
Facebook is talking to the White House about giving away ‘free’ Internet - af16090
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/10/06/facebook-is-talking-to-the-white-house-about-giving-you-free-internet-heres-why-that-may-be-controversial/
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dopamean
I don't want free internet. I'm not willing to concede whatever it is facebook
wants in order for it to be free. We already have problems with ISPs injecting
crap into requests. I don't trust facebook to provide something that crucial
without screwing me over somehow.

~~~
JTon
Agreed. But perhaps it's worth it for people who are unable or struggle to
afford internet?

~~~
krapp
No. Facebook engages in propaganda and psychological manipulation. It would be
better for those people to avoid the internet altogether than for their only
connection to it to be an NSA Skinner box designed to distort their worldview,
profile them and every one they know, and mine their identities for profit.

edit: ok, "NSA Skinner box" may be a bit hyperbolic, but Facebook is still a
PRISM participant that engages in emotional manipulation and ideological
filtering, and they have a deeply vested interest in surveillance, profiling
and correlating user data.

Why would anyone trust them to act as a gateway for the internet? Ever?

~~~
ythl
> Facebook engages in propaganda and psychological manipulation.

Wasn't Facebook caught scrubbing positive conservative news stories in the
past? I could see secret deals between facebook and political parties
regarding the consumers of their "free" internet.

~~~
krapp
Which they're within their rights to do, as a company. They can distort your
newsfeed any way they want, they don't have to be impartial or fair.

Which is why they shouldn't be trusted as if they were a neutral party
providing a utility - they're demonstrably not. Even if they _intended_ to be,
the temptation to wield the power they have towards some financial or
political end would inevitably be too great to resist.

~~~
jsprogrammer
A news service, such as a newsfeed, has a duty to be impartial by virtue of
naming itself news unless there is a real contract with the user stating
alternative duties.

~~~
nathancahill
..he typed on Hacker _News_ , a newsfeed actively censored by YC against
negative news about companies that they invest in.

~~~
jsprogrammer
If you're good, you can still get your information through.

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x1798DE
Why is it "'free' internet"? I would think that it should be "free
'internet'", since the issue isn't that there's a hidden price, but that it's
not really the internet.

~~~
jwtadvice
The hidden price is advertising, platform lock-in, surveillance-as-a-service
and propaganda-as-a-service.

So maybe "'free' 'internet'".

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sumitgt
Wow, India rejected this specifically because of the concerns surrounding net-
neutrality. I am surprised they are trying this in the US.

~~~
subie
Surprised? I'd guess it would be easier to pass it here.

~~~
sumitgt
On second thoughts, yes.

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eggie
I find it hard to believe that monopolistic control of the media is good for
the happiness of people in totalitarian regimes. By analogy I think the
maintenance of the public space in common is important for the good of all.
Projects like this run up against that need, and should be blocked when
promoted by profit or power-seeking entities.

Net neutrality aside, let's consider the image promoted by the company. It is
brazenly false advertising. A product where the user is made to do useful work
for the company should cannot possibly be free to that person.

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keyboardhitter
I wonder if Zuckerberg would be helping with the current white house
initiative, or if he wants to deploy his own 'free' internet?

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/09/21/new-steps-
deliver...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/09/21/new-steps-deliver-high-
speed-broadband-across-united-states)

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bdrool
Free internet, or just free Facebook (plus a few token sites to look like
they're trying)?

Seriously, is there anyone left who isn't fully aware this is just a ploy to
create more lock-in and entrenchment, disguised as charity?

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angryredblock
What? A megacorp trying to erode net neutrality under the guise of
philanthropy? Shocking.

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Jade_Jet
And of course Facebook is considered a basic internet necessity by Facebook. I
could potentially understand an argument for .gov addresses (still would be
against it) but this is just a weakly veiled attempt at forcing Facebook down
more people's throats. Sadly I wouldn't be surprised when this or something
like it becomes a reality.

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shkkmo
I found this line intriguing:

> In the wake of the uproar, Facebook updated its approach to Free Basics. It
> currently allows any third-party organization to offer its services as part
> of the program, provided that the organization's developers abide by terms
> that, for example, prohibit the use of high-definition images or video that
> could consume a great deal of mobile data.

So I took a look at [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-
org/participat...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-
org/participation-guidelines)

These jump out at me:

>Your site(s) may be proxied to make your content available through Free
Basics. You can let us know that you want to pull your site(s) from Free
Basics at any time, but because we may need to make product and marketing
adjustments, we may require 60 days from receipt of your notice to transition
gracefully.

>In order for your content to be proxied as described above, your URLs may be
re-written and embedded content (like javascript and content originating from
another domain) removed. In addition, secure content is not supported and may
not load.

Then looking deeper at the technical guidelines:
[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.

So anybody using 'Free Basics' is giving Facebook full access to their
encrypted data. That seems like significantly more than just the 'not using
high-definition images or video' claim the article makes.

~~~
shkkmo
And does:

>Any data (e.g., proxy requests) or reporting we provide is deemed Facebook
confidential information and cannot be used by you for any advertising
purposes or shared with third parties.

Mean that facebook now owns your request logs and you can't share them with
third parties?

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trengrj
We need to be absolutely strict on net neutrality and zero rating or we will
end up with something a lot worse than Facebooks "free" internet.

It is hard to argue against free Netflix etc but the end goal of these
activities is clearly to centralise the internet (targeting poorer /
disadvantaged people first), and turn the internet into a modern television-
like propaganda machine.

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pessimizer
This reeks of bipartisanship; either major presidential candidate will help
push this if elected. Facebook is 99% likely to be able and 100% likely to be
willing to book either of them for speeches once they're out of office. No
threat of an "anti-colonial" mindset amongst US elites.

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resonantjacket5
Ive been thinking about it and Im fine with ""Free Basics"" of lets say
wikipedia or some city/ weather.org websites or other Non-profits.

However I have no idea why Facebook should be the gatekeeper nor why Facebook
or any large corporation should be on Free Basics.

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joelrunyon
This was the plot of Kingsmen. It didn't turn out too well...

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ikeboy
Ring plus and Freedompop and T-Mobile already offer basic free internet for
various amounts of data. I don't see a need for this.

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Overtonwindow
Didn't this fail in India?

~~~
daveloyall
Psst.. it mentions that in the article you are commenting on...

~~~
Overtonwindow
Sotto voce: I'm being sarcastically rhetorical. ;-)

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daveloyall
Uh-oh, the average USAmerican probably doesn't know what "If you aren't paying
for it, you're the product" means. :/

