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.
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 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.)
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.
Overall, it has not caused any major disasters.
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.
>:(
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.
This is the whole net neutrality issue. No net neutrality, no internet.
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?
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?
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.