"But we will all be worse off if they are successful."
Sorry if this is something obvious to everyone else, but could you explain why it wouldn't be open and why that's a bad thing? Is this some sort of "centralization of power" issue?
Sorry if this is something obvious to everyone else, but could you explain why it wouldn't be open and why that's a bad thing? Is this some sort of "centralization of power" issue?
Participation on internet.org is subject to approval by Facebook and ISPs. They choose the winners on their platform, not end users.
Imagine a world where, say, 20% of users are on internet.org. If you're building a consumer service that benefits from network effects, you must be on internet.org or else you will be eaten up by a competitor who is. Facebook, through its veto over internet.org participation, can now play an outsize role in deciding which consumer internet services get traction and which don’t.
App developers will divert resources from building features that users want, into building features that gets them perks from Facebook — probably by pushing more and more user data into the “open” graph. This would not just harm internet.org consumers, it will harm every internet user.
Essentially Zuckerberg is trying to use the strategy Carlos Slim used in Mexico with mobile phones: be the only game in town for years by making exclusivity deals with the government and by the time the competition is finally able to compete in a free(er) market, Slim has such a head start as to be unstoppable. Except now Zuck is doing this at a billion scale rather than a Mexico scale.
I think the Google balloon internet project has far more value than this. Google wants you to use their services, but at least they are interested in the entire internet for the poor and not just Facebook-y type access.
On a regular basis I'll hear someone mention 'their website' and when I ask for the URL it is clear from their reply that what they mean is they have a Facebook page for their group/business/whatever. When I press further they seem to understand the concept that owning a domain name and having a 'website' on Facebook are not exactly the same. These are normal users, not stupid people, and this is how perceive things right now.
This is anecdotal and I don't have any peer-reviewed studies to cite but I suspect this is pretty common and I wonder if others are seeing the same thing?
The same people who spend most of their time on Facebook would probably be very annoyed if all of a sudden their online banking would need to be done through Facebook with a Facebook-approved bank, or if they couldn't book airplane tickets on a third-party site or check the weather and so on.
That's the problem with internet.org; it's not that people wouldn't spend most of their time on Facebook, but it's that it makes it harder for non-Facebook entities to get access to these users, essentially building a Facebook-branded moat.
For example, say that building an ISP to reach these users has a fixed cost of x. This means that if that ISP has n users, the costs of building that ISP are spread out amongst those n users (ie. x/n); however, with internet.org, this would lower the demand for this ISP (because n will be smaller, due to some people not interested in having anything else but Facebook) and because the price of getting actual internet will be higher.
It's definitely a good move for Facebook, but creates large negative externalities for other people. A better move overall (but less so for Facebook), would be to give free access to the actual internet but let them access Facebook on its own merits. If Facebook offers such value to these users (and it definitely does for a lot of people), then there is no need to wall these users off of the rest of the internet.
Edit: formatting.
With Facebook's Internet.org or the "Free Basics" they would be the gatekeepers of defining what the free basic are. It creates a sort of economic divide - why would people people pay to access your site, when a similar big player is providing services on the Facebook's free basic plan?
And if the argument assumes that they'll eventually have the ability to get full internet, but won't want it at whatever price it costs, then isn't that their choice? If having a free service makes them unwilling to pay for a better service, what's the problem?
There's no options being denied here. For anyone that wants, Facebook's offering has only benefits. If someone thinks it has drawbacks, they're free not to use it. I seriously don't see the problem here.
According to you, if internet.org is so horribly evil, why would anyone freely choose to sign up for it?
This largely isn't correct. There are other providers, they just cost some money.
This [0] comment by aravindet captures everything that one needs to know. These people are going to get the internet, the question is whether we should allow some company to spend its capital turning them into a captive market for its own financial gain.
There are other providers. Aircel is offering free data at 64kbps. Airtel has started subsidized browsing at off-peak hours. Mozilla has a proposal for ad-subsidized Internet access. And all this is while Internet user base is already growing at 4% every month!
I don't see this changing any time in the future, either. There are still a lot of people without decent internet access here. I am pretty sure nearly all of these people will use Facebook's version of the internet, were it made available to them.
And don't have any illusions: there is no such thing as "net neutrality" here: internet speeds for domestic internet is way faster and cheaper than "real" internet. People have domestic-only internet plans, simply because it's all they need. So there already is massive restrictions put on the internet here, and I would argue that internet.org is not as evil as the local ISPs are.
Smartphone/app only internet is completely different from desktop-centric internet like it is in western countries.
Education is low here, but smartphone penetration very high. It's all about sharing pictures and videos through Facebook.
There are other ways to provide internet connectivity to people - by allowing them to access the entire internet and not limited websites. The Mozilla Foundation runs a program with Grameenphone, where users get free data in exchange for watching an advertisement. It also runs a program with Orange in Africa, where those who purchase a $37 handset get 500 MB of free data.
edit: I accidentally plugged 12 months, not 24 months. 24 months gives 250% growth. I think your numbers are wrong; 150% growth to only 60% implies the current base is 24%???
My source for these numbers is TRAI (India's equivalent of FCC) reports. Happy to be corrected.
And no, the problem is NOT that some people get to use FB for free. The problem is that we have no reason to give a privileged treatment to FB, given that they are NOT contributing in expanding the network at all. FB doesn't bear the bandwidth costs for internet.org, the telcos do. And telcos are already regulated under TRAI and have corresponding obligations. If they want to do commercial deals like these, let us first open the telecom industry to full competition.
http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/PR-T...
With a population of 1.24B, that makes 30% population being online. So 150% growth in 2 years will take us to 75%.
How can allowing more people limited internet, where before they had no internet, possibly be a bad thing?
A more noble implementation of the idea would provide low-bandwidth connectivity to any site (maybe with a browser that only loads text by default). The service could still deliver local ads to pay for the bandwidth.
And saying that there's a more noble option they could have done doesn't mean that what they did do is wrong.
What's the analog to this health risk in the Facebook example? "Digital segregation" is a nice abstract concept, which falls apart when you remember that the people using this have no other way to get internet, so they can't possibly be better off without Facebook.
Consider a utilitarian analogy. Suppose people need to see a benefit of 10 "units" before they are motivated to do something to obtain the benefit. Free Facebook might have a benefit of 6 units, which prevents people from reaching the activation energy to seek out the 15 units of benefit from true Internet access.
this programm really has to die. and we all should help killing and burying it.
@ikeboy/facebook employee
How well did the middle ages work out with it's 1-book policy? It regressed society from the very modern greek society with democracy to the so called dark ages. abondoning science and pluralistic cultures for centuries.
Slaves get choices too, to die or live as slaves. Some might even find happiness as being slaves.
The mechanism this would work by is ignorance, if someone is unaware that they only have access to a tiny subsection and believes that they have internet access (and we all know plenty of people that thought AOLs walled garden was the internet) then they are less likely to seek out real unfettered internet access.
Reckon Facebook are going to have big banners up telling them this is only a fraction of the net? I very much doubt it.
If you're so against an open internet what are you doing on HackerNews? Surely there is somewhere you could post about this on Facebook. Oh wait a second you love having access to the whole internet you just don't think people poorer than you deserve it.
Did I say I was against an open internet? I'm against government regulation of the Internet, while the people arguing with me here are in favor. There's more than one way to frame this about "open".
I could also snarkily ask you why you don't think the poor deserve to have access to anything, which is what will happen if internet.org isn't allowed.
If you really think that poor people deserve free internet, start a charity that brings it to them. But banning other providers from taking gradual steps towards internet access won't help them.
Imagine if MySpace at its height could have killed off Facebook, Twitter, TenCent, and anything else which looked like competition.
- it should be access to all internet. I think we all agree on that, including Zuckerberg, however it is childish to think that an ISP would be willing to work with that. The greatest challenge in a project of this magnitude is working with the local service providers. They are the ones that need to be convinced, and you'd need to work with to make this happen. I think a good exercise for everyone here is to think, how would I solve the problem of internet illiteracy.. Realistically?
The "watch an ad an get internet" does not sound to me as appealing for the service providers. They are basically using internet, to give internet, to someone that can't afford internet? I don't think this initiative would be succesful.
- "This is only a hinderance and hurts when internet is eventually accesible to everyone." This is what Paul Graham calls indefinite optimism. How exactly do you think this will just happen? The answer is little by little working with the service providers, phone manufacturers, etc. which is what fb does, and the fact they actually got something that everyone is willing to accept is pretty unbelievable.
So instead of idealistically oposing something that would make disconnected people lives better, how about thinking how would you solve the problem? Align all the major players over an initiative that would hardly lead to high revenues.
And if you doubt the usefulness of it how about you check the access it gives. I personally consider wikipedia pretty useful.
It isn't much more than an attempt at monopoly, and I think it seems more egregious because of it being explicitly targeted at the poor. In truth, it seems unlikely to me that those people won't simply be able to migrate to other services when they can afford it, but I also find it hard to believe that there won't be some (possibly significant) monopolisation effect.
For some additional perspective, here's a view from India: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0w_YhZUYeA
If we're worried about long-term effects, but concede there's a gain for everyone short-term, isn't the right thing to do to let them do it now, and if these negative effects materialize, then stop it?
On a personal level, whilst I don't have strong feelings about the campaign against internet.org, I wouldn't mind if they succeeded. I do have to question why we think net neutrality is so important for us, but not for the poorest in the world. Did you watch the video I linked to? Before watching that I (obviously very naively) hadn't really considered the issue in net neutrality terms, preferring to see it as you appear to, in terms of something-better-than-nothing, but now I'm really not so sure.
So any argument of the form "but it's against net neutral" won't work for me.
"Nah, just keep smoking, once you have cancer you can still stop."
I hope you see the problem with that rationale.
Also, just like smoking, once the harm is big enough, there's no easy coming back.
How is allowing internet.org now and stopping to allow it if and when it starts causing people to have less internet than they would otherwise (assuming that extra choice is bad here, which I do not concede) a bad thing?
Right. Once the downsides of smoking were realized, it was quickly brought to an end.
The argument is that internet.org gets people some access right away, and in the long term screws up infrastructure development.
The negative effects are being caused from day one. You can't just cut the program after five years to keep all the good and prevent the bad.
I oppose internet.org due to the permanent damage that it will cause to the Internet itself. Please see my earlier comment for how this will happen.
Internet.org probably won't shut down even if strong net neutrality is legislated in India; they would merely change their program to be compliant, by using a data cap on free (beer and freedom) internet use.
The cost for ISPs are the same in either scenario. The fiction about internet.org being "cheaper" to provide than the open Internet doesn’t hold water.
Internet growth in India: 20% of Indians have Internet access today, a number that has grown at 30% annually for the last five years. Mobile phone use grew from 20% to 75% in five years, so it is likely that Internet use would also get there by 2019 without internet.org.
Just who the hell are you to deny your poorer countrymen free access, based on your personal beliefs from a position of pure privilege?
Would you give up your internet access for the same cause? No, I didn't think so.
All you do in that situation is creating roadblocks for small ISPs. It's probably not hard to convince the incumbent telcos to get in on it. All you have to do is create a good business proposal. Telcos have tried similar things since ever since IP started to win, especially in the mobile space, but they've never had the services people want.
This is an unholy alliance between telcos and big content, and could very well succeeed. But I am still an optimist. I believe the market will win out in the end, and one thing we know for certain is that what people really want is the Internet. It will only delay that for a number of years, but that's hardly any consolation for those potential entrepreneurs stuck in that particular irrational market.