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Comment by tyre | Hacker News Reader

Good damage control by Zuckerberg, but notice that his comment says nothing substantial about why Free Basics _isn't_ similar to colonialism.

It is absolutely about growth and user acquisition. They are using their capital to subsidize and lock in a monstrous market. Is that bad? There are reasonable arguments on both sides.

But Facebook is not a charity. Facebook is not a social cause.

If it were, Zuckerberg would have sold his shares and reinvested the cash back into Facebook when announcing his plan to donate $45bn. There's a reason billionaires invest their money in charitable funds, and not all of it for tax reasons. There are some things markets just aren't great at solving.

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> Good damage control by Zuckerberg

Sort of. I mean it sounds lovely but he is just saying words. Do people really pay attention to PR and if so how would this comment influence what anyone is feeling?

He is emitting positive signals but they are weak. Where is the substance behind these (cheap) words? IMHO Zuckerberg would have to actually DO something extraordinarily profound to come across as a sincere human being.

I am not trying to imply he is evil but all his actions fail to make me believe that he is a well meaning guy.

Read the comments. Most people eat this stuff up. Companies do PR because it works.

The vast majority of comments is indeed positive. Could be that most of those who don't support him just don't dignify his post with a comment, though.

Most of the time when people have negative response to something they refrain from leaving an internet comment, thats why everyone loves internet comments /s

They could be the vocal minority though.

> But Facebook is not a charity. Facebook is not a social cause. If it were, Zuckerberg would have sold his shares and reinvested the cash back into Facebook when announcing his plan to donate $45bn.

Could you elaborate on your reasoning for this? I've reread this a handful of times and haven't been able to figure out the rationale for such a move under those conditions.

Sure. Zuck realized he wanted to do a lot of good with his money. If he thought that Facebook was the best way to have an impact, then he'd simply donate his shares back to the company, which would give them ~$45bn in capital to reinvest in their mission.

He didn't do that. Which means, as the person with the single greatest understanding of Facebook, he thought he could have a more positive impact on humanity by putting that money elsewhere.

This doesn't mean Facebook doesn't do good things. This doesn't mean Facebook isn't a great company. His actions merely show that, for some objectives, he thinks other organizations can have a better impact.

Or maybe it's just that throwing more money at Facebook won't make it any faster or better at doing good. It's quite possible the Zuck really does think Facebook is the best way to have an impact, but more money won't increase the impact. So, having more money than ability to deploy in a single entity, he's branching out into others.

Charities are part of a market process. "For-profit firm" and "market" are not synonymous.

I don't understand your first sentence. The second one is true, did my comment confuse the two?

A market is a group of people. A for-profit firm provides good or services (value) to individuals in a market in exchange for money.

You implied that billionaires donate to charities because markets aren't great at solving such a problem, even though charities are market institutions.

To be clear and fair, Free Basics is the East India Company of our day.

You're kidding? Nothing like

That seems like the sort of thing you might say if you had no clue what the East India Company was or did.

Facebook's core business is procuring tea from India and selling opium to China and employs large privateer fleet so the comparison is apt.

Facebook investors would shit a brick if they were as profitable as the BEIC. The Dutch VOC gave out 18% dividends.

The history of the BEIC is long and varied, but it actually ran into financial difficulty repeatedly and had to be bailed out by the British government, and was always vastly smaller and less profitable than the Dutch equivalent. The VOC did something like 5 times the amount of trade the BEIC did, at their respective peaks.

(Incidentally, one of the many bailouts of the BEIC company took the form of the Tea Act of 1773. American's probably know it better as the trigger for the Boston Tea Party, and one of many steps on the road to revolution. And you thought Occupy Wall Street was upset about corporate bailouts...)

lock in a monstrous market so that they can what? advertise to poor people who can barely afford clean water and food? yeah, great strategy...

And why exactly do you think Facebook is offering this service? (And, furthermore, why exactly do you think they are offering this service with access only to Facebook and Facebook approved sites, rather than to the Internet at large)?

[On edit: I seem to be getting a lot of downvotes on this post, yet no actual answers to the question]

Are people who use free basics required to create a Facebook account or can they simply just use Wikipedia and other apps/websites?

It's an investment. India is an emerging market, and those folks' purchasing power can only increase. It is truly a great strategy, because his company will be the one collecting data on what they like and what they don't before they're even able to buy stuff. That is a sure way to beat your competition.

India's growth rate is a fairly consistent 6-7% and the growth rate of the upper class (read: anyone > 1/2 US poverty level) is probably significantly higher.

Zuckerberg is running a long game here.

Furthermore, anyplace where Facebook isn't huge is a place where a competitor can grow. Note how Whatsapp spread from India/Africa to the rest of the world.

You're the same kind of people that would tell Zuckerberg "Why do you want teenagers? What are you going to do, advertise to them? They have no money"

Don't be ridiculous.

I can tell you've never been to India.

What do you really think the world looks like? Do you honesty think that most Indians can't afford food?

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