Hacker News Reader

Comment by eklavya | Hacker News Reader

It's not like people will stop getting an internet connection. They will still have it. They will open other websites as well. The traffic from a particular website is not significant anyway so I don't think they will go to/prefer websites with free access only. Facebook right now has no competition, they would have used it anyway and it something better comes along people won't care about the few MBs/month it costs them.

ISPs have already been giving free WhatsApp plans and all, nothing changed for telegram et al I suppose.

View on HN

IMHO, the "connectivity for everyone" thing is a thin cover of "controlled distribution channels for anyone who can't afford better".

> people won't care about the few MBs/month it costs them.

This initiative is targeted at the very broad population who can barely afford an Internet connection and computers of any kind. The cost of a few MB/month is something they do worry about. Besides:

> The traffic from a particular website is not significant anyway so I don't think they will go to/prefer websites with free access only.

The traffic from accessing a particular website once, in a "typical" browsing session, seems insignificant to you. I don't think the traffic from today's ad-ridden news websites is so insignificant for someone who doesn't surf the web all day.

In typical Facebook fashion, they describe this as something meant to "bring connectivity for everyone", when what it really aims to "bring a certain kind of connectivity, to a few certain websites, for everyone".

If you have a look at the list of websites included there, this is more than "but they'll only use Facebook for social networking, which they're already doing". They'll also only use BBC, Reuters and Times of India to read news and political opinions, TimesJobs and Babajob to look for jobs and so on. I.e. there will be only a few select information sources and sources of employment in this "connectivity for everyone" thing. This has considerable consequences, e.g. no (cheap!) way to check sources on science-related news or blacklisting "unwanted" companies from the only two widely-available job-seeking websites.

Just google "Net Nutrality" and see what's so wrong about this initiative. People smarter than me have talked about the matter, so better read what they have to say, but I'll just say that the reason the Internet is so successful in bringing all sorts of ideas to fruition is that it doesn't discriminate ideas, and lets all information flow equally. If there are companies whose ideas are worth more than others, or are cheaper to reach - you no longer have a free(as in free speach) internet.

I know(I think) about "Net Neutrality". There is a difference between discriminating between packets and charging more for particular traffic and providing access to some sites for free. They are not charging more for a particular kind of traffic and so I assume they are Net Neutral.

Did I miss something?

They are charging more for particular types of traffic! Anything other than a select few sites is being charged.

No, you are bending it. They are charging the same they were before and there is no change in that regard. They are still charging same regardless of what the packet contains. Some sites are paying to be subsidised. They are paying for a service, what's wrong? You want to compete? Get your site subsidise as well. Someone has to pay either the customer or the provider, customer doesn't have to pay more for particular traffic. Do you expect ISPs to provide all data for free?

> They are still charging same regardless of what the packet contains.

The issue here is that this is not internet. Facebook has partnered with a local ISP that decided that some packets (say, those from Wikipedia) can pass for free but others (say, those from GMail) cannot. Wikipedia is not (AFAIK) an AS; as such it doesn't have a deal with Reliance Communications at the internet level. And yet, there is now some business for Reliance to transport Wikipedia's packets. This is completely breaking the internet as it is designed (and as it works best)

All the chatter we've seen with ISPs and content providers is because AS interco is highly contentious. In this case we're not talking (only) about AS; we're talking about websites having to bend to an ISP for it to behave as expected. It's absolutely not ok.

> customer doesn't have to pay more for particular traffic

Of course he doesn't have to, because he doesn't even have access to it, whether there is a route from website to ISP or not. That's the horrible part of it: now peering with an AS is not enough, you need some other arrangement.

> Do you expect ISPs to provide all data for free?

I expect users to pay for laying cables, then everyone peers with everyone else and traffic is free. But we're not there yet.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_%28Internet%...

While looking at this from the point of view of AS is helpful to understand the ISP industry, it does not help to understand why giving away things for free is bad.

Lets look at the first thing that springs to mind about giving stuff away for fee: humanitarian aid. If a larger food producer "dump" free food into a region, this will decrease the incentives for local grown food, while driving up prices of alternative source of nutrition. A "evil" organization could, I guess, use humanitarian aid as a method to destroy local industry and cement themselves as the only game in town. The question then becomes, is the concept of humanitarian aid wrong and could there be safeguards that will prevent misuse.

I would suggest that non-profit charity that gives out food, medicin and knowledge is an acceptable line in the sand, while commercial monopolies and for-profit price dumping is bad. This still enables the good aspects of "free", while preventing bad actors from exploiting the side effects of giving away things for free. In the context of Internet this would mean that Wikipedia and similar non-profit information sharing sites would be acceptable, but not for-profit companies like facebook and google.

I think you are saying that access to some sites is blocked? That is not the case (for most). I see that internet.org is now accessible only from Reliance network. But it won't end nicely for internet.org.

I am yet to see a website being blocked because the site didn't pay for the "privilege" to be accessible. I am just seeing some sites becoming exclusive (to their own detriment) and some sites being provided for free. I don't see a problem here.

The ones trying to be exclusive will fall hard face first. The ones not being provided for free will not be affected. People will continue to pay for internet access, they are not going to limit themselves to 32 websites. It might be helpful for those unprivileged Indians who can not afford an internet connection though.

I would love to see the peering style take off too :)

The new Net Neutral laws had an intentional loophole. An ISP can provide cheaper access to sites out of only good will. aka not in a business partnership or affiliation.

I do not know if facebook is paying for this service though.

I find it funny that people only seem to start caring when there is a "bad" name on it (I didn't hear much else than praise for Wikipedia Zero, for example).

And the primary complaint seems to be that they might do something bad maybe, but they haven't yet (specifically, they might start charging more (why? because they are bad of course) for standard commections)

for >90% of things, the "short" and long tail of businesses are going to both cost money to access their sites, the economy isn't going to erupt in flames

Reply on news.ycombinator.com