
After harsh criticism, Facebook quietly pulls services from developing countries - mmaanniisshh
https://theoutline.com/post/4383/facebook-quietly-ended-free-basics-in-myanmar-and-other-countries
======
JumpCrisscross
"A couple of hours outside Yangon, the country’s largest city, U Aye Swe, an
administrator for Sin Ma Kaw village, said he was proud to oversee one of
Myanmar’s 'Muslim-free' villages, which bar Muslims from spending the night,
among other restrictions.

'Kalar are not welcome here because they are violent and they multiply like
crazy, with so many wives and children,' he said.

Mr. Aye Swe admitted he had never met a Muslim before, adding, 'I have to
thank Facebook because it is giving me the true information in Myanmar.'"

[1] [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/world/asia/myanmar-
roh...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/world/asia/myanmar-rohingya-
ethnic-cleansing.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur)

~~~
simplecomplex
Facebook has nothing to do with Sin Ma Kaw having anti-Muslim laws, and Muslim
free areas have been instituted by the Burmese army all over Myanmar since at
least 2012. Ethnic cleansing and ethno-religious conflict with Rohingya has
been happening and accelerating since before Facebook existed.

Widespread hatred for Muslims existed long before widespread usage of Facebook
in Myanmar.

There’s also no evidence Facebook pulled Free Basics because of media
pressure. Commercial reasons are obvious. Burmese now have a much larger
mobile internet and phone market with better penetration, so Facebook doesn’t
gain as much now.

~~~
azernik
> Ethnic cleansing and ethno-religious conflict with Rohingya has been
> happening and accelerating since before Facebook existed.

Just because the problem existed before Facebook doesn't mean Facebook is
completely free of responsibility. It amplifies existing prejudices in those
echo-chambers we know so well from American politics; and it provides
practical help to the organization of "grassroots" violence. From this New
York Times article on the similar Sri Lankan situation:

> “We don’t completely blame Facebook,” said Harindra Dissanayake, a
> presidential adviser in Sri Lanka. “The germs are ours, but Facebook is the
> wind, you know?”

~~~
djohnston
this argument can be made for any piece of technology humanity has ever
invented

~~~
aspaceman
which is precisely why those who create technology must consider how it will
be used.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
Yes. Roads can service vehicles used by terrorists or invading armies. Roads
are a necessary evil that should be heavily moderated, and any road makers
must be held accountable to who uses their roads.

~~~
debt
I do wonder why the Valley has such an aversion to defense contracts then if
other non-defense related “necessary” technologies cause guaranteed collateral
damage.

Is it because these technologies such as self-driving cars will only kill
people accidentally?

~~~
madhadron
That's a new thing. Silicon Valley was built on defense money after WWII. The
microcomputer and BBS world there was very connected to utopian and pacifist
ideals, which is where a lot of the anti-military ethos present today comes
from. That was later, though.

------
hw
"Users who sign up for Internet.org are required to sign up for Facebook
first, and Free Basics works by not counting Facebook use against a limited
data plan; therefore, if users do most browsing through Facebook, they can use
the “internet” essentially for free."

Sure, connecting billions of underserved people to the internet is great and
all, but it's all in the name of growing Facebook's user base and numbers. Any
philantrophic / good will effort that has a business agenda behind it can't
really be trusted. Not to mention putting Facebook as the access vehicle and
introduction to the Internet for folks who have barely or never been connected
before, is like giving drugs to a new born.

There are ways to get people connected to the Internet, without requiring them
to "browse through Facebook", for example by spending your billions and
building infrastructure. Try again, MZ.

~~~
amelius
Wouldn't it be possible to make a tunnel, such that the users can use
internet, while Facebook receives essentially zero information?

~~~
pritambaral
When FB was trying to peddle "Free Basics" in India, I looked up the rules for
a website to be supported, and FB demanded no communication between the user
and websites be encrypted.

The problem is not a technical one.

~~~
mic47
The problem was technical (due to the way it was initially built, I think it
was using facebook domain for zero rating). Currently, encryption is
supported: end-to-end on app, for mobile browser facebook apparently still
decrypts the traffic.

[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-
org/platform-t...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/platform-
technical-guidelines)

"HTTPS support

We encrypt information for Free Basics wherever possible. When people use the
Free Basics Android app, their traffic is encrypted end-to-end unless you
specify that your service should be HTTP only. For the Free Basics website in
a mobile browser, we use a “dual certificate” model to encrypt traffic between
a person's device and our servers in both directions. If your server supports
HTTPS, we will also encrypt traffic between our servers and yours. Even if
your service doesn't yet support HTTPS, where possible we will encrypt that
information between our servers and people's devices unless you ask us to not
use dual certificate HTTPS. When people use the Free Basics mobile website,
information is temporarily decrypted on our secure servers to ensure proper
functionality of the services and to avoid unexpected charges to people.

We preserve the privacy of that information while it's decrypted by only
storing the domain name of your service and the amount of data being used—the
same information that would be visible using end-to-end encryption—as well as
cookies that are stored in an encrypted and unreadable format."

------
temp-dude-87844
There's several distinct issues intermingled in this reporting, muddying the
lessons.

First, there's issue of ethnic violence in Myanmar, fueled by hate speech on
and off of Facebook. While the article acknowledges that Facebook's digital
distribution allowed hoax stories designed to incite ethnic violence to spread
very fast, it says a lot about a society when isolated instances of trolling
can lead to real people being killed. It said a lot about the US' fears and
anxieties when foreign agents were discovered to have been generating content
to amplify sectarian divisions, but it was also remarkable how similar their
products were to organic content produced by various factions of true
believers within the US. If domestic agents are posting hate speech in
Myanmar, the only explanation is that Myanmar is a sharply divided tinderbox
with many prejudices and preconceptions, and some people will latch onto a
rumour that in their mind provides the necessary justification to commit
violence and murder against another ethnicity. It's difficult for me to accept
the article's insinuation that in such an environment, Facebook must somehow
do _more_ to counteract the undercurrents of society.

Then there's the issue of Facebook and certain websites being zero-rated on
some phone networks. This is popular in countries where no organized lobby
against it exists, and has been withdrawn in some places where activist groups
have succeeded in framing it as a foreign company picking winners and losers.
Zero-rating is the new frontier in net neutrality that was punted even in the
US, where the old FCC never banned it outright, the new FCC is declining it
investigate it, and telcos are vertically merging with content providers,
which seems to lay the groundwork for more zero-rating to come.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _It 's difficult for me to accept the article's insinuation that in such an
> environment, Facebook must somehow do more to counteract the undercurrents
> of society_

Facebook went into a troubled situation to make money and made it worse. They
don’t have to solve Myanmar’s problems. But if you’re getting paid to throw
fuel on a fire, you accept liability for the houses it burns down.

~~~
kodablah
One wonders if anyone got value from it. Many realize the ratio of negative
articles to positive ones regarding Facebook domestically far outweighs the
ratio of negativity to positivity in people's lives (maybe not most here, but
in general).

I personally feel like I'd be someone unfamiliar with a situation looking down
and judging all peoples of a society as too irresponsible for Facebook, so I
don't. If anything, I think Facebook would be wise to temper growth as it is
guaranteed that no matter what happens, there is no outlet for it to be seen
as a positive by anyone whether it is or not.

(not completely excusing FB here, just not sure they are more complicit than
any other messenger...I see too few articles suggesting action taken against
the message senders)

~~~
bilbo0s
The previous junta in Myanmar would definitely have silenced the message
senders. (And the people committing the violence. And likely any people who
agreed with the people committing the violence. And probably their families
just to be sure. Etc etc etc. It wasn't a fun time to be a hater in Myanmar.)

Point is, the previous "government" kept more control over this sort of
violence and hatred, BUT... they did so at the barrel of a gun. What was the
cost there? (Does the cost even matter in view of the fact that we can now see
that they did save tens of thousands of lives? All really tough moral and
ethical questions.)

What's disheartening to me is the fact that, it seems that humans haven't
evolved past that. The only demonstrably effective method of controlling this
sort of tribalism, seems to be at the barrel of a gun.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _humans haven 't evolved past that_

As long as there is scarcity, it will be game theoretically efficient to form
violently competitive in and out groups.

That said, cynicism is misplaced. We are in a centuries-long progression of
falling per-capita rates of violent death. Perpetuating that virtuous spiral
is our tendency to shame, as this article goes, enablers of violence.

------
bagosm
Are we now accusing Facebook for not having enough censorship power?

Their response to the ordeal is way better than what I would expect, and I
blame humanity more than the platform it uses to communicate.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Are we now accusing Facebook for not having enough censorship power?_

No, we’re accusing Facebook of selling ads next to a system known to
prioritise sensational junk. When your ad platform rolls out before your
moderation system, your priorities are wrong and you are morally culpable.

There is also the problem of disparate treatment. “‘Facebook is quick on
taking down swastikas, but then they don’t get to Wirathu’s hate speech where
he’s saying Muslims are dogs,’ said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human
Rights Watch’s Asia division” [1].

[1]
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/w...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/world/asia/myanmar-
government-facebook-rohingya.amp.html)

~~~
kadenshep
They tried a moderation system. An active and passive moderation system.
Conservatives in the U.S. claimed it was "biased" so they stopped. Despite the
fact that Facebook had clear records about disinformation campaigns and how
untruthful they were. To keep the faux appearance of "intellectual curiosity"
they scrapped the moderation team and now eventually the news feed. Talk about
political correctness.

When rolling out their platform to other countries they obviously "learned"
from yesteryears experience about dealing with disinformation and decided that
doing nothing was better than doing something (no matter how perceivably
flawed, or how substantially flawed it actually was, which is just foolish).
Boy did they learn their lesson here, at the cost of other people's lives.
Fortunately, such rhetoric rarely has jarring repercussions in the U.S. (for
now).

Blame humanity. Some of the best engineers in the world tried to solve the
problem but were only meant with whining about unfairness. No doubt had they
employed enforceable, decent standards when moderating content on the
implementation of their platform for other countries it would have just been
dragged under the meaningless label of "censorship." So they didn't bother
apparently. Foolish and privileged.

But at least we treated all sides equally. It only was paid in blood.

------
skolemtotem
This article talks about two issues at the same time: the first is Facebook's
insidious "free basics" plan, which I'm 100% against, but the second is
Facebook's role as an "accelerant" in Burma, for which I can't really blame
them - censorship is pretty hard and you'll always have someone complaining.

~~~
joeblow9999
It's easy to be against "free basics" when you can afford internet access.

------
ivm
One more case of the technical progress causing a great amount of harm by
being ahead of the ethical progress.

"Educating the world" should come before "connecting the world".

~~~
kodablah
> "Educating the world" should come before "connecting the world".

That's a scary thought in several ways. At the very least it's a chicken-and-
egg conundrum. Also, it robs large groups of responsible people from
beneficial communication tools because of how it's used by others. It often
occurs with progress and advancement though, those that have it often only see
the negative side of sharing. The positive side rarely gets coverage.

~~~
ivm
"Should come before" implied shifting priorities: I didn't suggest to rob
somebody of beneficial tools but to provide at least basic training before
giving access to a potentially dangerous technology.

~~~
kodablah
These aren't technology trees you control in a game of Age of Empires where
things are all bad or all good. There is not a single door with which you
prioritize access serially. Often progress has both good and bad tenets. I am
just saying on the outside we are only made aware of the bad, so we aren't
informed enough to say what should come and in which order. In the meantime
putting artificial limits on tech only benefits the powerful who can
circumvent them.

~~~
ivm
_> we aren't informed enough to say what should come and in which order_

I'd say we are since we have artificial limits for the technologically
advanced activities like driving cars or installing electrical wiring.

------
michaelmrose
The thrust of the article kind of seems like it wishes Facebook was a better
censor so it could more aptly shape the course of the society at hand in a
better fashion and its hard to imagine a more backwards perspective.

Who can look at Zuckerberg and instead of thinking why would I want that guy
deciding the course of my nations fate preceed to lament that he doesn't do so
slightly differently.

------
simplecomplex
The article presents no evidence that Facebook ended Free Basics because of
media pressure.

The likely reason is commercial. Many of those areas now have better internet
and phone penetration, so there is less to gain for Facebook.

~~~
bronson
You're speaking of presenting no evidence...?

------
pseingatl
It's ridiculous to cut Facebook services in Bolivia because of what's
happening in Myanmar. In Bolivia, Facebook _is_ the Internet. There's an
opportunity here for a company to step into the breach. Tencent (WeChat) will
ramp up in Myanmar, but Bolivia is a little far from their normal markets.

------
jinonoel
>“Perhaps Facebook should consider not aggressively getting more people online
through its free internet program, and on its platform, until it has fully
realized the scope of various ways it impacts a society, and often the whole
nation,”

Imagine the amount of first world privilege you need to have to be able to say
this with a straight face. While we're at it how about we don't spread
education and vaccinations across developing countries as well, until we
"fully realized the scope of various ways it impacts a society, and often the
whole nation".

------
duxup
I suppose division used to grant some folks power or followers is more
profitable.

I wish we saw similar movements to bring people together that seem as
effective.

I think at one point simply being able to communicate would do the good thing,
I'm not sure that is the case... :(

------
adamnemecek
I’d love to hear someone’s analysis as to why these things happen. Like these
major, major fuck ups by some super national organizations and governments. Is
this due to scale? Lack of accountability? Perverted incentives?

I feel like some sort of super national government is needed. I hate the idea
but like there needs to be some sort of counterweight to supernational
organizations. Local governments trying to punish them is like a game of what-
a-mole.

~~~
tyfon
That would be the UN but with policing power.

I'm not opposed to the idea either. I'd also like it to hold government
ministers/officials personally responsible for a states breaches of basic
human rights. But the problem lies in it's structure, accountability and
execution. It would be very hard to make a stable system that was objective
and neither corrupt nor possible to subvert in some way.

~~~
JasonFruit
As witness the current UN: stable, but not objective, thoroughly corrupt, and
constantly subverted by pretty dictators and wannabe genocides. I think giving
an organization like that enforcement power over anything would be a disaster
— even if it weren't an affront to every sovereign nation on Earth.

~~~
XorNot
The UN is a place to talk and conduct diplomacy. It is very intentionally
intended to be the minimal, reliable set of international services needed to
try and keep nations diplomatic channels open.

