Facebook's Free Basics Shuts Down in Egypt
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
Now I wonder how free and open his other internet through blimps idea was, that was floated a while ago.
So do you really believe FB did it for the good of the people and that this free basics thing is good? What do you think a poor guy without access to proper resources like food, education will gain by sharing likes on FB?
Net neutrality was the last bastion of freedom online, but it's somehow too high of a standard for societies with lower rates of internet access?
If you rely on government to build free internet access infrastructure for poor people, it could take long time. While on the other hand, fb has managed to build something and convinced telcos to give it for free to poor and promised that they will soon see those people converting into a full-internet user and will pay you the normal rate.
So, actually the grand plan is to get them to use full internet, which is not bad for either parties I think.
I don't see that anywhere. It's almost as if there is a lot of money in getting a class of people to think FB is the internet by cutting off any real initiative for full internet access.
It's all about the USA doing exactly that, by promising massive GDP gains. When they fail to net the profit required to pay the contractors, the contractors take over the infrastructure -- netting the USA dozens of corporate-owned electrical infrastructure all over the world, chiefly South America & the Middle East (!!)
Ads are increasingly about product placement, brand presence and being top of mind. Especially when you can be sure that 80% of your clickthroughs on Facebook are from some bot network that Facebook doesn't bother to crack down on because it adds to their userbase metric, which is what the derive such a high valuation from. [1]
I'm sure coke, nestle, and other branded basic commodities (food, drink, clothing) would love a way to show ads to this low-income segment.
[and even poor people may be advertising targets, for the right customer. Loan sharks? Political parties? Religious groups?]
The poorest who can't afford the internet don't even have the devices capable of displaying the modern web pages properly. The cost of internet comes secondary to the cost of the hardware necessary to access it.
A serviceable used PC can be had for on the order of $50. Internet service is on the order of $50/month.
This is bullshit. 1GB of 4G LTE costs less than $4 in India.
Even at $4/month = $48/year, how is that supposed to make buying a $50 device once every five years the dominant factor in affordability?
This argument can lead to a lot of unpleasant places. It's the regulators job to decide what offers are coercive to the poor, and make it illegal to offer them.
It's generally illegal to offer to buy an organ, buy sex, or buy someone in to slavery because the only people that would consider that offer are being coerced by their circumstances. I think that the same (obviously to a lesser degree) is true of facebook's offer here (but not of netzero's offer). They are not free to choose, they are coerced by circumstance.
In other words, they're coerced into staying broke if we make it illegal to sell organs.
Or, we could stop trying to justify abuse of the poor for the benefit of the wealthy.
There are plenty of poor people who cant afford to make mobile phone calls or send sms messages. With this they would at least had some way to do so.
Say there is one mobile phone in the village (powered by say a solar panel). A person could just borrow that or rent it for a moment, to send some important message. Say to find out what the price of milk is today at the market in the next village. (If they cant read or write then they could get that one kid that can, to do it for them)
Small thing like this could create all kinds of new opportunities.
From my observations in Kumasi, Ghana and Kabul, Afghanistan (where I worked for a telco) having a basic cellphone and a cheap top-up plan is nearly universal. Prepaid SIM cards are sold on almost every street corner and the Facebook-enabled bundles are extremely popular.
After food, water, and clothing, family and business communications are the next most important need.
I would make a great ted talk. How cheap mobile communication is changing life in remote villages.
From own limited experience, I was struck by how expensive slow internet access was in the third world around 2008 (two years backpacking South America and South East Asia). The average local could not afford it. I could barely afford it. I remember for instance a Internet cafe in a small mountain town in Bolivia charged about $10 dollars an hour in 2008 (I guess it was internet by satellite).
I hope things have changed. Any internet access (however limited) would make a big difference to the poor.
The punchline is that when yo look at earth from space, the places that don't have visible (artificial) light are the places where innovation is happening, leapfrogging legacy wired infrastructure.
What happened to Net Neutrality?
If the Internet is really so beneficial and necessary to these people, they should be given the actual Internet. Accept no substitutions.
(Also, this is more than just "ad supported." This is a bundle of specific sites with their own biases and opinions, not real access to the Internet.)
Throw in that this is Facebook, not internet, where Facebook is free but everything else is charged, and you're making an obvious monopsonic grab on these people.
Anyway, please don't spread the "no such thing as free" propaganda. It's good to be skeptical of anything free, but truly free can exist. In the same sense, people should be skeptical of all sorts of scammers and catches, people that may claim to be in love with you but are really scamming you, and yet sincere unconditional love does exist in the world.
You start with an idea to give completely free, net-neutral internet to the poor.
Next someone tells you that you need to pipe that through something so that the ISPs don't charge for the data, fine, it's now free, but goes through a pipe, and since you have a company with lots of resources, let's make it a Facebook pipe, as it's easier. You ask services to just register with you so that you can let them through the pipe.
Then you realise that most people using this are going to be using it on devices that can't run Javascript and heavyweight CSS, so the content needs to be a little more basic. Facebook already does that, but you need other services to, so you run a few quick quality checks on their site when they sign up. Easy, better user experience, anyone can still do this, anyone can sign up to provide a service on free basics, so it's still neutral right?
Finally, you find out that lots of these countries that you're providing free basics in have random obscure laws about what you can and can't do online, so you add in a clause that lets you deny approval to sites that don't conform to the laws, just to cover yourself legally, you don't want to be sued out of the country by the government, otherwise you wouldn't be able to provide your service!
So that's it, you can now provide a net-neutral service to non-internet users.
(Earlier post) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10816991
> Mind if I ask how you usually access HN?
My PC, with WiFi at home.
> Do you know anyone who would consider something like free basic?
I would. Already, mobile networks have Facebook and Wikipedia (iirc) zero-rated. Meaning you pay nothing to use those services. My startup is trying to get zero-rating on Vodafone to encourage our customers to use our service.
Having free access to some useful sites is a plus. Having my Internet restricted to those sites is a minus.
What is the process of getting zero-rating like?
Are you glad that zero rating exists in your market?
I don't know. As far as I can tell (what we're doing) we're speaking to the telcos directly. There's no formal process for getting zero-rating. We have an investor/incubator relationship with Vodafone Ghana. Zero-rating our service is just one of the things we're negotiating.
> Are you glad that zero rating exists in your market?
Uhh...I should put my current feelings in context.
I didn't care much 2-3yrs ago because these were marketed as carrier promos, and telcos in Ghana have a bad reputation already. It was none of my business until word went round that MTN (the largest in Ghana, huge across Africa) will start charging special rates for using certain apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, the usual.
The response in our small tech community was mixed. A lot of people I asked weren't aware, but there few that were, were truly outraged.
I didn't follow the news but it seemed other telcos started moving in that direction, then backed down. All the while, 0.facebook.com was still promoted on billboards in Accra.
So it's two things: you can get useful services for free (so you remain subscribed to the network, I guess) or you can be charged specially for using a service that really matters.
My feelings are mixed at this point but I'd much rather prefer a neutral net than one that can favour or penalize services. That leaves an uncomfortable room for abuse.
> ...who would consider something like free basic?
I can't put a number on it but from what I've observed it's SCARY to see the consequences if Free Basics took off. All internet cafes already have Facebook as the default page (most people don't even know how to logout, they just close the tab).
One thing that gives me hope is that people also know Google (I personally use DDG).
So, they have convinced telcos to give free-basics for free for the poor and soon they will see them switching to full internet. And in the process people will get addicted to fb too.
Poor - Win
FB - Win
Telcos - Win
I don't understand, why people are only seeing non net-neutrality way of making money from this. There are ways for them to make money in the above way too.
It's definitely a front for what Comcast et al have been trying to do to destroy net neutrality. The only difference is that it's under the guise of a "helping the poor" facade, and you've been fooled by it.
Why to kill something when you are not sure that it will definitely result in non net neutral internet. If there are people doubting it, then you must wait till it really makes the web non neutral, then the government can interfere. Government just have to give one notice to the telcos to stop this.
This is one experiment which is worth trying.
They're a for-profit company that is violating net neutrality and damaging ISP market growth in developing nations. Your logic justifying this as an "experiment" is just as unethical as the logic behind something like the AZT trials.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/free-...
Something that really bothers me about "Facebook Basic (Free Basic, Facebook.. what a fucking insidious name!)" is the lack of competition..
http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFL3N14J3OQ2015123...
It begins with telecommunications, namely wires and radio links that carry data. You cannot have an Internet without these. Normally these things are provided by carriers, also called phone companies. ISPs used to be a separate thing but nowadays, an ISP is just part of a wireline or wireless phone company. Once you have a carrier who supplies you with connectivity using the Internet protocols, you are on the Internet.
Beyond that there are millions of services accessible via the Internet and Facebook is only one of millions. Many people never use Facebook because they don't need it, or because they use an alternative service.
It costs money for carriers to provide Internet service and traditionally this has been paid for by subscribers, not by Internet service companies. People are creative, and in many countries, the billing plans for Internet services are very different from the way it is done in your country. But it works, because local carriers are motivated to understand their customers' needs.
Facebook can add nothing positive to the relationship between carriers and their subscribers. It's that simple.