Comment by kamikazi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kamikazi | Hacker News Reader

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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.

> 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.

To be honest you are not offering an alternative to Zuck's expanding coverage, you are offering the status quo which for a person without any internet sucks. You can claim Zuck's plan is corrupting and should be stopped for that reason alone but I doubt you'd find agreement from the people who don't have any access under your system but would get limited access under Zuck's system.

The idea of net neutrality grew out of common carrier ideas, most similarly to the telcos. You could pick up your phone you can call basically anyone, it costs the same as anyone else you called in the same location... except some companies could set up toll free numbers to make it a little bit easier to call them. That analogy seems to work strongly for what FB is doing here.

The fact that FB and Bing are paying for "toll free numbers" would make a lot of other businesses like Google do the same. The competition would tend to lower prices as if 90% of the traffic on the telco lines are subsidized by BigCo's they only need to charge 10% for the remainder. In this instance it all seems like a net good from the expanding access angle.

edit: nileshtrivedi's comment below[1] has a much stronger argument against Zuck's plan:

The spectrum belongs to the public and the license was given with conditions and expectations of good faith (such as neutrality).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9393040

So that seems fairly cut and dried, if those are the conditions for the spectrum license and it seems reasonable that they are. Still we could consider whether the greater good of expanded access might outweigh the benefits of strict net neutrality and the answer to that might not be the same everywhere. It might be interesting to see how full internet access develops in two similar neighboring areas with completely different regulatory regimes here.

Toll-free analogy doesn't work - https://medium.com/@amod/the-broken-analogy-toll-free-vs-zer...

This post is from CTO of Flipkart (India's #1 ecomm site) who supported NetNeutrality & was opposed to his own org's initial plans of getting into Airtel's zero-rated plans (akin to internet.org).

Two days back Flipkart withdrew themselves from those plans convinced that zerorating violates Net Neutrality.

Here's a (India's #2 probably) travel site withdrawing from internet.org with solid lucid reasoning that answers more of your Qns - http://blog.cleartrip.com/2015/04/15/cleartrip-is-standing-u...

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¢.

I agree, but then why the wailing and gnashing of teeth? They've released an inferior product for only 22¢ less than the superior alternative, doesn't seem like such a threat. Just let it fail, no?

Personally, I do think the name is fraudulent (and they should be forced to change it), but the service in itself seems like a non-issue to me.

You are right. The problem is with the telcos they are partnering with. The spectrum belongs to the public and the license was given with conditions and expectations of good faith (such as neutrality).

Facebook can build a wired network with only FB/Whatsapp available on it. No license required and no expectations of neutrality (they still shouldn't call it an "internet connection" though). It's not the Internet if links don't work or one link costs more than another. The telco can charge for data, the website can charge for its content. The telco should NOT charge a link based on its destination.

"You must be on the Reliance network to use Internet.org. If you'd like to access these websites for free, use a SIM card from Reliance" --

What I see when I visit internet.org from my wired & wireless, non-Reliance telco.

Think of this as FB passing off 'free AOL CDs in the mail' as The Internet in India for millions of first timers who are getting sub-$100 smartphones, using poor villagers--& benevolent Wikipedia to provide covering fire.

Think of this as FB passing off 'free AOL CDs in the mail'

Yeah, and what a stronghold AOL has now over the US market, eh?

Yeah, so let's repeat that - this time in a vastly different market, way crazier demographic variety, far different socio-economic & growth conditions and tech/internet revolution which has exponentially changed for good since then.

What can go wrong? At the most we are risking only a generation of Indians thinking FB as internet (just like Indonesians) who will then graduate to think Chrome icon as the browser (just like people thought of IE shortcuts on their Win95 desktops).

Let's allow the same mistakes but this time execute it better. I can get behind that.

it's not a superior vs inferior product. This was just an example to show that telcos are making money at the entry level too & they should (screenshot - http://i.imgur.com/gpsgRLh.png). This data plan has nothing to do with FB or internet.org.

Just a 2G data plan that I can use to surf any site. Fb/internet.org on the other hand is free to users & paid for (or howsoever they do it), decided by a secret cabal behind the scenes between telcos/FB/govt bodies (mark's words) and whoever else is monopolistic enough to be at the table.

Perhaps I didn't understand your question?

I'm saying that FB/Internet.org is an inferior product (since it's limited to a few services) in the same market as the Vodafone plan, which only costs a few cents more. If so, then what's the problem? FB/Internet.org will likely just fail to attract any significant number of users.

Defaults matter. In Europe, 10% people opted in for organ donation. But when the mechanism was switched to an opt-out, only 10% actually opted out.

True - though that's mostly applicable because people don't really care if their organs are donated.

But any case, I don't see the default here; people have to choose the telco(s) that implement Internet.org, and sign up for it, no?

Is that like saying Microsoft shouldn't have been penalized for bundling IE because the user chose the machine which came bundled with Windows which came bundled with IE? (Just so you know, telecom cartels are a reality - at least in India)

I don't see how is it comparable. What is Internet.org bundled with?

Bundled with the mobile service (Reliance in India, for eg)

@icebraining I can't reply in the thread so posting here.

Other internet data packages are bought explicitly by the user, and treat websites neutrally.

How is it bundled anymore than any other mobile data package?

The problem is akin to being a frog in the well.

Millions of first-time internet users will be onboarded (using shady mktg techniques - that's just how things work on the ground where it gets real dirty) onto free flavors of handpicked services.

They have no idea of real internet. Please see the very first link I posted which gives our full reply. It answers your Qn in depth.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com