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Comment by yesenadam | Hacker News Reader

>most time spent online is done via mobile devices, with the greatest portion of that time spent on social media

A lot of people in Phils seem to have a FB-connected mobile plan where they can chat on FB but not see the pictures on there, although you can send them pictures in the chat. And it only seems to connect them to FB, not the whole internet. Just a messenger app I guess. (Most of my close friends are in the Philippines, we chat on FB.)

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Philippines was the number one demographic of the very first large-scale social net - Friendster...

How would a mobile provider block pictures and other attachments inside a chat system? See a large transfer and kill the connection?

Also, in this scenario what would stop users from using domain fronting or encrypted SNI to access other Facebook services?

Facebook itself subsidizes a specific 'facebook data plan' with mobile providers. It loads free.facebook.com which specifically does things to keep data down also.

Yeah, that's it I think. They've said they're on the free plan or something. (I've never had a mobile phone so not up on the jargon!)

Also, in this scenario what would stop users from using domain fronting or encrypted SNI to access other Facebook services?

Or just tunnel their traffic through the chat itself:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9203946

Thanks - there's some interesting discussion on that page about the FB-only 'internet' from people who know a lot more about it than me.

> Also, in this scenario what would stop users from using domain fronting or encrypted SNI to access other Facebook services?

That any day the ISP can kill those "bugs" making them useless especially for those who brought those in forms of paid VPNs, and if it doesn't, they will "block" you from the service, from not allowing to initiate LTE connection and locked to 3G, to not connect to the cell site at all.

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