
Facebook Leads an Effort to Lower Barriers to Internet Access - goatslacker
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/technology/facebook-leads-an-effort-to-lower-barriers-to-internet-access.html
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nivla
Sad to see a lot of people being cynical about this just because Facebook is
taking the lead. Facebook may have personal interest in it but if the global
good is greater, we must learn to be appreciative. Most discoveries and
inventions, heck even the space race dint start out of the goodness of heart;
but aren't we glad they did? I am all up for anything that brings people new
source of information. Atleast its better than sitting in a corner and
grunting how we don't have Google Fiber or how a 1px scroller disrupts the
workflow while failing to realize that 2/3rds of the world has never visited a
single webpage in their life.

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samstave
FB is a front for the NSA at this point. Not willingly, perhaps, but by-proxy

~~~
chucknthem
You might as well say the internet is a front for the NSA

~~~
samstave
Well, you're correct - however, nobody aggregates the non-US userbase better,
more accurately and so cleanly as FB - with 80%++ of their users non-US-based,
they are ___THE_ __goldmine for the NSA.

With the new FB policy office in DC, I am sure they are nice and comfy - as
well as with their Security head from NSA-FB-NSA (along with all the other
spooks FB has) -- its damn clear what is going on.

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quink
tl;dr: Zuckerberg says "Screw net neutrality, I've got dibs on billions of
people for my walled garden."

> Twitter ... has struck its own deals ... in more than 100 countries to offer
> some free Twitter access; ... it bundled free Facebook access with some of
> its Asha feature phones.; Globe Telecom, has used free Twitter, Facebook or
> Google access

> "if you can afford a phone, I think it would be really good for you to have
> access to the Internet."

Yet... it seems like they're equating Twitter, Facebook and Google to "The
Internet".

> Cut the cost of providing mobile Internet services to 1 percent of its
> current level within five to 10 years by improving the efficiency of
> Internet networks and mobile phone software.

Now how that metric is measured, I'd like to know. In countries with $10 a
month plans, does that mean a 10 cent a month plan instead? Somehow I don't
think so. Or do they mean to say by that that Google, Twitter and Facebook
will be quota-free?

> Facebook is already working on techniques to reduce the average amount of
> data used by its Android mobile app from the current 12 megabytes a day to 1
> megabyte without users noticing.

That seems like more of an incentive on carriers to make Facebook quota free
as much as anything else... I mean what good is that if you aren't going to:

> tackle some thorny infrastructure issues that are huge barriers in the
> developing world, particularly the long-distance transmission of data to
> far-flung places.

So, this is no Loon. What is this then?

> “We’re focused on it more because we think it’s something good for the
> world,” he said, “rather than something that is going to be really amazing
> for our profits.”

Being the founder of a publicly traded company that had a big IPO, I'm sure
the emphasis is on "really amazing for our profits". Having access to
Facebook, even at the detriment of other services, being something good for
the world apparently is now uncontroversial enough that even the NY Times
doesn't report critically.

This is how net neutrality dies, people. This is how the World Wide Web
disappears into a rapidly diminishing sea of walled gardens. This is, unlike
Loon, really more about ensuring that the next billions of people on the web
never consider net neutrality as natural thing.

~~~
debt
Looks like it's more about making the internet more accessible to people
without it.

~~~
quink
> However, the Internet.org team does not plan to tackle some thorny
> infrastructure issues that are huge barriers in the developing world,
> particularly the long-distance transmission of data to far-flung places.

The only way this initiative will therefore accomplish access to the Internet
to people without it seems to be in increasing the profit margin to the local
telco. How? Through vertical integration. What does that mean? Get free
Facebook with your phone. What's so bad about that? Goodbye, net neutrality in
developing countries.

I'm leaving the morality judgment for others, and it's far from
straightforward that this is a bad thing. But I'm rather more inspired by
Google's Loon as actually having a positive impact on the developing world
than this here thing.

Basically, 3G, 4G, the lot, is no good for large amounts of data. The
percentage of mobile traffic of total traffic is actually dropping here in
Australia - mobile data is being thrashed by fixed line services. Fixed line
is growing 50% while mobile data would 10% every 6 months. And Loon acts more
like a fixed line service than mobile data.

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josh2600
To be frank, that has a lot to do with the shifting Australian regulatory
conditions, specifically deregulation. Your fixed line services, at the
national level, are still relatively small. What you're referring to is what
we call Last mile connectivity and competing exchanges.

In reality, there aren't very many transcontinental cables being laid right
now because the ROI is greater than 30 years in most cases.

Basically my point is this: your fixed line services are growing at a fast
rate because they're just now being opened to competition, but, over time,
like the rest of the developed world, wireless networks will subsume your
fixed line services.

Just my opinion and my two cents from talking to Aussie Telcos.

Source: I'm a telecom geek.

~~~
quink
> like the rest of the developed world, wireless networks will subsume your
> fixed line services.

[http://abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Products/8153.0~December...](http://abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Products/8153.0~December+2012~Chapter~Volume+of+data+downloaded?OpenDocument)

You sure about that? Plus, how are you going to transmit 1 Gbps with an
acceptable level of contention, with a very very thin wall or two in the way
over any distance greater than let's say a hundred metres?

Plus, this deregulation that you speak of, the national telco was being
privatised starting in 1997, and deregulation happened before that even.
Broadband ISPs have been around forever, and their DSLAMs for more than a
decade too.

> Your fixed line services, at the national level, are still relatively small.

In some areas, we've got three networks running to the same premises. Fixed
line services are near enough fully built out and have been forever.

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oscargrouch
Those people probably dont have any internet, because:

1 - they dont have jobs and lack of money

2 - they are still strugling for food security

3 - their village or city have no energy

4 - they are maybe even without water

5 - they maybe have a low level education

so if they are so good and passionate about helping people all over the world,
and they are insanelly wealthy people why they also dont make a bigger plan..

Thats one of the reasons i really admire bill gates right now.. he spend his
fortune for a real common good..

while what facebook and others are doing is not bad at all, on the contrary
can be a good thing.. what piss me off is that sort of marketing bullshit,
like if we are stupid people that would buy that is "all for the common good,
rainbows and unicorns"

Do it, show the good side of it, but also show the real reasoning behind it

A human being asking himself, about what he could do to help improve the life
of others.. would get a lot of answers to start with but in none of those
cases it would start with "extend the internet to the people that can barelly
read so they can share their plate without any food in it for lunch time"

~~~
dalek_cannes
Firstly, Bill Gates is being a philanthropist with the billions he earned by
running a lot of other entrepreneurs to the ground. But if he's had a change
of heart, then I applaud him, even though it doesn't absolve him of what he
did in the past.

Secondly, I'm under no illusions about FB's motives, but if this can bring
educational resources such as Khan Academy to more people in developing
countries, I'm for it. The worst thing you can do to developing nations is to
give them handouts (see: Africa). There will be no permanent progress without
education.

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smutticus
Correction: "Facebook lead initiative to bring Facebook to everyone."

~~~
dxm
Correction: "Facebook lead initiative to bring advertising to everyone."

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danenania
Quite a high percentage of the people in the world without internet access
live under governments with poor human rights records. In this new age of
massive unscrupulous spying and data mining by governments, bringing the
internet to new populations without making sure they understand the risks
makes them vulnerable to unprecedented levels of tyranny.

Any initiative that tries to expand internet access without addressing these
basic moral issues is suspect, and we obviously aren't going to see
responsible behavior on this front from the likes of Facebook.

~~~
annnnd
One could argue that even those in the USA do not understand or cannot avoid
these risks, making them (as you said) "vulnerable to unprecedented levels of
tyranny".

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zmmmmm
Google seems to be conspicuously absent.

It's terrible to be cynical, but can't help feeling like this is just a
reaction to project loon. Basically a banding together of companies who might
see Loon as a threat, to offer some kind of alternative that they are in
control of instead of Google.

However unlike Loon, reading the entire page I can't see anything solid they
will actually do - develop better compression algorithms? Introduce "business
models"? That's it? It sounds suspiciously weak.

~~~
ihsw
Facebook is an investor in the Asia Pacific Gateway[1], and, despite the
minuscule size of the Wikipedia article, it stands to reason that the project
will be very big for the SEA region.

Their interest in providing internet to as many people as possible isn't new,
however Facebook's "internet for everybody" initiative is indeed unexpected.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Pacific_Gateway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Pacific_Gateway)

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ianstallings
Every one of us. Everywhere. C̶o̶n̶n̶e̶c̶t̶e̶d̶[Monitored].

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cromwellian
These proposals look too vague / generic. There's already a lot of people who
build mobile apps today and try to compress as much as possible, or limit how
much they download.

It's like announcing you're leading an initiative to improve the health and
nutrition of children, but you won't actually be distributing any vaccines or
food, but laying down a set of principles to align local supplier incentives
and politicians.

Bill Gates criticized Loon because, and probably rightly so, concentrating on
health of children with easily preventable measures is the biggest bang for
the buck. But this initiative seems even more like Vaporware.

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diziet
New York Times article:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/technology/facebook-
leads-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/technology/facebook-leads-an-
effort-to-lower-barriers-to-internet-access.html?hp&_r=0)

~~~
psbp
It's on the page.

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mcebula
2/3rds of the world does not have internet. It's easy for us to forget that.
It's a serious issue, and Facebook is well-positioned to tackle it.

~~~
u2328
How are they well-positioned? I don't mean to sound crass, but what has
Facebook ever done that makes you think they're well-positioned? They're
pretty much a software/advertising company. Sure, they have their Open Compute
project, but besides that, what significant contribution to technical
engineering have they contributed to that suggest they have the know-how and
ability to scale such a massive infrastructure project.

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brymaster
No thanks, Mark. Here's hoping that your plan to AOLify the rest of the word
and violate the privacy of your future would-be users fails miserably.

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hiteshiitk
A detailed plan by Zuckerberg:
[https://www.facebook.com/isconnectivityahumanright/isconnect...](https://www.facebook.com/isconnectivityahumanright/isconnectivityahumanright.pdf)

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mariocesar
I'm sensing a new trend: short videos in the backgrounds. Other similar site
with the same trend [https://letshum.com/](https://letshum.com/)

~~~
rfnslyr
I absolutely love videos in the background. Brings the page to life. If it
doesn't lag my computer I'm ok with it.

Anyone have any links to any good tutorials to embed background videos like
this?

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TeMPOraL
[https://github.com/sydlawrence/jquery.videoBG](https://github.com/sydlawrence/jquery.videoBG)

Found it when snooping around some New York Times webpage code ;).

~~~
rfnslyr
Cool I'll take a look at that. Thanks!

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psbp
We're stuck with facebook for the rest of our lives. Aren't we?

~~~
dev1n
facebook is literally an infinite well of data. I don't see how we could
eradicate it without a truly terrible abuse of power coming to light from
within the company.

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psbp
Facebook isn't giving me useful implementations of my data. It's holding
relationships hostage.

It being the de facto source for internet services for large populations is
only going to make things worse.

~~~
malandrew
IMHO solving the Facebook walled garden would be one of the most interesting
startups to create today.

I've spent several months studying how to create tools that get around walled
gardens (unfortunately they aren't mine and I can't open source them) but this
is definitely a problem I wouldn't mind working on next. There are ways to get
your information out of Facebook that would be extremely hard for them to
counter, but it's a fulltime job to create something robust enough and
maintaining it in the face of changes Facebook makes.

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sravfeyn
How do you create a society where organizations would have a vested interest
in leading efforts to lower barriers to electricity. Even in present
conditions, electricity is after-all a prerequisite to better internet access.
I wonder why there are fewer juggernauts looking into electricity than
internet.

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hrktb
> _The companies intend to accomplish their goal in part by simplifying phone
> applications so they run more efficiently and by improving the components of
> phones and networks so that they transmit more data while using less battery
> power._

Isn't it already happening for a while (or forever, depending on the
companies) ? Companies who cared about performance and responsiveness already
work on optimizing their apps. Because more usage means more revenue.

Mobile OS and hardware makers already care about battery life and efficiency,
because these are strong competitive advantages.

The rest of the effort seems to be into getting carriers to make
Facebook/other companies requests out of quota, witch is not new and belongs
more to marketing/sales strategy than anything else.

This initiative feels like some generic PR move with nothing special to latch
on.

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pdshrader
Frankly, it sounds like he's just recharacterizing basic efficiency plans to
make it seem like Facebook is on some sort of altruistic mission. There's
little to no action called for, no commitments towards altrustic ends. It's
just a "hey, we should get more people online" (which only helps Facebook's
bottom line) and a "we're trying to make Facebook load faster" (again, bottom
line).

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vasundhar
I think this time, Facebook need not sell, it just need to propose the
govt.,rest all will be a breeze as the Big boys want more data,more and more
to churn, bubble and victimise each citizen possible every day.

Hail Facebook,Hail NSA and Other organised shit giving us false promise of
security while churning our own data.

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nhangen
This is all just rubbish so that they can find more eyeballs to stick into the
service. They've reached almost everyone, so the next logical step is to bring
Internet to the only audience they can't yet reach.

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balabaster
Given the complete lack of security on the internet, it would seem that we
want to extend this lack of security to everyone in the world. Hurrah!

Now can we fix the problems before we ship it?

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caiob
Great initiative, but it doesn't actually say what they're doing towards it.

~~~
goatslacker
The rough-draft how:
[https://www.facebook.com/isconnectivityahumanright/isconnect...](https://www.facebook.com/isconnectivityahumanright/isconnectivityahumanright.pdf)

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zobzu
I start hating on this scrolling design stuff. Specially with bright pink.

~~~
malandrew
I didn't even try scrolling. I watched the video and then closed the page
because I didn't know that there was some other action to take next. They
should put a call to action at the end.

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williamle8300
It is just my computer... or are they not using any CSS styling?

~~~
williamle8300
Weird that it doesn't work in Chrome... Surprising that wouldn't bother to
test drive it in Chrome.

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popee
And another NSA approved frontend? >:-)

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nvk
tldr; Facebook need new markets to enter to keep growing at expected
investor's rate.

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adenot
Facebook looking into ways to improve their userbase? Jokes apart, this is a
great initiative.

