Mark Zuckerberg's Free Basics argument doesn't address conflicts of interest
techinasia.com
techinasia.com
There are a thousand effective ways in which you can help the underprivileged. Partnering with ISPs to decide what's "basic" internet is not one of them.
P.S. Many professors from India's top tech institutes, startups, entrepreneurs & other eminent people have spoken against "Free Basics".
https://github.com/net-neutrality/no-free-basics - Feel free to add more with a Pull Request.
"HTTPS support: We encrypt information for Free Basics wherever possible."
Huh? As a service provider, why would I want YOU to encrypt traffic between my customer and me? I mean, it defeats the purpose of HTTPS. Its literally saying "I'm going to be a Man in the Middle and for a change, I'll also have the keys to decrypt the traffic". Yeah, right.
"When people use the Free Basics mobile website, information is temporarily decrypted on our secure servers to ensure proper functionality of the services and to avoid unexpected charges to people."
I had respect for Zuckerberg, have lost it completely.
Do you mind if I ask why? Zuckerberg is perhaps alone among tech figures in that I've never really had any respect for. Hell, Steve Jobs was a pretty scummy guy, to users/competitors/partners/everyone, and yet I still have more respect for him. Zuckerberg's attitude towards the user has been pretty consistently shitty going all the way back to the very beginning of the "thefacebook" service ("they trust me -- dumb fucks"). The guy's as cynical as they come.
Or essentially everyone that would not be a target market for this service.
Really, there aren't any pros of Free Basics when you take into account the fact that a similar, net neutral business model can and has been implemented (by Aircel). The details are different (data cap or speed cap instead of walled garden), but the business model is the same -- get people to start using the internet for free in a limited way, and some of them will come to the non-free services. But net neutral. You can basically take Facebook and the walled garden completely out of the picture and it would probably have similar efficacy.
Why can Facebook and Zuckerberg support free basics -- when they're not even from India, but these smart Indians cannot oppose it because they're not the target audience?
The pros are that its a service that people have a choice to use so if a customer freely chooses to do so, that person is obviously off. If you, or Aircel, want to provide a more competitive service you are free to do so. A different model that you feel is more effective is not an argument to restrict another competing model.
What's you definition of elite ? There's a very diverse background of people who have spoken against "Free Basics". Also keep in mind, that your average Joe won't even bother to read the fine print about the pros/cons of "Free Basics". So in a way, you have to depend on someone with a keen interest to voice an opinion.
I believe the keen interest lies with those that are going to potentially use the service. These "elites" don't know the people that could potentially use this service. They don't know their values, their circumstances, or anything about them. It is presumptuous to think that those outside groups somehow know whats best and can choose for those being forced to forgo the service what sacrifice they should make for their ideals
If someone wants to smoke tobacco or pot, why should I get any say in the matter?
And it's not internet colonialism for Facebook to swoop down, decide what Indians need, and take over their internet?
In fact, I've seen many well informed arguments from the so-called "elites" with numbers about internet adoption and _why_ the Internet isn't used much in India. I've seen none of this from Facebook; which has just assumed that India is full of clueless poor people.
For example, if you look at the costs of mobile data in India, the cost of a smartphone that supports the modern web (enough for sites like, say, Facebook to be usable) is more than the cost of data for a year or two. Most of the people Free Basics "helped" already were able to get internet. Folks are jumping onto it because it's free (and "free" has its own charm "If it's free, why not?"). There may also be people who already had internet switching to the free thing since they mostly use Facebook/Whatsapp/etc.
And given that Facebook isn't even paying for the data, what's it's role here? Some infrastructure (which is unnecessary in the alternate net neutral free internet models -- the infrastructure is only to make "internet.org" work), and some outreach.
You see a bunch of elites pushing back a philanthrophic company trying to help the poor. We see a company deviously inserting itself in the midst of something our telecom operators could have made work on their own, and structuring it in a dangerous way so that it is highly benefited.
(On a side note, a lot of students who came from poverty are on the side of the "elites", but this is anecdotal)
> the sacrifice that the poor will make (by forgoing this service) to serve their ideal (net neutrality)
I already said that there are net neutral ways of doing the same thing. It's not a sacrifice. You're making the same non sequitur the article says that Zuckerberg is -- saying no to Free Basics is not the same as saying no to.
net neutrality isn't even the only ideal involved here. Privacy is. You know, that thing the West is so crazy about right now? Free Basics is structured as a massive MITM. Facebook is in the business of data, and we can't trust them to not exploit the MITM.
Are you going to tell us to ignore this -- the same thing the West is so crazy about -- because it helps the poor? Even though, I reiterate, there are multiple models which have worked which provide internet to the poor without any of this crap? You're asking us to roll over and accept whatever we get because poor people. If you're from the West (many of the folks making this kind of argument are), that's way more elitist.
> want to provide a more competitive service you are free to do so
The internet, as Zuck himself is saying, is a public good and need. You don't unleash full market forces on those; capitalism can be harsh on them. An example is what's happened to the cost of higher education in the US.
The whole tone of this is very condescending. You (presumably) don't know these people that will be the market for this product. I don't think you should look down on them and deny them autonomy as to the service that they use.
> And given that Facebook isn't even paying for the data, what's it's role here? Some infrastructure (which is unnecessary in the alternate net neutral free internet models -- the infrastructure is only to make "internet.org" work), and some outreach.
I don't see your point. Who cares what Facebook is paying for or their involvement. You're arguing that a free service that could help out many people be banned by fiat. I think the bar should be set pretty high.
> We see a company deviously inserting itself in the midst of something our telecom operators could have made work on their own, and structuring it in a dangerous way so that it is highly benefited.
By all means, if you and others think there is a better model, implement it as a competitor and allow people chose. Partner with the telecom operators, get them to do it. Preventing competition will not achieve your hypothetical ideal.
> Are you going to tell us to ignore this -- the same thing the West is so crazy about -- because it helps the poor?
I'm not asking you to do anything. Let those choosing to use the service or not choose what to consider when deciding whether to use this product or not.
>You don't unleash full market forces on those; capitalism can be harsh on them.
Capitalism has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other system in human history. Extreme poverty has fallen to below 10% for the first time [0].
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/05/world-bank-ex...
I do know many of them. I don't think it's condescending to say folks will have a "It's free, why not?" attitude because many people (including me) has that attitude -- it wasn't a statement of the attitude of the poor, it was a statement of the attitude of people.
> I don't see your point. Who cares what Facebook is paying for or their involvement.
The point is that Facebook's involvement is an addon to an existing system that could have worked on its own. This point was to support the next bit about "deviously inserting itself".
> Capitalism has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other system in human history.
Another non sequitur. I wasn't saying capitalism can't/won't help poverty. I was saying full capitalism on basic needs is a bad idea. Even in the US these services are government controlled or highly regulated. Market forces aren't magic fix-everything solutions.
> I'm not asking you to do anything.
The "you" here was a general thing directed at Free Basics supporters and Mark.
> By all means, if you and others think there is a better model, implement it as a competitor and allow people chose.
It's been implemented partially (Aircel, Gigato, Grameenphone, not all in India). My point about full capitalism and market forces remains.
Note that Facebook's model requires a sacrifice of net neutrality from the get-go. Even if the market forces decide against Free Basics, net neutrality is long gone by then.
This is the heart of your argument. You believe that this undermining net neutrality, and it probably is. I don't see why there should be a different set of rules of paid services and those with a different model that doesn't involve direct payment from the user. As you can probably guess, I am not in support of net neutrality, so this is where we differ. I respect your resolve on the issue especially when faced with what seems like a hypothetical. I could see someone arguing against net neutrality by asking "hypothetically, under net neutrality I would be unable to offer free internet with limited functionality to the poorest people in the world...".
I believe this is a better argument to make and the rest is really an unnecessary distraction and can often be interpreted as condescension of the poor.
Yes, and this is the argument Zuck is trying to make (well, he's sort of skirting it but it's a similar core argument), and this is the argument I've been refuting here -- like I said there are models (Aircel, Gigato, Grameenphone) which have worked which solve the free internet thing without impacting net neutrality or privacy. This is not a hypothetical.
I see that you don't care about net neutrality -- a valid opinion to have. But here we have multiple solutions to the same problem, one of which impacts net neutrality -- something which a lot of people care about (and others, like you, don't). All other things being equal (they aren't, but there aren't any other compelling arguments for facebook's solution), shouldn't we choose the neutral solution? If you don't care about net neutrality, the solution picked won't matter. But this is a solution agreeable with the people who care about net neutrality. So everyone's happy, except Facebook.
I'll tell you how it'll go. You would probably as a way of casual conversation(in What's App or FB messenger) , mention that it would be nice if you bought an Air Conditioner. Now, normally FB won't(hopefully) read those messages because of its privacy policy.
Take free basics now, they're explicitly static that they can decrypt traffic. So now that you've mentioned an Air Conditioner, FB will start showing ads the next day saying "Air Conditioners at a discounted price". You get influenced and buy it(remember, you did not impulsively go to a shop and seek to buy one, you just mentioned it as a way of casual conversation). Do you see where its going?
That's one part of the problem. The rest is already summarized nicely by IIT professors.
Elites in our country have decided slavery should be banned, no matter what. Who are they to say a starving poor man can't sell himself into slavery in exchange for food for his family? How classist.
If is the difference between saying that smoking at 18 is bad and pushing a ban on selling cigarettes to adults who are considered too young. By all means, inform me. But do not take my freedom from me, even if it is in my best interest. For example, I strongly oppose bans on selling cigarettes to young adults even though I have never smoked and I hate smoking. I love the advice of how it is bad for you, but I love having the freedom to choose not to smoke instead of having it forced upon me.
But, I also realize it isn't this simple, as you have the other side using very underhanded if not outright illegal means to push what is in their best benefit. Personally this leads to me being at a moral impasse, because while I love the freedom to choose things that are less than beneficial for me, I realize that applied at large this causes major problems and I personally cannot hand wave it all away by saying they are adults responsible for their own choices (I honestly don't draw a major distinction between adults and children in this regard).
I dislike Zuckerberg for being deceitful as to the goals of this 'charity'. But I also dislike those who want to remove choices, even those that are not in my favor.
From that point of view, there are things which are strictly better than free basics which address these concerns (and net neutrality affects everyone, it's not just the "choice" of the people using Free Basics).
If these other models didn't exist there would probably be a weaker opposition to Free Basics. I'd mostly be on the fence -- preferring that net neutrality wasn't affected, but still supporting (or, not opposing) Free Basics since it's an IMO net gain. But these other options do exist.
What if there was a way to get the stress relief and other effects of smoking in a perfectly healthy and otherwise equivalent way? Would you ban cigarette smoking then? This "safe smoke" is not inferior to regular smoking according to smokers. It feels the exact same and has the exact same effect. If this exists, why allow cigarettes to exist? Okay, maybe you still want that choice. What if secondhand smoke was a much larger danger than it is now, and if a sizeable chunk of people start smoking, a lot of other people may get cancer just by sharing the same streets? In that case, would you allow it?
It's the same situation here.
Charity is not the reason why you're not the intended audience of that market.
Regarding net neutrality, that idea needs to die (and I know it's a hugely unpopular thing to say on HN). All bits are NOT created equal, some bits are more economically valuable than others. This is a fight you can't win, because it isn't against special interest groups etc, it is against the reality itself.
You're making the exact same fallacy the article says Zuck makes. Free Basics is not the only solution, there are other solutions out there which don't need Facebook's involvement, which could and should be implemented. Opposing Free Basics is not opposing free internet. Get rid of that strawman.
Mind you, that so far none of the "India's top tech institutes, startups, entrepreneurs & other eminent people" are forcing general population to reject the offer. They're just explaining what the costs and the long-term consequences are. Who, if not them, is supposed to do that?
Welcome to XXI century. We're making the world so complicated that you often can't trust an ordinary person to make a good decision for themselves.
So you deny the poor autonomy since they're poor? Poor != uniformed. They're not subjects of the state due to their circumstances.
Because I love quotes:
'Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.' - Abraham Lincoln, letter to H.L. Pierce, April 6, 1859.
> Mind you, that so far none of the "India's top tech institutes, startups, entrepreneurs & other eminent people" are forcing general population to reject the offer. They're just explaining what the costs and the long-term consequences are. Who, if not them, is supposed to do that?
I have no objection to that. They can advocate that it should not be used. I am only opposed to banning this service.
> Poor != uniformed.
I didn't think along this line. It's more of "general population == uninformed", especially when it comes to science and technology. It's too new and it's changing too fast. Societies internalize things very slowly.
I love quotes too, but denying freedom isn't what's happening. A big issue in our times is that people have very limited capabilities to exercise their freedom for any good. Not only the world is too big and complex, in every aspect of our lives we're constantly facing armies of malicious people that are paid for fucking us over. "Free will" sounds cool, but it loses much of its glamour when you see how easy is to manipulate people into doing things that go against their best interest.
> I have no objection to that. They can advocate that it should not be used. I am only opposed to banning this service.
Yeah, I'm not advocating a ban either. But I don't see anything bad about the third-party "elites" speaking up. They aren't just random celebrities, they're the people with knowledge and means to understand this particular issue.
Moreover, I find it extremely hypocritical of Mark Zuckerberg to push a system that would have prevent his own company from becoming as big as it has. Put another way, he would be screaming bloody murder if it was Google offering Free Basics, and forcing everybody to access the web through Google+.
Kottke, 2007: http://www.kottke.org/07/06/facebook-is-the-new-aol
Marketing tech blog, 2009: https://www.marketingtechblog.com/facebook-is-the-new-aol/
Stowe Boyd, 2010: http://stoweboyd.com/post/7928792532/the-decline-and-fall-of...
PC Mag, 2010: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372729,00.asp
The Verge, 2015: http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/4/7488495/facebook-is-the-new...
NY Mag, 2015: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/facebook-is-the...
If it would be OK to do anything as long as the service is free, it would make sense for Chinese government & Baidu & Huawei consortium to provide High Quality Free Basics for every American who wants it.
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[1] Remainder to avoid fruitless arguments: monopoly power ≠ monopoly http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Market_failures/Monopoly_po...
I am sure that most Indians who have the means to pay for broadband will not want to be restricted to that facebook service. In fact the more restrictive facebook makes it, the more likely it will not prevent competition.
So, ISPs are taking the money from (users paying for) site A, and using that to subsidise site B. This is a blatant net neutrality violation.
A neutral way of doing this is to offer the site the option of paying on behalf of the user, at the same rate the user pays. Offer the same option to all sites at the same price and subject to the same terms. Allow this to be resold, so that CDN-like companies can spring up that allow a company to reach all users in India (or the world) without having to sign up with multiple ISPs. That will be a level playing field.
Second, and more importantly, even if Free Basics were completely free, it'd still be wrong. Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer for free with Windows. They did not do this as an altruistic gesture. They did it to crush Netscape, which was challenging their software monopoly on the desktop. Facebook is doing exactly the same thing with Free Basics. This is not an altruistic gesture by Facebook, regardless of what Mark Zuckerberg writes in his op-ed. This is a calculated move to establish a Facebook monopoly over user data in the largest untapped Internet market in the world. Facebook, with Free Basics, is ensuring that no other social network or messaging platform can challenge it in India.
The technology community rightly applauded the US Department of Justice when it initiated anti-trust actions against Microsoft. We should applaud the Indian technology community for standing up and forcing the government of India to take a hard look at the long term consequences of a Facebook monopoly.
Can someone explain for me how Free Basics would be harmful for anyone? If there's an alternative way to bring full internet connectivity to people who currently can't pay for it, wouldn't that alternative beat Free Basics in the market? The article briefly mentions "public internet access" as an alternative, but the Indian government has already failed the 400 million Indians without electricity, and 1 billion without internet. "The Indian government can probably get the money somewhere" reveals a total misunderstanding of the scale of the problem and places a laughable faith in the Indian government, the incompetence of which is in fact the single largest factor holding India back. Why not give market solutions a chance?
[1] http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/role-of-private-sec... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/world/asia/for-indias-poor...
Mark Zuckerberg's Op/Ed piece[1] specifically makes the case that Free Basic's is valuable likening it to public healthcare, public education, and public libraries.
So yes, private good. But private also is private, and not beholden to the public. Free Basics isn't private, though Zuck et al would like it to be accepted and lauded as a public service.
[1] http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/free-...
Unless we're talking about B-corp's [1], such a philosophy is not compatible with the legal responsibility a corporation has to its shareholders.
An advertising giant offering "free internet" with the ability to MITM and track https connections is hardly charity.
Meanwhile I'll point out that this sort of disdain coupled with a demand that India accept a Faustian bargain ("Who could possibly be against this?", as Zuck says) is exactly what prompts people to think of this perspective as a variation of the "White Man's Burden".
I reject the idea that if someone comes up with a plan for a country, upon turning it down the country has to provide an immediate substitute. If I say highly-polluting cars are affordable and will give more people mobility, it doesn't mean opponents have to immediately provide less-polluting cars at the same price.
My arguments about the power of the free market are not limited to India or any particular country. I preach the same for America. The American government is incompetent and is holding back growth.
Subsidies preserve broken business models at great cost to not just taxpayers, but economic efficiency and quality of service. They create and perpetuate structural deficiencies in the economy. They reward political rent-seeking instead of creating real value for people.
As they pile up, the cumulative effect becomes worse and the ability of society to change its mind erodes. At an extreme, when subsidies drive a huge portion of economic activity, returning to a free market requires years of painful readjustment.
The great thing about business is also one of the worst things about it. Profit drive is a very powerful optimization force, and we owe to it most of the wealth around us. It's great when it kind of follows along the lines society wants it to. But, as you said, it has essentially no reason to keep doing that, and so when being horrible and evil is more profitable, the business turns horrible and evil and that's where we need the government - an agent that does not follow the same incentive gradient - to step in and force that business to behave.
The market is like a great river. It's simple - it flows downhill. Put an obstacle on its way, and the river shall destroy it or route around it. But just as majestic and life-giving it is, it can equally easily take lives away. It will flood villages and cities without stopping. Governments are like people tasked with landscaping. They don't have the power of the river. But they can put things on its path to redirect it - whether away from settlements in danger, or towards a barren land, or straight into a power plant that will help feed millions.
We need both.
I agree that we need both. Basic research is a good example. I'm not familiar with the economics of electric cars, but you might be right about Tesla too. But beware the easy incrementalism of this all. Each step is logical and difficult to oppose on its own, but the collective result is a society drained of its dynamism and freedom. And then the real kicker is that the government programs that you sacrificed them to don't work. They become barriers to entry for competition, vehicles for political pork, permanent bureaucracies that lobby for their own existence, and more opportunity to waste other people's money.
As an aside, businesses do have a very good reason to continue to serve the public interest: they need to continue to create value for their customers, or they soon won't have any.
(And no, disbanding all governance will not make power spread itself evenly among everyone - it's not a stable state. We'd be back to having warlords instead.)
RE Tesla, they took some DOE loans (inb4 someone pops up with "evil Musk eating taxpayer money" again - loans which they paid back in full and way before the due time) that were important to their growth. It's a textbook example of why those loans, and other grants, exist in the first place.
I agree that all the problems you mentioned are real and important. Governments do create nasty issues. But they handle some things well. Markets too have issues, just different ones, and also have terrible failure modes in other areas (which include bribing governments into changing laws to benefit them instead of the general population). Personally, I'm advocating for dropping the ideological approach and just evaluating every problem on its own, whether it is solved best by top-down governance, bottom-up free market work, or some combination of both.
Jurisdictions are moving toward charter schools because their teachers are not unionized, and can therefore be paid less salary and benefits than public school teachers, with the side “benefit” of breaking public schoolteachers unions. Additionally, charter schools help rich white people redirect their tax money away from funding public schools in poor brown neighborhoods. Finally, charter schools are much less regulated w/r/t the salaries they pay their management or the services they purchase from other firms, which makes them a booming profit center, and gives plenty of slush to spend on lobbying, bribes, and PR/marketing.
Alternet isn’t the most neutral source, but check out this lengthy piece for a decent rundown of some of the sources of profit in the charter school world: http://www.alternet.org/election-2014/who-profiting-charters...
I think there's problems with that narrative too. The impact that good teachers can have on kids from very troubled homes is probably overstated, and teachers unions have often been fighting against performance rating systems that unfairly ignore that. But in defense of charters, a performance rating system that doesn't work won't survive very long in the private sector.
Edit: Perhaps a better question, that avoids the nasty politics of the current situation, is: what does the ideal system look like? My inclination is that it would look more like charter schools than like public schools.
The precise policy details might not apply in extremely different societies/political systems, but the high-level goals should be the same:
Highly qualified professional teachers with good career prospects and lots of personal responsibility and a culture of continuous professional development, adequate school infrastructure and materials, focus on the individual needs of diverse children, resource equality for students regardless of wealth or social class, work to solve child poverty and other severe social problems that prevent any education system from functioning.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-ame...
"...teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. "
"All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher."
"If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it."
"In Finland parents can also choose."
But it may be that the finnish model is slipping anyway:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/06/is-finland-a-choice-les...
"Finnish eighth-graders today perform slightly lower than seventh-graders did in 1999."
I give them two decades.
Some charter schools. A minority. Others are run like tiny military academies, or have gone all-in on high-stakes testing, or profit by relying on low-paid short-term teachers with high turnover, or are mainly financial schemes/scams with schools attached (cf. the alternet link a few posts upthread).
All of the bits you listed actually sound precisely like my southern California suburban public elementary school experience in the mid–late 1990s. Unfortunately the school got constant pushback from the school district and state for not being excited enough about letter grades or standardized tests, but was able to mostly persist its culture through support from local parents.
The hard work, mediocre pay compared to alternative professions, and lack of autonomy and social respect they receive takes its toll though, and teacher attrition is higher than ever. Instead of “playing chicken” as you suggest, experienced teachers are retiring in droves and top potential teachers are scared away by poor career prospects, and as a profession teaching is hollowing out. Most states cut education budgets sharply after the 2008 recession and in general those budgets still haven’t recovered. I fear that in another decade or two public education will be in a very tough place, having lost a huge proportion of its human capital with no easy way to get it back. In parts of the US this is already a crisis, but the political response has been to further demonize teachers and push for more standardized testing, voucher programs, charter schools, and so on.
Even if states cut education budgets sharply in 2008 it shouldn't have been a problem, because it's not like teachers 30 years before that were suffering under much more parsimonious spending. It's just that when they cut those budgets, someone decided to pass the pain on to the teachers instead of figuring out where the real waste was.
The atrocious thing is that the teacher's unions keep clamoring for more educational spending instead of higher teacher pay. Empirically speaking in the US, more educational spending will correlate with lower teacher pay.
My only question...would Americans think it would be wise to destroy Net Neutrality?? Just asking. Perhaps someone should try and get Facebook to start this in USA.
Private schools exist from an aristocratic history. England has this nonsense also. Meanwhile there are countries who take public education seriously and there is essentially no such thing as private education. Look at how Scandinavian countries do this. And the Germans are offering U.S. college students free degrees, many of them stay in Germany. And by and large the education level in these countries is more uniform, where in the U.S. it's again, quite classist.
So if you're in favor of feudalism, yeah private school is a great idea.
As for Free Basics, I think it's for the users to decide whether it meets their needs or not, but for that to be possible Facebook shouldn't be referring to what they offer as an essential service. Facebook itself is not essential. A full, unabridged Internet connection, is essential. But that's not what's offered. Further, the connection with the user requires dual certificates, so Facebook can see what everyone's doing even if they aren't using Facebook proper - something an ISP doesn't even get to do. The harm is the obfuscation.
And maybe the fiercest and bitterest war waged in state politics over the last decades were about school systems.
In Hamburg there are mostly comprehensive schools. In the largest state, Northrhine-Westphalia, there are still those separate tiers, but comprehensive schools are probably the majority.
Who funds education can and should be a separate argument from who runs the schools.
It makes the entire technological infrastructure of the country grow crooked, relying on a particular corporation as backbone, rather than growing their own.
Because "market solutions" demonstrably fail in the presence of externalities, esp. for public goods.
Besides market equilibria are provably intractable in the general case anyway... (Unless P = NP, that is).
The question, if we can agree the open network is something desirable, is will this initiative help the population get Internet access sooner or later? My bet would be later, but I am happy to be proven wrong.
The case is entirely opposite in higher education. People swear by public institutes and universities and private institutes (barring a few big ones) are looked down upon because they have historically charged more for a lesser education compared to the highly subsidized and excellently staffed public universities.
This is a good argument. This is not a charity act but a business decision. Although it brings something good to the Indian, Indian also helps Facebook to expand its business.
> The World Bank and African Development Bank report there are 650 million mobile users in Africa, surpassing the number in the United States or Europe. In some African countries more people have access to a mobile phone than to clean water, a bank account or electricity, the agencies add. [0]
Perhaps its time to rethink what organizations are best suited for raising the standard of living.
[0] http://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/may-2013/africa%E2%...
It's not difficult for people to understand this initiative violates net neutrality and is an attempt to create a "separate internet" where budding entrepreneurs/content providers have no choice but to pay Zuck to be onboarded. This is akin to license raj (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj) that was demolished way back in the 90s.
Free Basics just happens to depend on differential pricing, and Facebook is running a campaign to preserve Free Basics, hence it has become lightening rod for the debate.
Mozilla is another example, and then there are standards boards, IEEE, e.g., which are very closely tied to industry. So why not internet.org?
In any case, you seem to be missing the bigger point here - it's not about whether FB is promoting this today for maximizing profit or not, it's about promoting the re-modelling of the internet where information flow is controlled by FB.
Let's put it like this, Facebook could be pushing for a net neutral version of free Internet access, the cost to them is exactly the same as the Free Basics plan, as the real cost is in the Internet bandwidth/infrastructure. The fact that they're not pushing for a net neutral Internet says volumes about their true intentions.
Are those for-profit and not readily regulated?
> Moreover, the conflict of interest exists even when the state
But in this case the state is a democracy. Ideally conflict of interest is non-existent.
Of course they can be regulated just like any business or service. So could this service, in fact. Forcing net neutrality for all service providers would cut out a lot of crap and I'm convinced it's a long-term boon.
It's not regulated - not sure about the profit part. It is hugely dwarfed by the public library, but it is still quite popular. They have a smaller collection, but the percentage of the items that circulate is supposedly astronomical.
It only has a 10,000 year lease though, so I suppose it's only temporary.
So how is Mark using the billions now? Right, actively trying to make the world much worse and closed place. A place which would prevent him from starting his business in the first place. What world we live in that such individuals are so successful :(
It's a fairly simple question. If Free Basics, which violates net neutrality (Facebook has never denied this, instead responding by saying that poor people internet is more important than net neutrality) is allowed, then every ISP in India will have the legal ability to violate net neutrality.
Indian providers are already terrible, and will almost certainly abuse their powers to have both website providers, and customers, pay more to access services. They will be providing different packages with the lowest tier only giving Facebook access, the next one adding Bing, etc...
What we know as the internet, and the best parts of the internet, which allowed companies like Facebook and Google to flourish in the first place, cannot exist without net neutrality. Allowing Free Basics is essentially India kissing the internet good bye, in favor of AOL style walled gardens. Admittedly, there will be a wide variety of walled gardens to choose from, and some of them may even allow you to talk to your friend in a different walled garden.
But the internet won't exist anymore.
When I first got a Kindle, it had unlimited free access to Wikipedia. I thought this was the coolest thing ever, and didn't think about net neutrality, just a cool bonus that came with the device.
Zuckerberg might spend a lot of money on this, but an entire continent's opinion is turning against him.
This is not going to go well for him.
Corruption will likely not tolerate such a free market without getting a slice of the pie, that's the biggest stumbling block.
Capitalism isn't a magic wand you can wave over things and have them fix themselves.
ANRC (the body that governs communication) in Romania I think did more (by doing very little) for the Romanian economy than any other government agency. It's funny because we used to hate them for not allowing us to get more ethernet cables on the public infrastructure (which we payed for a nominal price) because of some safety issues. I was working as and admin working for one of those free for all ISPs. It's crazy how good and cheep the internet has become since then.
What happened is that in a small city (250k people) we had about 30 independent ISPs and we had gigabit peering between ourselves. Scroll 5 years, big companies come in and buys us all out, then slowly start replacing ethernet with fiber. Scroll another 5-10 years, most have fiber in the cities and gigabit connections at very low prices.
It can be argued that the little guys (ISPs) got a little screwed especially those who haven't been bought, but overall the romanians got a really good internet and that's all that matters in the end.
The take away here is that once people started getting used to low-cost mostly local network + internet within a highly competitive environment, the "big" ISPs had no choice than to provide at least an equal service.
It's true, that was a different time, but now it's even better, because hardware is a lot faster and cheaper!
That's not the case in India.
Also, note that India is much larger and setting up a network is a much harder investment to make. If there's an oligopoly already active, they could simply not let new ISPs get a foothold unless you set up all the infrastructure on your own. And part of the problem of low internet usage is low internet connectivity in rural areas (which is probably less of a problem for Romania). That's not going to be solved by Facebook or market forces.
It really irks me when someone tries to convince me by speaking on my behalf. Yes, I might be in favor on these plans.
"Exxon could build a school and then teach kids in its science classes that fossil fuels are the healthiest way forward for our planet"
And states don't do that? Pick up a history book from American, French and Russian public school, see if they tell the same story...
"Penguin could build a library and stock it in a way that pushed more people towards reading (and buying) Penguin’s books"
So what, as long as other publishers aren't forbidden from doing the same thing??
tl;dr: even if we agree that FB isn't aiming at personal benefits here, internet.org isn't useful. reasons in the article.
Many facebook posts include links/videos to other sites, and almost all of these will not work unless you pay facebook tax.
Most indians use whatsapp as it is cheaper(free) and offers more features than SMS, that actually means people use data probably 2G, but vast majority of these customers are not using facebook. free basic is to get the whatsapp users to become facebook users.
There's the facebook platform and all sorts of startups that have been excluded for competing with Whatsapp or Facebook or being a threat to facebook.
Unfortunately this is a winning strategy politicians follow in India to garner support. Its getting better with education and the Internet, but it still works to some extent.
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-free-basic-internet-...
2. What services are available on Free Basics? It does not seem very easy to figure out what you can get access to.
3. Internet.org by Facebook.
4. Facebook is the gatekeeper of what sites are available on Free Basics.
But that's not what the alternative is. It would be correct to write "instead of having _no library at all_".
There is not such a huge barrier as is being portrayed by Facebook. A better comparison would be a very cheap book rental store which can lend you anything you want to a free private library which controls what and how you read.
The problem is that he's trying to kill both those birds with one stone.
Oh, so you agree that it shouldn't be banned, which means you're taking Facebook's side, against the advocates that do want to ban it. Glad that's clear.
He may not violate netneutrality plus can expand his user base also.
But he may not go with this solution. It is less cost effective. But as it is a charity, cost shouldn't be a point.
Zuck is masking his for-profit venture with charity.
Zuck and Facebook do bill Free Basics as a charity, but yet, they're not giving the Internet, they're giving poor people what Zuckerberg wants. They're not hooking up Twitter are they? They say it's because of "agreements", but really it comes down to the fact that they are paying the telcoms money, and they want an audience for their ads. Now that's not immoral, but it's not a charity, so don't expect people to say how great and benevolent they are. Now FB could pay for the real Internet, but they don't, because they're not a charity. It's this mismatch between rhetoric and actions that really pisses people off.
We saw this before when Google first started operating in China. The Google Triumvirate said, "Hey, isn't some Internet better than no Internet?" (The exact same argument that Zuck is making today.) Of course, the Chinese had Baidu at the time, and Baidu actually worked better for Chinese language search than Google as well. The real reason Google wanted in China wasn't to spread knowledge, but rather to get access to the 1.4 billion potential users, because pretty much everyone with an Internet connection outside of China already used Google.