About Internet.org and net neutrality

Here's the full reply from India's SaveTheInternet.in coalition exposing Facebook's chicanery --> http://www.hindustantimes.com/technology-topstories/mr-zucke...

This piece can be instructive and useful to others in US/Europe & any country where such deceptive zerorated plans are trying to make their way in. Be it of FB or anyone else.

Zuck wants a walled-garden version of internet (with FB as gatekeeper) to be made free for the poor. We're saying poor Indians should have access to the same full open globally-connected internet as we all take for granted. And that free & fair competition will & should take care of things like access on the cheap, sachet-mktg etc.

As of today on my Vodafone India plan I can get a 2G plan starting for 22¢. Poor Indians that Zuck wants to target with his zerorated internet dot org spend $0.5 on ringtones. This twitter thread from Andresseen & Horowitz Parner, Benedict Evans has a good discussion about pricing & cheap access --> https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/588511768244162561

I will encourage anyone who is following NetNeutrality debate globally to keep an eye on India. (China is out of bounds). That's where all the action is.

And if you can help us punch above our weight at global level - please connect with us.

An interesting exchange in the comments on this post:

> Sagar Kamat: Mark The aspect of Internet.org that is in conflict with Net Neutrality is that FB chooses which services are offered for free to the users. That's an attractive way of getting new users hooked onto popular services. Why not just sponsor a certain data cap for users instead and let them decide which services they want to use? That will be in line with ur vision of internet for all as well as Neutral

> Mark Zuckerberg: We actually don't choose the services by ourselves. We work with local governments and the mobile operators to identify local services in each country.

> Cheenu Madan: So Mark, can you explain then how internet.org works in India? Did Reliance choose the services? Why then, Bing Search over Google Search (clearly better) for example?

... Sounds much like doublespeak. There's no actual addressing any concerns. Just "think of the chil^H^H^H^H villagers!"

"We fully support net neutrality." ... "Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services"

So if I try to access my own website via Internet.org, how does that work again?

Also note how instead of saying "certain websites", Internet.org provides access to "basic internet services". Slick try to redefine "basic" in terms of his own website. He says it "lowers the cost of accessing the internet" ... but that's not really true, since you cannot access the Internet via this system, only select services.

"saying that offering some services for free goes against the spirit of net neutrality. I strongly disagree with this."

No two rational people can disagree (with the same priors). Therefore saying you disagree is a cute/passive aggressive way of saying "you're wrong" or "you have wrong information". There is no doubt that "zero rating" aka "get FB for free" is directly against the concept of net neutrality. You can say you "disagree", but that's simply incorrect.

On the plus side, at least his piece was rather heavy handed so hopefully FB's goal will be clear to others and continued opposition. (Hopefully...)

P.S. The Internet is usually capitalized. (I know, I'm old or something.)

There is a lot of double-speak in this post by Zuckerberg. And it starts with a thinly veiled "think of the children". He talks about "basic Internet services", not clarifying that this is only access to a few sites, including Facebook, and says they respect net neutrality. As if those two things were not contradictory. To me this feels like it is about a market grab, camouflage, probably even to himself, as a humanitarian effort.

"It's too expensive to make the whole internet free."

Translation: "It is not lucrative enough to us to make the whole internet free. We only want you looking at things where we stand to make money off of you, not anyone else."

Sure, Facebook wants to help connect some of the poorest people in the world, but only if it's the company that stands to make money from the proposition.

Remember kids, if you're not paying, you're the product.

It's incontrovertible that internet.org throws net neutrality to the wind. The only question is whether, in this case, it's worth it. I guess he makes a decent argument in that regard, but it's disingenuous to claim that this isn't "violating the spirit of net neutrality."

It seems most people here are against this because of Facebook's (or other service providers') gain from it, but no one is arguing against Mark's actual point: "some access is better than none at all", which I think is more important.

Internet.org may not succeed at the end, because of the conflict of interests in many parties (corporate and political) involved in its running. But the idea of providing limited access for free is IMO very good and important, and arguing details before anything being done is at best unproductive.

All the people here already have internet access, and most without any limit or censorship. But can you try to think of this from POV of the users of internet.org? Not to think for the children in poor regions, but think AS those children.

Let me explain from my experience, where limit of access mostly comes from heavy censorship.

I was born in China at the end of the Culture Revolution. Fortunately, my family still had got TV when I was in elementary school, and we had internet when I was in high school. All the information, programs, news, cartoons, whatever contents from TV or internet were heavily censored. They were censored so heavily that I, as a kid, could not realize that they were censored at all. But I still enjoyed a lot of information, entertainment, knowledge from TV and internet as a kid. As an adult now, I hate and want to fight those censorship with all I have. But without TV or internet, I'd very unlikely to be able to code, or to write English, or anything I enjoy doing today.

To me, the limit of access that's forced by government doesn't differ much from the ones by corporates. But having some limited access to information is absolutely critical, when the ONLY other option is no access.

> Net neutrality ensures network operators don’t discriminate by limiting access to services you want to use.

Internet.org provides some services for free and other services... not at all. That certainly sounds like "limiting access" to me. He's saying they don't limit access to other services since you can keep paying for them exactly as you are now... which is exactly the same as the argument that speeding up traffic from some sources doesn't hurt anyone, since it's not like they're slowing down traffic from others; you can keep getting it exactly as you are now.

This is what net neutrality is all about. How can a non-free service compete on a level playing field with a privileged, free service (of which Facebook is one, naturally)?

I am not a Facebook user (let's say, the reason is x) so can't comment there, but he seems to be avoiding the main question. He was asked why "Facebook gets to chose which services will be available" to which he replied "telcos do, not Facebook", but the spirit of the question remains unanswered. Why telcos? How does that not conflict with net-neutrality?

There are two quotes from above I'd like to call out here:

1. "Net neutrality ensures network operators don’t discriminate by limiting access to services you want to use." - in a country where there are huge economic obstacles to connectivity and the internet is not affordable to everyone, offering certain services for free automatically discriminates against the services that are left out since they are not deemed to be "essential" by the government or local mobile operators. Also note that these countries don't have the most ethical of the governments (yes, I'm from India and have seen how the government works pretty closely), and mobile network operators are ultimately responsible to the share price of their stock, not the overall social welfare of the country.

2. "Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast lanes -- and it never will." This is true, but if one looks from a slightly different perspective, free lanes are as bad - maybe worse - than fast lanes. One has to admit that internet.org is ending up creating free lanes for certain services, in a country where the toughest obstacle to internet connectivity is not lack of availablity of mobile network infrastructure, but the economic situation of the country's poorest poor.

Like with all tough cookies, the solution doesn't lie in suggesting that this is better than nothing. It lies in admitting to the apparent problems in the internet.org ecosystem (clear lack of net neutrality) and working out the answers. A solution lies in offering the internet as a whole for free upto a basic data usage (limited by bytes, not services), working on innovations like the low flying drones or loon style projects which place mobile internet infrastructure in places where there's none (I know internet.org is already working on this), working on business and technical innovations to enable the mobile operators offer better, faster and cheaper services to more people and finally, working on faster, cheaper mobile devices. ($50 is not cheap enough in a country where median per capita income is as low as $616 (2013) - in comparison, the same figure for US is around $26k)

I understand internet.org was founded by Facebook to connect the remaining 4 billion - and it's a very noble initiative. But we have to be very careful of the long term.

Reading facebooks values, it makes me extremely sad to see what they're doing. No one wants to stand in the way of providing access of the internet to the poor. But it has to be done right. Saying that telecom providers recommend these services without any bias is untruthful. Furthermore internet.org is an initiative to empower people with tools. Not providing them unused/ rarely used services. I get that one of the values is move fast and break things but at what cost?

The general goal of the Internet.org project is honorable, it's a huge step into the future, giving to everybody an internet connection. Now, I have few concerns with timing and the modus operandi:

1. Facebook is actually working with governments in countries where poverty rate is extremely high, corruption is everywhere and the outcome is a logic so broken, that I can't see any advantage. They will have access to Facebook, but not to drugs, medical help or water.

2. Each country has a list of available services for free, this will discriminate some of others and, IMO, this is clearly against net-neutrality.

3. I am scared to see a company like Facebook (would be the same with Apple or Google) collaborating to expanding internet in the world, it looks like they are taking the chance to address all these new markets using the financial power they benefit.

They are all concerns based on opinions and assumptions, I hope to be proven wrong and that Facebook is doing it for a good, open world.

"Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast lanes -- and it never will. We’re open for all mobile operators and we’re not stopping anyone from joining. We want as many internet providers to join so as many people as possible can be connected."

Dear Mark, this open-to-ISP initiative is one way to look at what you're doing. Another one is closed-to-most-of-the-Internet. Let's turn it into an open-to-all-Internet initiative (web sites, mail, etc - all protocols), with no other costs for service providers (web sites, etc) than the amount of money they're paying to get online right now. Then I'll believe you're really trying to help those poor people by giving them free access to the full Internet, not only to what you think they must be allowed to access. Forgive me if I'm skeptical about how unbiased you are about it. Thanks.

> Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast lanes

Nah, no one cares about the carpool lanes -- they care about the toll roads.

Oddly, although this is how the NN debate gets talked about (providers limiting consumer access), that's not what the FCC has been arguing about in the US; they've been arguing about whether people can build private fiber between tier 1's and selectively route over it (in practical terms, it's always been "route my own traffic only").

For that matter, in the US an ISP can say "I refuse to route certain traffic to and from certain nodes"; if this were not the case you couldn't have any RBLs. India's legal situation is different from the US's (I've lived in India for the past couple of years and all I can say is that the legal situation is byzantine, confusing, and often self-contradictory) but that same basic capability is there: a provider can refuse to route arbitrary traffic. And this as-implemented is seen as a Good Thing.

So... where's the line for that? Is there a legal difference between a small whitelist and an arbitrarily-large blacklist? Does the intention of the provider matter? (And if it does, how long until "congestion" gets thought up as a way to limit traffic to the 16 walled gardens they want?)

If internet.org were to succeed, it will be SO interesting to see all the fun hacks that are created to proxy through the whitelisted sites.

What is really missing from this debate is how cheap the internet already is in India. It is not something that needs to be distributed for free.

On my old Nokia phone, I didn't even subscribe to a data plan, and was thus charged at per kb (I'm not sure exactly how much), but I used to read HN, check my email, facebook and much more over Opera Mini.

It hardly cost me 2 INR/day. Now that I am on a smartphone, costlier options are much better for me, since my smartphone uses far more data. But if you can own a 6000 INR smartphone, you can surely pay 100-200 bucks per month for data charges.

So what are the people who are pulling from internet.org proposing? Are they supplying more open internet? Are they providing access to these people/locations to all websites? Are they doing ANYTHING?

It's amazing what a little engagement can do for public perception.

It's undoubtedly a laudable goal, but why obfuscate the reality that mobile carriers are merely concerned about profit margins? I fail to see how this doesn't embody the pure essence of Net Neutrality. There is no shame in stating that mobile carriers must recoup costs, but I understand why he steers clear; the natural corollary is relatively unpalatable. To what level are Indian telecoms being remunerated for this "service?" If I had to venture a guess: rather handsomely.

Not entirely on topic, but sometimes I wonder what would have become of companies like Google and Facebook if they never went public.

I realize that the extra capital helps them better expand and compete, but does every startup have to aim to take over the world?

What's wrong with just providing a useful service to society and having enough revenue to cover your expenses and grow at a modest, organic pace without having to compromise your values?

I will go ahead and show Internet.org about how wrong they are in thinking that offering a few basic services will cover people up. Say they offer,

Google (or any search engine) - the search is useless if the sites returned are not accessible for free. Offering google for free and blocking the rest is like saying, "Hey, you can see all these trailers for free. Wanna see the movie? Pay us a truck load of money." And no, the "preview" is not enough. I cannot ask question on Stackexchange from the "preview", for instance.

Facebook - The people are most likely already communicating with each other. How sharing "pics" and "liking them" for free will give them "raw knowledge" is beyond my imagination. I, among many other people, am not a Facebook user and enjoy my life with all the productivity in the world.

Wikipedia - The thinking that wikipedia contains all the knowledge in the world, and we can get all the information from it is utter crap. Say a poor person in a village wants to learn web development. Tell me how exactly does Zuckerberg think that Wikipedia can teach him JavaScript? Wikipedia provides overviews, stories, and some details, but it can hardly be considered as the library of all books.

News sites - seriously? Radio stations are free, much more helpful, feasible, and have a more affordable infrastructure. And they would be limiting users to only selected news sites so the chances that they get a one-sided view of things is more than likely.

Skype - In India, the rates of phone calls is ridiculously cheap. Indian service providers provide the cheapest phone call rate in the entire world. The problem is not cost of the call rate, it is the lack of infrastructure. Network problems, dropping lines etc.

Cleartrip - Let me tell you something, no poor person will be able to use cleartrip or the likes to book anything since poor people in India don't sit in flights, they don't have credit and debit cards to make online transaction, they don't book hotels.

Anyways, getting a usable internet enabled device is more of problem, IMO. The Indian government still took the most authentic step to help the situation, by making the world's cheapest tablet (Aakash) with a fair spec set. If Internet.org expects poor children to stare at a 3" dull screen showing wikipedia or anything in tiny text all night which can harm their eyes, they really need to think again.

In case it in case it can help with anything:

http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/32wtn5/my_attempt_at_...

Internet.org is in clear violation of net neutrality and zuckerberg is trying to fool people.well does he want to do charity?do one thing.give at least 500mb 3g data free for all and foot the bill for it.now isn't that how charity works?

If Mark really believes in what he's saying, he shouldn't object to only making nonprofits like Wikipedia or OCW a part of the initiative. Facebook isn't an essential good.

> Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast lanes -- and it never will.

Wait what? It's basically blocking everything except their services, did I miss something?

Quick, someone develop a way to tunnel any website through Facebook. :)

Maybe disguise the http traffic as seemingly legit FB conversations and/or media.

One issue that it seems like Mark isn't acknowledging is the fact that participating in Internet.org will give a huge competitive advantage to the companies that are able to offer their services through that platform for free, however it is that they're able to arrange that. How could a competitor to one of these websites compete in that market segment when, in order to access it, you need to be on the "paid" Internet, while Facebook and these other services are available for free? How do you compete with free? (For example, a music streaming company HungamaPlay is available through Internet.org. How could a competitor reasonably achieve similar market share when the competitor's service causes users to be charged for data, while HungamaPlay is available for free through Internet.org?)

Will this create a further lock-in effect where, once users become accustomed to the sites they're using on Internet.org, they will keep using them for free even after paid Internet is affordable for them?

> Arguments about net neutrality shouldn’t be used to prevent the most disadvantaged people in society from gaining access or to deprive people of opportunity. Eliminating programs that bring more people online won’t increase social inclusion or close the digital divide.

Giving things away for free may not be the best way to accomplish that. Especially when the free services seem to favor certain business significantly under terms that appear to be secret. While it's true that some people are saying that no connectivity is preferable, these arguments are false dichotomies. If one's goal is connectivity, then one can provide access to the /entire/ Internet. If sites need to sign up in some program to cover the mobile networks' data transfer charges, or provide an ultra-low-bandwidth version of their site, then so be it -- but be transparent about how those agreements work, and keep the program open to any website to join in a straightforward way. Since Facebook chooses which services are available, Facebook essentially becomes the kingmaker for what services will become popular in those regions. How does Facebook know that it's reasonable to include HungamaPlay, for example? What if they're involved in payola, and they're offering streaming music for free only for artists that pay to have their music circulated widely? Now an artist needs to be available on HungamaPlay in order for their music to be widely known on the Internet in the region.

There are many concerning claustrophobic effects like this.

> It's too expensive to make the whole internet free. Mobile operators spend tens of billions of dollars to support all of internet traffic. If it was all free they'd go out of business.

Mark seems to be implying here that mobile networks are eating the cost today as a form of charity. Is that true? The implication is that scaling up the program will cause mobile networks to lose money. That would be the case if these mobile networks have decided to offer the service as a form of charity, but will not be the case if other companies like Facebook are covering the data transfer charges for Facebook users. What's really going on, and why is it difficult for me to learn about how these deals work? If I want to pay the costs to include my site, why can't I do that? (And if this is an option, then why isn't it a simple part of the dialog around this initiative?) Has anyone said, "Every website is welcome to participate - here's how to do it"? The Internet.org website seems to be largely marketing flash, and scant on real information about how website owners could participate and make their site or app available.

Furthermore, the argument seems shaky. If the mobile network is willing to donate $X worth of data per month per user for use of "basic services", then why not permit a similar amount for any website? With this approach, offering free access to the entire Internet does not need to cost more than the cost they're planning for now -- except the users get more value from unrestricted access. The fact this is not how it works suggests to me that Facebook is paying the mobile network to make it all work out, and is probably bringing in other services besides Facebook in part to legitimize the initiative (the goal being to drive growth in developing countries). Whoever is paying for this believes it's worth their while from the competitive advantage they're getting. Which is fine, but let's not pretend that charity is the primary goal in that case.

Folks might feel like there is less of a "slippy slope problem" if there was more transparency on what it takes for sites to join Internet.org. What are participating sites paying to be part of the program, or are they part of it for free, and if so, who makes the decision to include them, and on what basis? What would it take for me to make my blog available on Internet.org? Are mobile networks or Facebook now in charge of deciding whether there's merit to including a site? They must be, if they're the one deciding which sites to offer, and are covering all the cost themselves. Alternatively, if sites are charged to become members, what are the charges, and how can I choose to participate? Is the program open to any sites, and if not, what are the criteria for inclusion? Are there exclusivity deals?

If the goal of Internet.org is to be taken seriously as a charitable endeavor, all of this information should be publicly available. (And if it is, I would appreciate a pointer to it, since I haven't been able to find anything on Internet.org) And if it's not a charity but a business endeavor, then the principals should understand that folks will be concerned with handing significant "monopoly" power to one entity to define what the Internet is in those areas. The initiative is in danger of seeming like a coalition of companies that have decided that they want to expand into emerging markets, and have banded together to create a monopoly on information by offering it for free there, while excluding competitors from the network and putting them at a disadvantage by forcing them to compete with free.

He the fellow breaking internet into pieces and breaking net neutrality.

He is the fellow breaking internet into pieces for promoting facebook