I think what pissed me off the most was Facebook's reaction to net neutrality. Instead of attempting to reflect and revise their free Internet service so it can better serve the masses, it just attempts to slander and point fingers at net neutrality advocates. Like "ooooh no! We ain't the problem for your not having "free" Internet, it's those guys those over there arguing that free access to all of Internet is better than a free access to the websites we limit you to!" Seriously Facebook, you're not fooling anyone here. As if you haven't had enough fun screwing developed countries, now you have to go pick on the poor too?
It's almost beautifully murky that the folks using the app would come to think that what is offered to them is the Internet. This is a distilled example of what heavy ISP control of the Internet could look like.
Getting service to disadvantaged or destitute people is great. But it's so very important that Google, Facebook, Apple, Comcast, Verizon, TWC, whomever are constrained from wanton good-will Trojan horses. The tenor and breadth with which Facebook has entered their heavy-handed lot simply illustrates that sometimes, there's nothing new under the sun.
TRAI taking a very thorough, critical look at Free Basics is a good thing for the people of India.
Indeed. China would love it if they could start over and just offer a "Free Basics" version of the "Internet" to its billion citizens. It would make censorship easier by orders and orders of magnitude (basically as easy to censor as TV is over there).
Facebook is already stealing hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars worth of revenue from content creators like video makers whose videos are stolen and posted on fb's walled garden for the benefit of facebook and content pirates. i guess fb is hoping to capitalize on this trend, steal all online content in the name of providing it for the masses, and put all that ad money into its coffers. that would be longer term game with "free basics".
Captive market which you can sell ads to and force content creators and their thieves to post it all to facebook.
I also deeply dislike their use of "Internet.org" - it's just shameless. How can 50 websites be anything close to the "Internet"?
Eventually they kind of got the message on that, too, which is why they've renamed the service to Free Basics, but they're still using the Internet.org website to promote it.
This is counter-productive for FB in the long run. When zero-rating hollows out net neutrality, what stops WeChat from teaming up with an ISP to undermine WhatsApp and Messenger?
Imagine if MySpace had struck deals with network operators all over the world to be available without data charges and called it philanthropy.
->India without net neutrality: Everyone has free Facebook. "Free basics" didn't help in advancing electrification of the country but it did provide free facebook/wikipedia to everyone. So 30% of the country is still in dark. But 50% of the rest of India doesn't pay for internet and it thinks there is no need to because that is ALL the internet has to offer. A young founder launches a new education app to teach reading/writing to poor villagers. But she first needs to get a 'license' from facebook. Facebook doesn't think it is a good idea for its users to 'waste' time on other services instead of watching ads on FB, so it declines. Startups don't receive as much funding because of the 'licensing' issues and there aren't as many Indian tech companies as there could've been. News is censored by Facebook and Facebook can now influence Indian politics. 100,000 fewer jobs were created because the Indian tech scene didn't take off.
->India with net neutrality: 50% of the country cannot pay for internet. They still don't have access to internet. They use other forms of communication to get their daily, unfiltered news. The startup scene in India is growing at its natural pace and the culture has become more innovative. In another 10-15 everyone will have internet. 100's of thousands of poor were lifted out of poverty due to tech jobs in India.
One is a short term 'fix' which ruins the future. Another is a little bit harder but provides for a better future.
The whole Business Model build up on the freebases cannot work if they provide free access to the whole internet.
Considering that we are talking about Facebook here. Things could go very wrong once it is implemented. It should be killed without second thought.
> Nothing to worry about, I trust the people in charge
> to do the right thing, after all they did show better
> judgement in the past
to
> We hope the people in charge know what they are doing
The worst part is this (Narendra Modi/BJP led) government is enjoying popular support these days due to the progressive steps that they have taken as far as public spending on development and infrastructure are concerned. These appear to be well thought out and are pro-development (albeit might also be involved in cronyism)
However, in this one instance the government seems to think that Facebook's Free Basics thing is a 'Good Thing'. I hope better sense prevails !
The original TRAI paper for this Net Neutrality discussion looked exactly like if it had been written by someone from the telcos. This repeated "call for feedback" attempts made by TRAI seems to be a ploy to ignore the 1.5 M+ responses supporting net neutrality that they had received during the April consultation.
If Facebook can (ab)use their monopoly and userbase to trick people into supporting Free Basics, just imagine what they will do when they monopolize access to Internet in India for most of the people? Scary!
Keeping marketing or financial problems aside. What are the technical difficulties that Facebook would face when providing access to the whole web rather that some specific website?
Data from Facebook or Wikipedia is same as the data from any other website. They will need the same infrastructure. What am I missing here?
I think network operators around the world are receptive to ‘zero-rating’ certain websites (which is all Free Basics really is) whereas making free data available with a usage cap or speed cap would be something new. Facebook is not actually providing access or building infrastructure (under this program), they are teaming up with ISPs.
Some one have to pay the ISP for the service they are providing. Suppose that Facebook is providing access to all websites in free basics. Where is the business model in that. How can Facebook profit from that? May be what Facebook is saying is right: “We are not against net neutrality”, but there is no way on earth that they could provide such service for free.
What are they suppose to do? Give people free access to whole web assuming that out of their good heart they will use Facebook?
Note: I am not supporting Facebook.
If internet.org is about Free Facebook, they should at least drop the veneer of philanthropy. Argue in favor of zero-rating with everyone else who wants to cut these deals.
In the end such exceptions will be a disaster for the tech industry: if Netflix is available without data charges why would you ever use a competitor? If you can do Bing searches for free why would you Google and pay more? Plus it's a regulatory issue (mobile networks are licensed to provide internet, not specific services) and potentially a consumer-protection/anti-trust issue.
Facebook provides free access to Facebook / Wikipedia etc... then customers that have no access win because they get access and along with it, some pretty nifty tools to gain information and share news with their friends and family.
On the other hand, if Facebook doesn't provide free internet, then all those people stay in the dark.
What does net neutrality have to do with this? It's not those people are paying for an unequal service. It's FREE!
This is the "some internet access is better than none" argument. However, the end result is
- facebook controlling internet access for those people
- Zero Rating creates an imbalance in the ecosystem, favoring websites and services that can get into the walled garden
- facebook gets to mine your usage data.
There are better ways of improving internet access, such as :
- The Mozilla Foundation runs a program with Grameenphone, where users get free data in exchange for watching an advertisement.
- The Mozilla Foundation also runs a program with Orange in Africa, where those who purchase a $37 handset get 500 MB of free data.
- There are data cashback schemes such as Gigato offer data for free, for surfing some sites. Airtel has launched night plans, which give data as a cashback upon usage of the Internet between midnight and 6am, helping bring cost of access down.
These things work, without breaking net neutrality. See [0] for a more thorough discussion of these arguments.
Did you never use these free AOL CDs when you were a kid. Yes they did provide access to the entire internet, but it was designed to get people to use AOL. I am not going to complain about free internet even if it is walled.
I'm going to copy-paste from a comment on mine from 6 months back[0]:
As an Indian, believe me when I say this: "We already have good internet". Our data rates are extremely cheap. I paid less than 1 INR per day (it costs more to get a cup of coffee, which costs around 5-10 bucks) while using Opera Mini on a Nokia dumbphone.
India has progressed beyond the point where rich corporations need to help our country. We have amongst the world's largest telecom industry and usage statistics. Everyone owns a cellphone, and more and more people are realizing the benefits of a smartphone (Whatsapp primarily, which is way cheaper than SMS).
A basic android smartphone costs 100 USD in India. If a person can purchase a smartphone that costly to "access the internet", they are rich enough to afford a data plan (which costs around 3 USD/month).
India does not need free internet. What we need is cheaper and better internet and companies trying to use this internet in the first place (which is already happening with ecommerce). There is no point of giving internet to people unless they have a use for it.
Curious. Which Internet pack did you use which cost less than 1 INR per day? I too used to rely exclusively on Opera Mini in the past but never found rates so cheap.
I'd rather not have Western companies filter what Indians can and cannot have under the assumption that India is too poor or backwards to get its shit done.
That isn't anyone's assumption. These people are too underprivileged to know or care about your "walled gardens" and "ecosystems". It's supposed to be a good enough intermediate step to drastically improve the poor's access to information.
Yes, it's good for Facebook, obviously, but this is not a zero sum game. The choice to use any better competing service that comes along will always exist. No one else is willing to front the hundreds of millions with little to no returns for 20+ years required, though.
No, this is precisely digital imperialism. Being underprivileged does NOT mean that these people should not have privacy and security.
Currently, for lots of phones still used in India, using internet.org means NO HTTPS. So FB (and any other eavesdropping party) gets to snoop on your data and browsing habits. It's not about a walled garden, it's about basic human rights.
The last time the West tried to save backwards people, they stole and murdered and raped their way to wealth. We don't need any more generosity from the West.
> under the assumption that India is too poor or
> backwards to get its shit done
Perhaps until it does "get its shit done" that assumption would appear to hold?
I have often wondered what the middle-class Indian dudes who are trying to block their country men from getting Facebook and Wikipedia access are really scared of. Could it just be they're worried about how it looks?
India is certainly trying, and we've improved greatly in this regard. I don't think the West should get to decide what the rest of the world can and cannot see. Under the current internet.org setup, HTTPS does not work on feature phones, which are still a HUGE market in India. So by using internet.org, fb gets to see in plain all communication between a user and the website. Furthermore, anybody eavesdropping on this connection can also see this data.
So basically in exchange for free internet, Indians lose security and privacy. Just because these people are poor does not mean that they don't deserve these rights. Somehow, I don't trust fb to act benevolently in this situation when they'll have so much data ready to use.
Great quote from Desmond Tutu:
"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land.
They said 'Let us pray.'
We closed our eyes.
When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land."
The last time the West claimed to be helping spread enlightenment to uncivilized people, they colonized them and stole their resources and livelihoods. Fuck that, it's not happening again.
Can't wait for other internet companies to compete with Facebook's free service and let people decide for themselves what they want. Some of them will probably want more internet, while others will be perfectly content with just a Facebook account.
Not to mention that Facebook's partner in all this is Reliance Telecom, who do not have a good track record on censorship. You need an RCom subscription in order to have access.
Does anybody happen to know how easy or hard it is for a site to be whitelisted under Free Basics? Or if Reliance has any negotiating power on that front?
This is economic imperialism. The underlying current of thought is that India is too poor/stupid/backwards to get its population online. That's pretty fucking racist.
And Facebook is hardly doing this out of any altruistic tendencies. These poor people, who've only ever seen a facebook-ized internet, become a cash cow for FB - they can exploit them however they please.
This is economic imperialism. The underlying current of thought is that India is too poor/stupid/backwards to get its population online. That's pretty fucking racist.
Then India can prove them wrong but offering free full Internet access to its citizens, so that Facebook's racism costs them their investment.
I think their "free basics" is geared towards people who already have internet. They are not exactly going to remote villages and electrifying them.
Imagine how hard it would be for Indian startups when you need a 'license' from Facebook to deploy your app to your target market. The poor will have free facebook, but they won't have tech jobs. I've seen thousands of really poor guys being alleviated out of poverty due to Indian tech businesses which could grow because competition was fair. Tomorrow when launching an app means getting a license from facebook, it would be much harder!!
And it is a fair argument to make that other big boys will jump in to give some competition to facebook's "zero rating" but what about the small guys??
Its better to provide free as in freedom when attempting to provide internet to the masses.
Claiming to provide free as in beer means either someone else is paying for it or/and you end-up paying for it in other forms i.e. you are the product they acquired and are being sold.
If Facebook really had good intentions they would use the money they spend on these 'marketing campaigns' towards actually providing free internet access. These guys are disgusting. For once I hope the quirky and unpredictable Indian legal system actually turns on the crazy full blast and summons Mark Zuckerberg himself to answer ...
FB won't be reporting each individual message to TRAI, I think. They'll just submit a few picks, and give out the aggregate number of people who submitted the form.
I'm pretty sure that nobody's going to read every message that gets submitted through that form (because there'll be thousands of them, if not millions), but still, I felt so outraged when I have read the text beneath the form that I had to type what I had in mind.
Privileged people with Internet complaining that people without Internet access get free access to (some part of) the Internet. What are you doing to provide free Internet access to the poor?
Privileged people complain because a pure business move is being fed to the less-aware as a huge philanthropic effort.
Having been to many villages, I can say without doubt that so called free-internet will hardly bring any improvement in people's lives. How do you except a person who hardly knows how to use a phone to use the internet productively? No doubt, information access is important for human development but sorry, I don't have a reason to believe people who can put Internet to a good purpose will have any trouble paying for it.
The most famous scientist in my country [1] had to travel 1000 km on foot from his home village to university to get decent education. He then proceeded to make a lot of important discoveries in many areas of science. Now imagine if we had Wikipedia in every village. Imagine how many more people could make use of their talents if they had access to the basic information to get them started.
I don't think people crying for net neutrality understand how many people in India still do not have Internet access. Even free access to facebook changes people's lives in a better way.
I belong to a small village in eastern UP, and the Internet penetration is still very less there. The Internet has huge potential to change people's lives for the better, and I have experienced it in my own life. Lots of people still can't afford to pay for the Internet, and for those people, as well as for their children, getting access to a subset of the Internet, however small, means a lot.
A little good now at the expense of a significant amount of future opportunity. In established markets this is called "dumping" -- giving something away to destroy competition.
I don't think there is any loss of significant future opportunity. When someone will be able to afford the Internet, they will start using whichever service they find fit.
Till then for those people, I can't overstate how important free access to even this limited Internet is. Even free access to wikipedia and facebook helps a lot of people in a lot of ways.
Fun Story: One day I was with the brother of a friend of mine. He said facebook helped him a lot in SSC preparations. I thought he was joking, but it turns out that there is an entire ecosystem of services on facebook which help several people in several ways and for those people, this free access matters a hell lot.
You are assuming that the other services can just wait it out while people break out of FB ecosystem and discover them. Development of these kind of walled gardens significantly harm the development of independent services. That is one of the main problem. If everyone had free Orkut and no access to FB, how long would it have taken Facebook to catch on?
I am not assuming anything. People who don't have internt access are not using those service anyways. So those services will continue at their natural pace. So I don't see how free basics will harm the development of independent services.
Regarding Orkut, it had a lot of users before facebook arrived on the scene. But Facebook was just so much better that everyone eventually jumped on it. I doubt the outcome would have been any different had Orkut been free, considering that the network effect was a huge price in itself.
The point is, I am yet to see anyone who can afford a monthly data pack interested in choosing a service based upon it's inclusion in free basics. Free basics is good for those who won't use the internet at all otherwise.
In the FB vs Orkut example, not only is the Orkut Free, FB is inaccessible to Orkut users. What do you think will be the outcome then?
You are also assuming that if not for Free Basics, there will be nothing done to increase the internet spread in India. As those opposed to Free Basics have repeatedly pointed out, there are other better options available.
Facebook could make all this opposition evaporate by changing from a fixed service model to a fixed bandwidth model open to all services. I'm not trying to keep people from getting their first access to the Internet, I'm trying to keep corporations from creating a permanent tier of second-class locked-in customers.
If Facebook is bringing in Free Basics only to get those who do not have internet access to get some, then why is Free Basics provided even to customers with data packs? I have seen in person and verified that it is the case.
Facebook has reportedly spent more than $20 million to advertise, push and lobby for Free Basics. Just imagine if that money was used to provide some MB of unrestricted internet usage to people. A lot of people would have benefited. That also begs the question, how is Facebook going to recoup that? And every answer to that question is bad for those poor users that Facebook is connecting to their own walled garden impersonating internet.
Also if people can afford to get phones that support connecting to internet (these days almost all such phones are smartphones and prices start from Rs. 2000 onwards), can they not afford Rs.100 odd to get a reasonable amount of 2G data to access the actual internet? Imho most of them can.
Would you still be OK with that knowing that Facebook gets to spy on their browsing habits and steal their data? My family originates from Bihar, and so I've seen my share of poverty. But being poor doesn't mean that you don't have basic human rights of privacy. HTTPS doesn't work with internet.org for a large set of phones still used in India. So not only can FB spy on you, anyone eavesdropping on your connection can too.
The last time the West tried to help us and bring 'enlightenment', we were enslaved for 200+ years. Do you want that again?
And so we have a bunch of rich Americans yelling 'unfair!' about the poorest of the poor in india getting some small part of what they have. I like net neutrality <in principle>, but this is dogmatism.
More like facebook denying an enormous number of people the same opportunities that allowed their company to flourish, and then whining "not fair" when anyone points out the hegemonic extraction racket they're trying to set up.
Why not help india set up their own services? They could easily contribute to infrastructure and compete with indian startups on the free market. But no, they want to abort the baby before it grows powerful.
You're comment is an interesting inversion of reality though, good job Goebbels.
