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> 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.

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.

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.

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

> 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).