Comment by bo1024 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bo1024 | Hacker News Reader

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> It is better for a poor Iraqi to get free Wikipedia even though that hurts other upstart wikis, than for poor Iraqis to have no Wikipedia at all.

I don't accept this premise. This is a false dichotomy because these are not the only two options. There is a third, better option: to get access to the entire internet.

A company offering you that choice is using a classic game-theoretic bargaining approach: commit to only allowing a restricted set of possibilities, of which the other person's best option is the one you want to happen. This makes it sound like the company has no chioce in the matter: they are just presenting you with the options, and you are the one who has to choose between eliminating this poor Iraqi's internet or giving her partial access. In reality, the company has stacked the deck by presenting you with this particular pair of options.

I'm not saying it's completely illegitimate for a company to want to sponsor free partial internet for those who don't have it in some places of the world.

But I am saying it is opposite from the ideal we should be working towards in already-developed countries like the USA. Ideally, the company providing internet should not at all be vertically integrated with the company providing websites on it and should have no incentive to prioritize one over the other.

I remember a progression going something like this:

1. Local folks taking turns calling a handful of BBSes.

2. BBSes synchronizing some messages with each other, even long-distance.

3. BBSes providing some limited Internet services (email, newsgroups).

4. Quasi-Internet services like Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL.

5. Slow but "real" Internet access. All content available but still had to ration use.

6. Fast, ubiquitous, unmetered, unthrottled Internet.

7. An ISP that doesn't care if you run a server.

While I strongly sympathize with anyone sitting at #6 or #7 who views a move to any previous step as a huge regression, I can't sympathize with denying people any kind of connectivity unless they can snap their fingers and manifest the infrastructure to enable #5. All of those previous steps served a purpose at the time.

Developing economies have an opportunity to learn from our mistakes as first mover, and leapfrog ahead to something more robust against all these threats we're facing today (centralization, stratification, eavesdropping, denial of service, walled gardens...).

BBSes were an artifact of the old phone infrastructure, so that's not a necessary phase, but otherwise the story would look roughly the same: Local communities gradually connect peer-to-peer and then interconnect. This time wirelessly, securely, without entrenched middlemen.

I think we're on different pages somewhat because you seem to be thinking mostly about challenges facing developing economies in various parts of the world, whereas I'm thinking mostly about the infrastructure, vampiric monopolies, and regulations in the USA, where we are mostly trying to (1) prevent regressions from #6 backwards, (2) move up places that sit at #5 for no reason other than monopoly ISPs, (3) improve infrastructure for true #5s.

If you are a poor American on a Lifeline phone (free phone provided by the government) with a very limited data plan, no one is (at this time) willing to subsidize unlimited services for this user. But maybe some companies, for their services, are willing to subsidize them. And in my opinion, it's better for the poor person to have access to some services than no services.

I think it's worse. It might provide some low quality entertainment as a TV replacement, which just takes up people's time. It might be in that person's interest at the time but not in the interest of society in general.

I don't like to tell others what is the best use of their time, or what "society" wants them to be doing. People are free to choose what to do with their own time.

There is no limit on my truconnect phone for calls texts or data. There are multiple companies set up outside the general relief office and I am eligible for a phone from each one; so, even if there wasn't a generous data plan, a combination of phones would solve that. As does using free wifi which is available at all libraries and police stations where I live.

Posting garbage about poor people's situations that is untrue only serves to hurt everybody. Please stop.

I have never heard of a government provided phone with unlimited data plan. I don't think the government should be providing a "combination of phones" for free to each poor person. I am happy you can use free WiFi. I think that if you want to watch YouTube and google is willing to pay for your data, that's OK and no one will be hurt.

I see your point and it does make some sense. But imagine this analogous situation, a poor American cannot afford the electricity bill for her home, and a lightbulb company offers to provide reduced-cost electricity with the conditions that (1) she can only use lightbulbs purchased from that company in her home, and (2) the electricity only powers the lightbulbs - no other appliances in the house can be turned on.

Now you could make the same argument that you made in your post, but I don't think the lightbulb company comes off looking so good.

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