
Facebook opens up Internet.org amidst net neutrality row - denzil_correa
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32580586
======
spenvo
\- HTTPS is a premium feature not included in Internet.org's package...

\- Internet services/sites are whitelisted - essentially by Facebook.

\- ISP tracking is baked into consumers' access. (Like Verizon's SuperCookies,
which have just been rolled back for US consumers.)

\- Select developers _get_ to develop for the web ... but based off permission
from higher ups. Because we all trust Facebook as a caretaker of a dev
platform... we already know there will arbitrary rate-limiting for these devs.

The best part of Facebook's story was that Zuck _didn 't_ need permission to
build it. How ironic...

Facebook has hijacked the word "Internet" for this initiative.

At best this is a whitewashed and severely limited offering that works against
the push for _real_ Internet access. And it sets all of the worst kinds of
precedents for first-time users across the world.

As for the PR spin around this campaign, some words that come to mind:
"disingenuous", "delusional".

[http://www.medianama.com/2015/05/223-facebooks-internet-
org-...](http://www.medianama.com/2015/05/223-facebooks-internet-org-privacy/)

~~~
x0x0
A free, ad-supported offering has limitations and appears to serve the
advertiser, not the "user"? Cue internet outrage!

    
    
       If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product 
       being sold. -- blue_beetle on mefi
    

It never gets less remarkable that people don't understand that.

~~~
formatjam
I don't think this is the case here. This is a freemium model, hoping the
people CAN afford internet but do not know they NEED it will pay for the
normal services with the operator.

------
ShirsenduK
\- No HTTPs \- FB says it will track and use the data \- FB approval process
\- FB owns/gets to reuse the content \- Telco can shutdown service if app use
increases

Are we doing enough to give the underprivileged access to Internet? This is
not the internet, this is a f'ing monetisation channel!

------
_greim_
> But Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg said it was "not sustainable to offer
> the whole internet for free".

I think that's exactly what they should do, if they're serious about this:
just find a way to offer everyone the whole internet for free. If something
must be compromised, then compromise speed, not access to sites. Sites that
want to reach poor people would just have to practice draconian bandwidth
discipline. At least that way, sites could opt in on their own terms, rather
than having to kowtow to some consortium of rich people.

~~~
Quanticles
Everyone is complaining - why don't other people offer free internet? Just do
it yourself

~~~
rabbyte
Should we not discuss our concerns for how people around the world connect to
the same network? There are a number of people working on this problem, people
who can handle the funding and work involved, but that still leaves room for
us to comment on policy that will shape the way large populations interact
with the rest of the world.

------
aravindet
> But Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg said it was "not sustainable to offer
> the whole internet for free".

Quite plainly, that's false. 1Mb of an internet.org site costs operators
exactly the same to carry as 1Mb of some other website.

Operators obviously have some average Mbs/user/month figure that they're
willing to bundle as internet.org, expecting to recover this from the people
who upgrade to a full internet plan. Whatever this number is, users can also
be limited to this with a data cap, allowing them to There would then be no
net neutrality concerns at all.

Facebook could continue to have the internet.org app, their proxy server, and
they could be displayed as a default to the people on this plan. Those users
would prefer them (they would really need to conserve data). It could even
warn people about data consumption when they open the browser, as long as
there is an option to click through. None of those things violate net
neutrality, and they will keep 99% of users within the internet.org app.

Facebook has never said why they cannot do this, other than offering hand-wavy
"poor people don't understand data caps because they don't know what megabytes
are". This is false. Anyone who has a prepaid phone connection in, say, India
understands how to navigate the bewildering complexity of phone plans (pay Rs.
30 to decrease the cost of calls by 50% between 10pm and 6am for 30 days). As
long as there is some way for users to check how many MBs they have left, they
will be fine.

I suspect that the real reason facebook opposes this is that they want to use
their position as gatekeeper to shut out competition. If these "starter
internet plans" operated as I described, Google will soon have its own
"Google+ zero" built into Android.

Thanks to Android, Google enjoys unassailable market power as a gatekeeper on
the device. The only way facebook can close that gap is by becoming the
gatekeeper at the network level, which requires that net neutrality be
subverted.

------
talwai
I love to demonize big tech as much as the next guy, but I really think the
public consensus in India against Internet.org is inherently biased. The
catalyst for the movement was a Youtube video. The chosen method of lodging
protest was via email. AIB themselves would not be the thought leaders they
are today if internet access was restricted to them. Every activist has been,
by definition, in a position of privilege with respect to internet access. It
seems we are cautiously ignoring the situation of the millions who have not
had internet penetration till date and to whom the internet is broadly
synonymous with "major" services like Facebook and Wikipedia. I am not in
favor of Facebook forming their own internet cartel and I think anti-trust
laws should work tirelessly to prevent that. But I think if you gave the
average unconnected Indian a choice between no internet on ideological
principles, and free internet, but restricted to Facebook and a few other
services, they would choose connectivity any day of the week

~~~
cmadan
> But I think if you gave the average unconnected Indian a choice between no
> internet on ideological principles, and free internet, but restricted to
> Facebook and a few other services, they would choose connectivity any day of
> the week

Sure they would. Does that mean it is good for the ecosystem on the whole? No.

80% of internet.org users are users with existing data plans. How hard do you
think it is to get someone switch over from free to paid? Even for a person of
privilege, he will prefer a free meal over a paid meal unless there is a huge
difference in quality of a free meal (e.g. bread) vs. paid plan (e.g. steak).
Considering that only well capitalised companies can provide free meals, you
have just made the uphill battle that startups everyday fight against BigCos
into a vertical slope.

It doesn't have to be like this. The Delhi Government is going to soon roll
out a free neutral Internet covering large parts of the city. There are many
models of free Internet implemented all over the world.

We'll get connectivity to the millions, but it won't be on Facebook terms -
it'll be on the terms as decided by a democratically elected nation.

------
bugsmasher
On Zuckerberg's understanding of Net Neutrality and User Privacy, I'd like to
quote Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something,
when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Zuck has inadvertently admitted Internet-Org makes money by trading User
Privacy. (Could the NSA be involved? Just asking) Wouldn't it be a good idea
for a company like Facebook to make an entire generation of internet users
believe that Privacy is not an option.

On April 17th, Zuck said they consult "Local Governments" to decide services
(See his comment here during the QnA he had about Internet-Org:
[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102033678947881?commen...](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102033678947881?comment_id=10102033689272191&reply_comment_id=10102033729885801&total_comments=281&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D)).
Now he's saying Facebook and Telcos will decide which services to allow. Was
he lying through his teeth during the QnA?

And please watch this Internet-Org ad broadcast in India -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s390lZ5UXc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s390lZ5UXc4).
Kindly enlighten me about who are they marketing it to?

I really respect Facebook and Zuck for their technological, business and
charitable achievements. But it lessens with every passing day as Zuck hides
an anti-Net Neutrality, anti-competitive and anti-privacy practice by giving
it a false PR spin.

------
smutticus
I'm reminded of the old 'competitors' to the Internet that existed in the
early 1990's. Remember Prodigy, or AoL?

~~~
hullo
Yes. And one important difference, you had to pay for those. (Some still are.)

------
chdir
I'll campaign for them if they put this in the tag line: "Free internet at the
cost of your privacy". And change the domain from "internet.org" to "3rd-
world-sucker-book.com" or something. I abhor the "social good" PR spin that
Facebook is giving to this initiative. Otherwise, I'm all for providing
connectivity to the billions. Just skip the charade. The whole initiative is a
great pun on the word "free"

In the real world, this task should be best left to organizations that are
truly working to keep the internet free & open (like mozilla).

------
pen2l
> Facebook says it will allow more websites and other online services to join
> its "free mobile data" Internet.org scheme.

Great, so now other few big portals like Yahoo can also be accessed for
"free". And Facebook will probably let you give their site for "free"... if
you pay Facebook some $. Basically it always was clever business, is, and will
be. Maybe it'd be a more palatable offering if Zuckerberg was more honest, if
FB didn't masquerade internet.org as Zuck's blessing to humanity.

~~~
lilfrost
They are providing people who do not have internet with internet. They are
giving people a useful service they did not have before for free. They aren't
making people use the service or pay anything for it. I don't see a negative.

~~~
yarrel
They are not providing the Internet to people who do not have the Internet.
They are providing a couple of websites in a walled garden.

They are not giving people a useful service that they did not have before,
they are giving people a deliberately broken and compromised system.

They are not giving it to people for free, they are making people pay with
their data and security.

As for not forcing people to use it, there's a pretty strong push to get
people to use it and a commercial monopoly in a given market is often a
disincentive to new entrants.

Those are some of the negatives.

------
_greim_

        If you would just set me and my friends up as dictators,
        then we'd build a faux democracy and call it
        totalandcompletefreedom.org. Soon, everyone will benefit
        from the fake freedom and realize how amazing it is to
        be free.

------
Cenk
[https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/05/announcing-the-
internet...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/05/announcing-the-internet-org-
platform/)

------
funkyy
I am afraid that Mark and few others start to live up to their stereotype.

I am surprised how sneaky is their buisness and how far in the future they
plan.

------
wnevets
is bad internet really worse than no internet? Sounds like people are letting
perfect getting in the way of good enough.

~~~
aravindet
It isn't bad Internet. It is a proprietary network like AOL and CompuServe,
and not the Internet at all. The name is intentionally misleading.

Allowing such proprietary networks to run over public radio spectrum causes
harm to the real internet - and not just by slowing it down and making it more
expensive.

The main long-term harm is the stifling effect on innovation, especially in
businesses that rely on network effects: Even if you are a regular internet
user, but some of your friends are on internet.org, you can only use
communication, collaboration or social networking apps that are on
internet.org. Even in other categories of apps, you might only hear about
those that are on internet.org.

This means that we will move from an economy where end users decide which apps
get popular, to one where facebook picks the winners.

This is scary.

~~~
wnevets
If the real internet is inherently better than this aol 2.0, shouldn't simple
market forces choose the internet as the winner?

~~~
jace
Wireless spectrum is a scarce public resource, allocated by government
license, effectively granting the telco a monopoly. Simple market forces don't
apply here.

------
jasonkester
So to paraphrase...

Facebook: here's some free internet.

Angry people: Boo! Not enough free internet!!!

See also every free app in every App Store. It seems that this is just wired
into human nature.

~~~
flycaliguy
Your paraphrase is missing the other times white people showed up and built
stuff "for them".

------
diminoten
Good -- some Internet is better than no Internet, and if it takes a mountain
of ads to get that to folks, so be it.

~~~
thrownaway122
No this is not Internet. It is AOL v2. It could well mean that people never
get any internet.

~~~
diminoten
Semantics. internet.org gives folks the ability to connect on a global scale
with others.

You would take that away from them, because it doesn't fit what you understand
about how a set of computers should communicate?

~~~
cazum
The semantics are important. This could very well mean that those people won't
get proper internet because "hey, what do you need that for, you've got
internet.org!"

I understand the "some internet is better than none" but this isn't the
internet. This is internet.org

On top of that, it means that Facebook gets to micromanage a populations
internet usage, what they can and cannot see, with no legal oversight because
"were doing you a favour!"

~~~
diminoten2
So you would literally go to these people and tell them they are going to
continue to not have any way of communicating with one another or others
throughout the world because what they're being offered isn't the "real"
Internet?

You would tell them they must continue to live isolated from one another and
the rest of the world? You'd deny them access to the single greatest invention
humanity has _ever_ come up with because it doesn't fit your ideology?

~~~
yarrel
But this isn't access to the single greatest invention humanity has ever come
up with. It's a brand that takes its name and applies it to a surveillance
monopoly.

It's internet.org that's denying people access to the Internet, not people
pointing this fact out.

~~~
diminoten3
Internet.org _is_ a set of interconnected computers. You want to get political
and philosophical about what is and isn't the Internet, but Mumtaz in
Bangalore wants to send $5 to his wife, and doesn't get to do that unless
internet.org exists.

~~~
jace
Mumtaz is a female name. And since that suggests you aren't very familiar with
India, I'll recommend not assuming that Internet.org is the only way people
are going to get Internet.

It's not even taken seriously in India and got dragged into this debate only
because of other proposals that are actually, intentionally malicious.

~~~
diminoten
I work with a Mumtaz, are you telling me he's a lady?

