

Facebook’s Plan to Wire the World - prostoalex
http://time.com/facebook-world-plan/

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DubiousPusher
> I sometimes wonder if he might be one of the most mentally healthy people
> I’ve ever met. He’s extremely smart, but he doesn’t have any of the neurotic
> self-consciousness or self-doubt that often accompany high intelligence.

Because people that consistently check their own motives and that are
concerned their own hubris might steer them into doing something awful are
suffering from neurosis and are probably autistic. This article is little more
than verbal fellatio.

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_almosnow
Fellatio all the way, stopped reading after a few paragraphs.

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yazaddaruvala
I'd love to see a future where Facebook starts buying back its stock, goes
private and then like (but unlike) Wikipedia, becomes a for purpose company.
Maybe donation based, but more likely still ad driven. Just with no more
investors or the pressure for growth. I feel like in the long term Wall
Street's pressure for growth always kills the altruism (if any) of corporation
founders/leaders. That would be interesting to see.

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jplahn
For any cynicism this might promote regarding FB's "real" intentions,
internet.org was one of the things that I found most intriguing while
interviewing there this past fall. Several engineers that I spoke to where
genuinely excited about it (from what I could tell, obviously).

I don't know where it will end up, but it was one of those projects that I
feel like I would have been proud to work on.

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Hellbannedtwice
People in developing countries have no use for facebook. The only reason why
anyone uses facebook is to show off their socioeconomic status, which 90% of
the time is passed down by generations and cater their social circles to fit
the illusion they want to create. This is mainly a first world thing. Poor
people can't afford such exclusive form of narcissism.

Why would someone who eats nothing but rice take pictures of their meals?

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mercer
Many people, myself included, use facebook primarily for chatting with
friends, staying up to date on particular things, and organizing things with a
group. The newsfeed is all but irrelevant. I can see a use case for that in
developing countries.

Not to mention the fact that in my experience people in developing countries
are just as human as we are, and like showing off their relative superiority
to others in all but the most dire situations.

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gregpilling
Zuckerberg is in the relationship business. Free internet will increase
communication and relationships. More relationships = more business for
Facebook.Seems like a good idea to me.

Even if only a third of internet users are FBers, then increasing the users by
4.3 Billion will increase FB users by 1.4 Billion. Interesting to see the
effort for old phones.

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smutticus
The idea that this is somehow motivated by unselfish interests by Zuckerberg
or FB is laughable. It's not about getting people online, it's about getting
them on FB. It's not clear if Time is aware of this distinction. They
misinterpret this as philanthropy.

>First, you look at a particular geographical region that’s underserved,
Internet-wise, and figure out what content might be compelling enough to lure
its inhabitants online. Then you gather that content up, make sure it’s in the
right language and wrap it up in a slick app. Then you go to the local cell-
phone providers and convince as many of them as possible that they should
offer the content in your app for free, with no data charges. There you go:
anybody who has a data-capable phone has Internet access—or at least access to
a curated, walled sliver of the Internet—for free.

So you subsidize access to your app, and this counts as getting people online?
Come on Time.

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skybrian
There's a weird notion that either you're doing something completely out of
charity or completely profit-driven. But the most effective ways to change the
world tend to combine the two.

Charities and for-profit companies both need money, so they have more in
common than you think. You need to at least break even in order to scale, and
making a profit is not that different.

Assuming you start out as the CEO of Facebook and want to get everyone in the
world at least somewhat online, is there a better way to go about it?

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kristopolous
It's the wrong goal. Public sanitation, clean water, weather resistant
dwellings ... These are far more important than liking the latest look of some
celebrity.

If the focus is on the latter in the name of the former then either they are a
fool or we are thought to be.

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ndaugherty18
But wouldn't getting them to information, where they can learn about the
things you just said, also be helpful? There is limited resources for people
trying to help the world with these goals, wouldn't this at least help (not
solve)?

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cnrsvxz
There's no doubt that's true. The Global Village Construction Set[0] is a
perfect example of how to use internet access to enable hardware construction
to bring about the factors necessary to create more internet access.

But critically examining whether access to facebook is even close to the
optimal way to go about this is extremely important. Zuckerberg gains a huge
amount of power once the majority of the world is using his service -- and
this power is of a _type_ and _scope_ that we've never encountered before in
human history. There is zero doubt that he knows this, and we're kidding
ourselves by ignoring his motivations and only focusing on what appear to be
the immediate benefits.

We also cannot conflate the actual service being provided with our previous
decades of experience of a free and neutral internet. We don't _really_ know
what dynamics we're foisting on the rest of the world with a project like
this, so it's pretty important that we engage in discussions with the actual
people that it would effect.

Take, for instance, the fact that there are a few mesh networks being set up
in Africa. Do the people implementing and communicating over these networks
_want_ Zuck's facebook-internet? Have we asked? Have we considered that a
conversation with those people would lend us a perspective that's basically
mandatory if are to believe that we're actually being charitable rather than
just making ourselves feel charitable?

This is dangerous territory we're moving into, both ethically and
strategically. We're setting up power structures that we may never be able to
deconstruct.

[0]
[http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...](http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set)

