Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
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.
Captive market which you can sell ads to and force content creators and their thieves to post it all to facebook.
Imagine if MySpace had struck deals with network operators all over the world to be available without data charges and called it philanthropy.
http://trak.in/tags/business/2015/12/22/users-mails-usa-cana...
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.
->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.
> 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
> We hope the people in charge know what they are doing
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 !
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!
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?
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.
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.
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!
- 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.
[0]: http://blog.savetheinternet.in/response-to-facebook-townhall...
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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?
Facebook and the local governments there could have a huge effect on warping people's views there.
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.
But that has been the case for more than a century. Similar example is Mozilla's - watch advertisement of this body lotion to get 50MB of data.
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.
I trust the EFF much more than I trust FB:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/internetorg-not-neutra...
Then India can prove them wrong but offering free full Internet access to its citizens, so that Facebook's racism costs them their investment.
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??
By providing access to the rest of the web?
</venting>
> Hey TRAI, you're doing an awesome job!
> Net neutrality is awesome! Don't let shithead companies like Facebook from stop you from your goal. You're doing a good job!
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.
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 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.
The last time the West tried to help us and bring 'enlightenment', we were enslaved for 200+ years. Do you want that again?
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.