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Comment by sremani | Hacker News Reader

Let us not judge from Intellectual Ivory towers, the facts on the ground are 80% of Indians do not have internet access. You sometimes have to try "impure" methods. The question is still up in the air, whether FB Basics is gateway to full internet or if it is a walled garden. Either way, it is better than No Access. The immediate retort I get is, why not facebook provide free internet access to poor. Guys, is it their responsibility to give internet connection without any thing in return? How about asking that to your IAS uncle? or Politician neighbor.

The Net Neutrality activists of India, are bunch of middle class disconnected from poor activists. They think their idealogical purity is paramount than a dirty limited connection for the poor.

I am afraid populism will one more time win the day, while NN activists take a victory lap, the India's poor now will not have any form of connectivity.

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> Let us not judge from Intellectual Ivory towers,

Labeling someone who disagrees with you as being in an "ivory tower" is basically an ad-hominem. Argue the merits, not the source.

> the facts on the ground are 80% of Indians do not have internet access. You sometimes have to try "impure" methods. The question is still up in the air, whether FB Basics is gateway to full internet or if it is a walled garden. Either way, it is better than No Access.

What if a pharma company came and said, "you know, this medicine causes birth defects, but it's OK to push it on Indians because 80% lack decent medication"... would you be for it?

India is making tremendous progress in bringing connectivity to the people. I grew up in an India where telephones were so scarce, that the waiting list for a landline phone was more than 10 years. People in villages had absolutely no access to phones at all; reaching a phone meant taking a bus/train to the nearest big town, and going to a PCO.

And yet today, almost everyone has a cellphone.

By pushing this "walled garden" to the people, FB will capture the market and derail the train of progress. FB has the ability to pay local carriers; but does HN?

I apologize if I came across condescending, I was try to set contrast here. For the activists its an intellectual/idealogical crusade, and for the poor people it is a way of life thing.

On other note, there are desperate patients and families who are willing to risk their health and are trying hard to get access to drugs that are in clinical trails even in OECD countries.

And the equivalent Facebook solution to the drug problem would be "Hey, we don't need to do clinical trials, because some medicine is better than no medicine, since there are desperate people who are willing to accept anything right now".

Right, because the wrong kind of Internet access could kill people.

Worse. It could be seen as something positive and then Netflix could be more expensive.

Not really, no. But you kinda got the idea: the wrong kind of network access could kill the internet.

This is the whole net neutrality issue. No net neutrality, no internet.

Maybe in the US, where there is a duopoly for the last-mile access for a large number of markets. Highly doubt it will happen in India because of the very rich, competitive Internet access market, as TFA points out.

You mean, like the right-to-try laws that have been passed by 25 US states, allowing doctors to prescribe drugs not yet approved by the FDA?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-try_law

You still need a different form of FDA approval possibly involving animal trials (among other things) before getting "experimental drug" status.

It's ridiculous that if I'm dying, I'm not free to use whatever experimental, theoretical, long-shot treatment that I damn well want.

Poor people are there everywhere in the world. It's just surprising that Facebook decided to help the poor in India before doing anything for the poor in the US. Especially given the fact that the data costs are huge in US.

Facebook can decide to do what it wants,but this type of spending on propaganda trying to change the policy in India is not acceptable and maybe not even legal. Not sure,but would it be allowed for an Indian company to take out full page ads in NYT against the raise in H1B visa fees?

Mark Zukerberg donated $100 million to Newark Schools, which I think is helping economically backward students. Internet penetration in US is huge, and there are several subsidies in place esp. in urban areas. Internet connectivity problems in US are mostly for rural and geographically distant locations. So comparing US vs India especially based on per KB costs does not give complete picture and MZ, told again again the mission of facebook is "connecting people" (that was nokia's tag line ;D )

There are full page ads in India for all sorts of things. Damn, if shell enough money, they would put a full page ad about my post in Hacker News. NYT and WaPo are in a different ball park, but they too at times are open to full page ads, what is illegal about that?

> Mark Zukerberg donated $100 million to Newark School...

With some quite interesting results and consequences[1], you can't just drop a big bunch of monies on soomething expect it to solve itself or be successful.

[1]:http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/19/schooled

You should really think before spouting off, and you should honestly admit if you're biased in this instance.

I've followed India's cellular revolution with interest, seeing (as I mentioned earlier) I grew up when India had almost no phones. My dad, due to his work, always had a phone; and I, being the youngest, was the errand-boy, running to distant houses to tell people that there was a phone call for them, and that the caller would call back in 20 minutes, so please can you come quickly?

The reason cellphones took off in India is that the government tried (some would say, not hard enough) to level the playing field and to remove barriers. What if you could make calls on Reliance to only Reliance folks? Or what if Airtel charged you Rs. 20/min for calls to Docomo, but Rs 1/min to calls on Airtel? This kind of balkanization would be disastrous to the cellphone users.

Similarly, if you want internet use to spread, you cannot do that by placing barriers and toll gates all around. It has to be unfettered access. Sure, this "basics" thing may be available right _now_ ; but users will then be locked into one mode of operation forever.

People who are arguing against FB are not just "intellectuals"; but people who have a lot of experience. I, for one, remember when the first Internet line to India was hooked up: it was a 56K modem, a Trailblazer. For the entire country of India. From there, we have come to terabits/sec fibre lines. So yes, I do know something about the Internet.

> What if you could make calls on Reliance to only Reliance folks? Or what if Airtel charged you Rs. 20/min for calls to Docomo, but Rs 1/min to calls on Airtel?

What if Facebook gave everybody in India free phones and free calling, even if it was only on Facebook phones? Would anyone have to be the errand boy for their neighbors' calls?

I don't see how your experience where most could not afford any access (let alone restricted access) to basic telephony applies to this scenario where a restricted service is being given for free.

(I also spent my childhood vacations in rural areas where our house was the only one with a phone for miles around. And even then they would trouble us only for issues of some urgency. I have a hard time believing any of the people who'd walk all the way over would prefer doing that over getting a free but restricted phone service.)

> I don't see how your experience where most could not afford any access (let alone restricted access) to basic telephony applies to this scenario where a restricted service is being given for free.

You're missing the point completely. My point is: we are on the path to progress. It's going the right way for the future of the people. But Facebook wants to derail it and lock you into their ecosystem. In the long run, this is detrimental for everyone.

People who are here, posting for FB, obviously have internet freedom; so what they're basically saying is, the poor should not have the same freedoms that I am enjoying.

And my point is, people who are here, posting against FB's initiative, obviously have Internet, which the poor don't even have, let alone Internet freedom. So what they're basically saying is, the poor should not have the same facilities that I am enjoying, because I am worried about them being locked-in and I know better than them what they want.

I will be honest the person arguing with you was literally there. He grew up there. He probably knows better than you about the environment he grew up in. It's disingenuous to paint him in the light you're doing.

The Airtel/Docomo analogy has been played out in the US. ATT Wireless calls to other ATT Wireless subscribers are considered mobile-to-mobile and don't count towards the minutes limit. Same for the rest of the major carriers, so families who chat a lot frequently pick carriers strategically (the balkanization you're describing).

Overall, it has not caused any major disasters.

> You should really think before spouting off, and you should honestly admit if you're biased in this instance.

The ivory tower comment which you complained about up-thread read to me as "this is a possible cognitive mistake we might make, let us avoid it" (note that it used the word "us").

On the other hand, there is no charitable reading of the first line of your comment. It's just nasty, much nastier than the even the worst reading of the ivory-tower comment.

>:(

I agree with jholman and Sreemani here. I dont see the pharma analogy, because rest of the 20% of the internet users are not forced to pay for something (Even though there may or may not be questions about anti-competitiveness, but that is not what we are arguing here...its net neutrality). If they dont like Reliance agreement with FB, they can switch carriers.

In the US an analogy that I can think of is obamacare, where everybody was forced to pay a certain amount of money as TAX so that the whole country is insured.... I dont see the same argument here.

> is basically an ad-hominem. Argue the merits, not the source.

It's not always ad-hominem. It might seem so because of the obvious tone used but at certain times it could just be that the context that a person is coming from could have a really significant impact on his reasoning (for or against).

"ivory tower" is reflective of content and delivery, not just source

> What if a pharma company came and said, "you know, this medicine causes birth defects, but it's OK to push it on Indians because 80% lack decent medication"... would you be for it?

If you replace "birth defects" (which imply a complicated moral issue of mother vs baby) with "nasty side effects", and assume that without this medication 80% of population would suffer a fate objectively worse than these side-effects (like loss of hearing vs death) — why the hell not?

What Facebook is offering is not internet in any form. Their advertisement has made this an argument into subset of internet vs full internet which is not the case here. Arguably getting tied up into the walled garden of Facebook is worse than the prospect of full access to internet at sometime in future.

You are arguing that an ad hominem attack is by defacto incorrect. Ad hominem attacks provide context and explain how your point of view can be clouded or misguided.

Ad hominem attacks have been and always will be useful tools in debates.

Example: If you are rich and believe that the poor are lazy and always asking for handouts, it would be beneficial for someone to make an ad hominem attack towards your character and background as a wealthy person to help you see why your statements are biased.

> Either way, it is better than No Access.

I see this as a false dilemma. Internet access in India is already cheap enough to be near the cost of a phone over its effective lifetime. To quote the linked post:

> Given that data packages cost as little as Rs. 20 a month while phones cost Rs. 2,000 and up, we think their thesis itself is flawed

So the group that free basics can help to get online are those for whom the cost of a phone is feasible but paying the cost of a phone ×2 or ×3 for internet access is not. This is a relatively narrow fraction of the population.

Activists in India see that there are other reasonable alternatives to connect the entire population of the country that do not encourage the digital enslavement of their poor. The simplest one is a marginal improvement of per capita income that is driven by the people of the country itself, not exploitative "charity" from a foreign company. In very short order this, and the decreasing cost of technology will allow the whole net to reach everyone who could benefit today from free basics.

The false dilemma "better this than nothing" comes from a distant ivory tower that does not respect the capacity and future of the people of these developing nations. There are other ways to full access that do not sacrifice human rights.

> India is already cheap enough to be near the cost of a phone

Indians are very frugal, if they bought the phone, then that's the end of it. They won't even spend a single penny to buy the Internet.. Only way is to give it for free and let them experience the usefulness and long term effect.

How to give for free? That's up for debate.

How about slow or even limited amount of data but full internet? Result of that would be people making websites that use minimal data. Result of FB-only internet is everyone putting everything on FB, effectively shutting out anyone not on FB and giving insane power to FB.

it would be better but then the question comes to sponsership, who would sponser such a thing?

A non-asshole, non-monopolist version of Facebook would be a company that would sponsor such a thing along with ads saying "brought to you by Facebook!" or something but no technical restrictions to FB. It's still in their interest to get more people online. It could be a consortium of companies. Or it could be the government, that would make reasonable sense. Or it could just be the phone companies saying that a little internet is a good way to get people to then pay for more bandwidth…

This is an extremely short-sighted view. There is no question that connectivity is a vital resource necessary for equality and that we want everyone to have access to the internet. The question is how we expand the network to them and — most importantly — who pays for it?

A network paid for by foreign business interests and advertisers is fundamentally different than a network paid for by its users. But even though the foundation is different, they are in many ways substitute goods, meaning the presence of one will inhibit the popularity of the other. By the most basic economic reasoning, Free Basics will hurt the spread of user-funded peer-to-peer networks like the internet, just as distributing free clothing will hurt a local textile industry.

Based on that model, we can also predict the more fundamental difference between the two networks to be in the details w.r.t. privacy interests, not limited access.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/aircel-to-...

There are better ways of giving out Internet for free. By giving out slower internet. Or internet with a free data cap. Or a way of "earning" Internet data after watching some ads (see: Grameenphone in Bangladesh). I'd somewhat agree with the "Some Internet is better than No internet" argument, except that there are better ways of doing the "some Internet" which Facebook isn't doing.

> why not facebook provide free internet access to poor.

Facebook isn't even paying for the data in Free Basics. The telecom operators are (I assume their business plan is to get more people hooked onto the Internet so eventually more customers for them. A valid plan.). They can use the same business plan (in a net neutral way) for the slower internet or internet with a data cap options; and I believe that's what Aircel is doing.

(Aside: When you look at it this way it becomes even more obvious how devious Facebook is here -- without putting in money of their own to finance the actual data, they, a third party, jumped in and convinced telecom operators to enact a scheme which Facebook has a lot of control over despite not being the primary financers of the scheme. They get lots of credit and lots of control, without actually doing anything. When framed this way the parallels with the Brits' takeover of India seem a lot more real.)

And really, the "no access" part of your argument isn't really well founded either. For most, data plan costs aren't the barrier to internet access (in fact, a smartphone capable of working with the modern internet[1] is more expensive than a few years' worth of basic data).

[1]: Fun fact: Facebook's mobile app evolves pretty fast and becomes unusable on older phones either due to browser compatibility, OS compatibility, or speed issues. Same with many other sites and apps.

I agree on most points but the one about the app, why fb should support devices discontinued from the manufacturers that aren't receiving updates to last version of their own os?

They already support a truckload of configurations as it is.

I'm not talking about discontinued devices. I'm talking about devices which are too slow for the "modern web".

(Also, for many low-end phones, updates come infrequently and OS updates are not always easy to install)

The problem is once you've tried this "impure" method there is no turning back. Once an ISP finds out they can offer some apps free but make other apps count towards data usage, the whole nature of the internet changes. Note that zero-rating is just one aspect of what mobile networks want to do; before the explosive activism in March, they were being more flagrant and trying to charge extra for each WhatsApp message or add extra charges for Skype calls.

Isn't that happening on T-Mobile as we speak in US, and yet people are moving in droves cutting their broadband to mobile Internet. I am for Net Neutrality in general, course correction is and has been always a part of regulation and I acknowledge it is slow, but let it play out.

Yeah T-Mobile just started doing this—decades after the web was created—and it’s already causing problems (Youtube counts towards data, and Netflix doesn't, so now Google is concerned that T-Mobile is downgrading Youtube resolution.)

I promise you that in this sort of Internet, Facebook would have had an even more uphill contest against MySpace. Mark should let Indians have the same Internet he had.

Why is there no turning back? Why not let people choose for themselves instead of limiting choices you don't think are good for them?

So you’re fine with the idea that every time you load news.ycombinator.com your ISP charges you $0.10 extra, but if you load TMZ.com it’s free? That would not be “the internet” in my books, and I’m glad that across the world, from Obama & the FCC to India, people are standing steadfast to endorse net neutrality.

As for why there’s no turning back: for most of the internet’s history we’ve had ‘de facto’ net neutrality so we can codify the regulations without disruption. As soon as ISPs get habituated to pricing usage based on the app, it will be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle.

As with Bittorrent, the solution may simply be VPNs.

how would that help? the free sites are on a whitelist; vpns simply mean you pay for everything.

1) This was in response to firasd's alarmist argument about ISPs charging differently based on what sites you access, not the Internet.org thing.

2) There are free VPNs out there. I am not sure how trustworthy they are, but people I know have been using them for ages.

Free VPNs do not mean that ISP's won't charge you for the data.

The current campaign in which Facebook v.s. net neutrality activists are asking people to write in to TRAI (and the other stages of this campaign over the last year) is about exactly what I described. The regulator's consultation paper is not specifically about internet.org, it's about differential pricing in general. Like I said, before the activism, ISPs were already declaring they'd charge extra for messaging and VOIP, so it's not 'alarmist', it's planned and declared.

> That would not be “the internet” in my books

Which is why you are free to take your business to another ISP that does no such shenanigans.

Well, in the US at least not many rural people (and some city people) do not have access to multiple ISPs. I have comcast up to 120 mbps, or att for 6mbps. So I need to sell my house if I want to drop comcast.

>The problem is once you've tried this "impure" method there is no turning back. Once an ISP finds out they can offer some apps free but make other apps count towards data usage, the whole nature of the internet changes.

No it doesn't. There used to be free WhatsApp + Facebook/Twitter access over 3G/GSM here in Brazil for a year or so, NOTHING changed, except the poor could communicate with their friends for free and people spent less. Then came net neutrality* and now people have to pay to STILL only use social networks to communicate, like they did before the free plans and like they'll keep doing. Get a bus here and all you see people doing is chatting via WhatsApp or Messenger, even though they can access whatever they want for the same price.

As some other commenter mentioned, NN crusaders frequently seem like people who can afford data plans and have no contact with reality on a moral crusade about something they have no idea how it would or wouldn't work IRL.

* there are still some plans where you get "free WhatsApp", but you have to pay for the plan itself and the "free Whatsapp" part has something to do with your data cap ending and still being able to use services with low bandwidth.

Okay a few things:

1) I understand that people want free WhatsApp (etc), but I can't base internet policy on crowning WhatsApp as a free service. Indeed my whole position is that ISPs should not price-discriminate based on apps.

2) The fact that people used WhatsApp, Facebook & Twitter when they were zero-rated and continued to do so even when they are paid doesn't detract from my point about zero-rating being a unique advantage, quite the opposite.

3) Picking three services with strong network effects over the course of a few years is not what I meant about the fundamental nature of the internet. The point is that before WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter got popular, during their early growth, these apps and their users benefited from net neutrality. If apps become zero-rated over the long term their incumbency changes the nature of the internet from the state it was in when they were released.

If it weren't for NN, you wouldn't have any of those apps that you're so fond of. Once you have to pay to reach people, it becomes cost prohibitive to start any large scale for startups.

> The problem is once you've tried this "impure" method there is no turning back.

AOL and CompuServe are good counter-points.

> the facts on the ground are 80% of Indians do not have internet access

The facts on the ground for everywhere in the world not too long ago was worse than 20% access to the Internet. And I bet the current 20% Indian Internet users have much much faster connections than dial-up.

Things change. Fast. It is disingenuous to ignore the natural connectivity growth trajectory and focus on today's number only. Most will get connected to the Internet, with or without Facebook's "help" soon. The danger is with Facebook's "help", they'll get connected to FBNet (Free Basics Network, aka ZuckNet), diverting them away from connecting to the real Internet.

This is a repeat of AOL's playbook in the US in the 90's. Sure the internet existed and the web was around, but they were more interested in pushing their curated online service.

I know, it's terrible. AOL took control of the internet, closed it off to all but the highest bidders, and is holding back progress.

Oh wait...

Absolutely. I have been living in Cambodia for quite a while now, and despite overall adoption still being just above India's, connectivity is exploding here too.

"Internet use in Cambodia grew a staggering 414 per cent since January 2014"

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/cambodians-flock-net

It's exciting to see. Most people in Phnom Penh have a smart phone, and I meet more and more full-fledged computer nerds and Cambodian programmers all the time. I have no doubt that Cambodia will be fully connected within 5 or max 10 years, without the "help" of Facebook.

The question is still up in the air, whether FB Basics is gateway to full internet or if it is a walled garden.

I think it's a gateway to popularising tunneling; as long as FB lets those using FB Basics and those accessing FB from the full Internet communicate, you can still send information through. It's just like using FB as a proxy. Given that and what I know about Indian ingenuity, I predict a lot more hacks like this will appear:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9203946

So I suppose in some respects you could think of FB Basics as a very heavily throttled full Internet connection. You could even argue that FB and all the other companies giving "free" non-net-neutral access is driving incentive to hack around these restrictions, which I think is not at all a bad thing.

It isn't realistic to think that this will drive any noticeable amount of proxying/tunneling traffic. Not even close to realistic.

Facebook is not doing this for altruistic reasons.

Good. Look at all of the good all of the altruistic foreign aid has done for the poor nations of the world. In case you aren't aware, it hasn't done much good at all, and often does a lot of harm by perpetuating corruption and undermining local markets. Capitalism is the most successful anti-poverty program in history the world. Facebook has found a way to make money by providing connectivity to a billion people. What a triumph.

Except for the fact that Facebook is not providing any connectivity here. It is simply access to the walled garden that is Facebook. It is not internet in any form, not even the subset.

You are mistaken. Facebook will be one of the services offered on this platform, but anyone can apply to have their web service included. But even if it were just Facebook, that's very much connectivity. Users would be able to message people across the world, communicate with companies and government, share their views, comment on others views, etc. It's a hell of a lot more connectivity than telegrams, phones, and television ever were.

Facebook is not being altruistic here, and there's no such as thing as free. Whenever a merchant offers "free shipping," they're just manipulating the customer and the cost is built in elsewhere.

When facebook offers "free internet," whatever benefits it provides, the cost is hidden and built in elsewhere in Facebook's business model. Which means such a free internet that facebook is supposedly altruistically providing is actually being paid for elsewhere, whether in higher ad costs for India or some other area of their business.

This means facebook is essentially skirting net neutrality by indrectly paying for people to only have access to Facebook.

This is on top of anticompetitiveness of the move. Giving anything away for free destroys natural competition in the ecosystem. See the case of TOM's shoes giving away free shoes and destroying local shoemakers.[1]

Their tactics here makes it justifiable for a country like China to block Facebook. Imagine if Facebook took over China, and started blasting political messages with ulterior motives to 2+ billion people, trying to influence them for corporate gain.

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/economic...

I'm not sure you read my comment.

Facebook is a foreign entity going into a less developed market. It is overpowered, using its power to influence local government, and also has the power to destroy the local markets with their "free" option much like handing out free shoes to impoverished African countries.

Competition is good, but Facebook has the power to completely destroy and monopolize local industries if unchecked (in less developed economies at least).

Let's not pretend that most aid given by governments is altruistic.

> The Net Neutrality activists of India, are bunch of middle class disconnected from poor activists

Is that what you want to believe or can you back it up ? I think your statement couldn't be further from the truth.

New people connect to the Internet every day. This billion (really?) people might very well all be connected to the real Internet in ten years. Maybe this Facebook push can get them connected to FacebookNet in five years. Is that a good thing? Probably not, if history is any guide.

I agree strongly with this - its the same flawed logic when it comes to "idealistic democracy in the middle east".

Once the poor have some access to social media - it will automatically generate demand for more and better services.

Can you back up either of your bullshit statements?

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