iran et al., you can get past censorship with VPNs. If I
understand this correctly, China's GFW blocks about maybe 20% of the internet,
while Facebook's proposed free ISP blocks perhaps 90%.

Perhaps there's room within the remaining 10% to create a VPN and fudge access
to the free internet? Perhaps using TCP-over-DNS, or even something ridiculous
like TCP-over-Facebook-chat?

------
newsignup
This thread is interesting, finally people have started to complain that they
are only against the name instead of saying that internet.org will skew the
market (which it might).

This shift of thinking is vividly interesting, it is quite possible that next
time people won't object.

~~~
sa1
This line of thinking is dangerous too, since Facebook has already changed the
name. It's now called Free Basics by Facebook.

However, it is still a limited internet because it runs on top of IP networks
provided by existing ISPs, who are using public spectrum. This public spectrum
was auctioned for telecom and Internet services, the public and regulators
still need to look at how this will skew the market and competition.

------
xorcist
I'd like to see Wikipedia, or some other project that is in on this, to launch
some subversive open proxy functionality in this becomes reality.

I understand it can't happen like that, but you get the general idea.
(Something like "general purpose computing FTW". One can dream, right?)

------
jobeirne
The sense of entitlement here is amazing. Is dying of thirst really preferable
to a free Coke?

~~~
ceras
Apparently it is when someone _else_ is dying for _your_ free Coke.

------
humble_dev
It's still free, no one is forced to use this. Companies exists to make a
profit, if Facebook offers something for free of course it's not driven by
philanthropy. I believe internet.org is better than no internet at all.
Hopefully people in developing countries will be offered alternative in the
near future but to get normal internet they need to earn enough to pay for it
- internet.org is free with means people using it are the product.

~~~
stplsd
Well, internet.org is non-profit organisation, so...

~~~
Crito
> non-profit organisation

What do _you_ think that means?

I don't want you to look up a definition for me _(I can do that myself after
all)_ , I want you to describe what that concept makes _you_ think and feel.

------
evv
Edit: Disclosure: I work for Facebook, but not with Internet.org. I'm not
aware of any master plan Zuckerberg has for it, other than spreading internet
usage

I'm surprised that Berners-Lee is taking this stance. If anyone, he should
understand the critical importance of access to basic information and
communication. Connectivity is a cornerstone for developing nations and
allowing young minds to prosper. I feel this is a basic human right, but over
half of the world's population is not online. They cannot afford it or they do
not see the value it provides.

It is grossly presumptuous to say that a small subset of the internet is worse
than no internet access at all. The pure internet is obviously better than
internet.org. Once people can see the vastness of the internet, nobody will
want to be stuck behind a firewall.

Tim Berners-Lee would rather impoverished people have no access to
connectivity rather than access to Facebook's watered-down version. He wants
them to reject and deny one of the most important things they now have access
to. Would he also tell starving children to turn away food donations that are
not organic? I guess he would tell them to "Just say no"

~~~
skymt
It would be good if you would mention that you work for Facebook when you
enter this kind of discussion. That fact colors your argument.

~~~
evv
Edited in that disclosure at the top. I am a stockholder, and I agree that
colors the arguments. Honestly I didn't feel that it was very relevant because
I don't work very closely with internet.org, and I don't think they have any
secrets.

------
DrFunke
The question being asked here is if Internet.org’s curated content negates
access itself. Given the recent, unprecedented restructuring in mobile ads,
maybe there’s a better question: Does Facebook really believe the internet can
be restricted to 50 sites?

------
start-up-woes
People should have learnt by now to stop resisting change. It will happen
eventually.

------
reagency
Before you say No to I.org, propose something better to say Yes to.

~~~
sa1
Internet.org brings no new infrastructure. It is not easier to bring to the
poor by alternative infrastructure.

Free neutral Internet with a small data cap is much better than this, if you
want to give 'some' Internet to the poor. "No internet" vs "subset of
Internet" is a glaring false dichotomy if I ever saw one.

------
astaroth360
Way to make something that should be philanthropy at its finest into
opportunism Mark Zuckerberg. What a dick.

------
rasz_pl
When asked to elaborate Tim Berners-Lee replied "not enough DRM for my
liking".

------
JesperRavn
I hope this gives some pause for people who advocate the XKCD line on free
speech[0]. While not every platform should be required to host every kind of
content, when a platform becomes sufficiently dominant, its ability to censor
content becomes a free speech issue.

[0] [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

~~~
0xcde4c3db
While you bring up a valid issue (per e.g. [1]), it's not clear to me what
you're trying to say about it. Even less clear to me is how any sort of
coherent legal regime would be imposed on something like Internet.org, which
presumably has access to sufficient resources to carve up its legal entities
into the tastiest possible slices (such that e.g. the local entities only run
the base stations while content approval decisions are ostensibly made by a
mailbox in Panama or whatever).

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins)

~~~
JesperRavn
I wasn't saying that Facebook should be regulated like shopping malls. I was
saying that people who say that _private_ censorship is not problematic, do
not have an answer for things like internet.org. Facebook are legally free to
set up programs like this, but people are also right to criticize Facebook for
setting up a system that takes away from the freedom of the open internet. The
shallow analysis of the XKCD comic ignores these issues, yet I often see that
comic posted when people complain about left wing censorship online.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
A daily comic isn't the medium that one usually chooses for subtlety or depth.
A lot of people complaining about "left-wing censorship" (or "right-wing
censorship", for that matter) are in serious need of a clue-by-four and
wouldn't bother reading a deep analysis if it were given to them.

~~~
JesperRavn
But people complaining about "corporate censorship" are smart well informed
people? How is internet.org controlling what website people get to see
different from, for example, YouTube controlling which videos people get to
see? And how are the whims of whoever will control or influence internet.org
different from the (mostly left wing) groups that (sometimes successfully)
pressure companies to remove material from their websites.

