Facebook’s Plan to Wire the World
time.com
time.com
Because people that consistently check their own motives and that are concerned their own hubris might steer them into doing something awful are suffering from neurosis and are probably autistic. This article is little more than verbal fellatio.
I don't know where it will end up, but it was one of those projects that I feel like I would have been proud to work on.
Why would someone who eats nothing but rice take pictures of their meals?
Not to mention the fact that in my experience people in developing countries are just as human as we are, and like showing off their relative superiority to others in all but the most dire situations.
Even if only a third of internet users are FBers, then increasing the users by 4.3 Billion will increase FB users by 1.4 Billion. Interesting to see the effort for old phones.
>First, you look at a particular geographical region that’s underserved, Internet-wise, and figure out what content might be compelling enough to lure its inhabitants online. Then you gather that content up, make sure it’s in the right language and wrap it up in a slick app. Then you go to the local cell-phone providers and convince as many of them as possible that they should offer the content in your app for free, with no data charges. There you go: anybody who has a data-capable phone has Internet access—or at least access to a curated, walled sliver of the Internet—for free.
So you subsidize access to your app, and this counts as getting people online? Come on Time.
so...did you read the article? I'd suggest reading to at least the "Colonialism 2.0" section before wondering if "Time is aware of this distinction". The section heading is a pretty good clue that they are.
From the article:
> Ultimately, these points of view don’t exclude each other. Zuckerberg can be both enriching himself and other people, both expanding and consolidating Facebook’s dominance and saving lives, all at the same time. He’s both empowering people (by giving them Internet access) and disempowering them (by making them into consumers and marketing targets).
Personally I find the article's take a lot more interesting (and probably closer to the truth) than a knee-jerk response of "zuckerberg had his human parts replaced by robot parts and so only cares about marketshare now".
Charities and for-profit companies both need money, so they have more in common than you think. You need to at least break even in order to scale, and making a profit is not that different.
Assuming you start out as the CEO of Facebook and want to get everyone in the world at least somewhat online, is there a better way to go about it?
If the focus is on the latter in the name of the former then either they are a fool or we are thought to be.
But critically examining whether access to facebook is even close to the optimal way to go about this is extremely important. Zuckerberg gains a huge amount of power once the majority of the world is using his service -- and this power is of a type and scope that we've never encountered before in human history. There is zero doubt that he knows this, and we're kidding ourselves by ignoring his motivations and only focusing on what appear to be the immediate benefits.
We also cannot conflate the actual service being provided with our previous decades of experience of a free and neutral internet. We don't really know what dynamics we're foisting on the rest of the world with a project like this, so it's pretty important that we engage in discussions with the actual people that it would effect.
Take, for instance, the fact that there are a few mesh networks being set up in Africa. Do the people implementing and communicating over these networks want Zuck's facebook-internet? Have we asked? Have we considered that a conversation with those people would lend us a perspective that's basically mandatory if are to believe that we're actually being charitable rather than just making ourselves feel charitable?
This is dangerous territory we're moving into, both ethically and strategically. We're setting up power structures that we may never be able to deconstruct.
[0] http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...
The real issue is water rights, land rights, and a traditional seed exchange program.
We have this notion that political self-determination is the end goal - a population having zero economic control we see as irrelevant. That's the issue in these places - they don't have a sovereignty over their own economy.
The only thing facebook could lead to for them is a popular uprising - but that will only be successful if there's a large enough middle class.
What may be more likely is that facebook will act as a further usurpation of the independent critical thought necessary for self-determination because people will have an effective propaganda tool with them at all times.
Imagine if a country wanted to filter out anti-government posts in a users news feed - giving disproportionate voice to a vocal pro-establishment minority; making them look like the silent majority; manufacturing consent as literally as possible. This will happen in your lifetime.
What a lovely future.
Zuckerberg is undoubtedly at least partially motivated by growing FB's footprint these markets (he's likely much more motivated by legacy than by money, especially at this point), and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think we should celebrate his efforts to remove barriers to the internet in developing countries; it will do good for many people other than Facebook shareholders.
When William Gibson talked about the future not being evenly distributed, I think he could've meant that on two fronts: one being equality, and the other being across any individual. With the latter, it will mean someone living in a slum but with a smartphone connected to satellites or balloons.
You say that as though it's mutually exclusive. It's not. In fact, one implies the other.