Edit: Disclosure: I work for Facebook, but not with Internet.org. I'm not aware of any master plan Zuckerberg has for it, other than spreading internet usage
I'm surprised that Berners-Lee is taking this stance. If anyone, he should understand the critical importance of access to basic information and communication. Connectivity is a cornerstone for developing nations and allowing young minds to prosper. I feel this is a basic human right, but over half of the world's population is not online. They cannot afford it or they do not see the value it provides.
It is grossly presumptuous to say that a small subset of the internet is worse than no internet access at all. The pure internet is obviously better than internet.org. Once people can see the vastness of the internet, nobody will want to be stuck behind a firewall.
Tim Berners-Lee would rather impoverished people have no access to connectivity rather than access to Facebook's watered-down version. He wants them to reject and deny one of the most important things they now have access to. Would he also tell starving children to turn away food donations that are not organic? I guess he would tell them to "Just say no"
Edited in that disclosure at the top. I am a stockholder, and I agree that colors the arguments. Honestly I didn't feel that it was very relevant because I don't work very closely with internet.org, and I don't think they have any secrets.
And if access to social networks such as those of your employer is a "basic human right," as you assert, then presumably Internet.org would provide free and unfettered access to all social networks, including those that would seek to unseat Facebook in the future?
I believe the basic human right is access to the unfettered internet. But we need to crawl before we can walk. People first need to see the value in having any internet at all. Once people are online a bit, they quickly want to see it all. The rampant use of VPNs in China is a good example.
Building out a cell network for the whole world isn't easy. It is much more feasible to partner with the existing providers who already reach the vast majority of the world's population. Although I agree it would be way better, I'm not sure how you'd convince them to make their entire service free.
I've been using the internet for 15 years, and I don't want to "see it all" and I never have. There's only about 15 websites I use regularly, and everything else I see comes through those. So you can't say, "we'll provide the big 15, you will learn to love the rest" when that could very well be a significant lie.
It's like saying "We'll build Wal-marts in every town, that way they'll learn to love shopping so much they'll start competing local businesses." It's transparently disingenuous, and completely unrealistic.
> People first need to see the value in having any internet at all.
Wow, this is horridly ignorant of the level of awareness in countries where Internet.org is trying to operate.
Let's take India.
People: homeless people, poor people, people in villages; all know what the Internet is. To some level. Not everyone uses it (esp. older people); not everyone is sure what it is -- but it's used in almost every social bubble by some people so people are aware of it and know its value. A lot of low-income families use Whatsapp, for example.
Internet.org isn't targeted towards the people who don't use the Internet at all. It's targeted towards the people who do use the Internet, but not much. Free stuff is nice, so more and more people will move on to the free Internet.org. There's no altruism here. It's a plain and simple business tactic.
> Building out a cell network for the whole world isn't easy.
Nobody's saying they should. But for the same amount of investment they could provide services like free Internet with a data cap. Make a landing page with a prominent link to Facebook or something. Meh.
> The rampant use of VPNs in China is a good example.
No it's not. That has nothing to do with this whatsoever. That's censorship.
> But we need to crawl before we can walk. Once people are online a bit, they quickly want to see it all.
At any point do you see Facebook committing to bringing the whole Internet to these people? I wouldn't really mind if it said that internet.org would be replaced with a full internet in 5 years or so.
>"once people see the vastness of the internet..."
Exactly. How will they get this glimpse from within a corporately delineated sandbox? Or one could see the vastness from afar, yearn for it, and make it happen. Give a man a fish and he becomes full and dependent upon the fish-monger. Tell a man that he can learn to fish and when he does he will never be hungry.
>Connectivity is a cornerstone for developing nations and allowing young minds to prosper.
So why not give full connectivity? Facebook Net is some next level BS. Facebook is treating poor people as secondary citizens who are only interesting from a consumption perspective while the rest of us have access to the full power of the internet and all the benefits it brings. The gap between the haves and have-nots only continues to expand.
Or Pepsi's campaign in India where you get codes on buying a soda, where each code gets you some data.
If Mark was indeed altruistic, he could get people 50MB of free data, which wouldn't have costed more than what it's costing him now(assuming that people would use more than 50 MB of fb on internet.org).
But that wouldn't have allowed him to create a sustainable monopoly, even if people would have used facebook on a free neutral network, which would still have fetched him money.
The only value of this deal to Mark is that Facebook gets to create a monopoly. This is something that should worry you.
Net neutrality is more important than whatever financial or profit motives the worlds billionaires may have. Facebook could easily connect India completely if it felt like it.
I'm surprised that Berners-Lee is taking this stance. If anyone, he should understand the critical importance of access to basic information and communication. Connectivity is a cornerstone for developing nations and allowing young minds to prosper. I feel this is a basic human right, but over half of the world's population is not online. They cannot afford it or they do not see the value it provides.
It is grossly presumptuous to say that a small subset of the internet is worse than no internet access at all. The pure internet is obviously better than internet.org. Once people can see the vastness of the internet, nobody will want to be stuck behind a firewall.
Tim Berners-Lee would rather impoverished people have no access to connectivity rather than access to Facebook's watered-down version. He wants them to reject and deny one of the most important things they now have access to. Would he also tell starving children to turn away food donations that are not organic? I guess he would tell them to "Just say no"