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Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy

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Re: Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy

#11

Post by horsecaptin »

captn3m0 wrote: post #5
horsecaptin wrote: post #4

Facebook provides free access to Facebook / Wikipedia etc... then customers that have no access win because they get access and along with it, some pretty nifty tools to gain information and share news with their friends and family. On the other hand, if Facebook doesn't provide free internet, then all those people stay in the dark. What does net neutrality have to do with this? It's not those people are paying for a…

This is the "some internet access is better than none" argument. However, the end result is - facebook controlling internet access for those people - Zero Rating creates an imbalance in the ecosystem, favoring websites and services that can get into the walled garden - facebook gets to mine your usage data. There are better ways of improving internet access, such as : - The Mozilla Foundation runs a program with Gram…

Can't wait for other internet companies to compete with Facebook's free service and let people decide for themselves what they want. Some of them will probably want more internet, while others will be perfectly content with just a Facebook account.

Re: Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy

#14

Post by mkagenius »

cvs268 wrote: post #10
horsecaptin wrote: post #4

Facebook provides free access to Facebook / Wikipedia etc... then customers that have no access win because they get access and along with it, some pretty nifty tools to gain information and share news with their friends and family. On the other hand, if Facebook doesn't provide free internet, then all those people stay in the dark. What does net neutrality have to do with this? It's not those people are paying for a…

Its better to provide free as in freedom when attempting to provide internet to the masses. Claiming to provide free as in beer means either someone else is paying for it or/and you end-up paying for it in other forms i.e. you are the product they acquired and are being sold.

> i.e. you are the product they acquired and are being sold.

But that has been the case for more than a century. Similar example is Mozilla's - watch advertisement of this body lotion to get 50MB of data.

Re: Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy

#15

Post by r3bl »

captn3m0 wrote: post #6
r3bl wrote: post #3

I used that message box to contact TRAI, but I don't think that my message is exactly what Facebook expected. > Hey TRAI, you're doing an awesome job! > Net neutrality is awesome! Don't let shithead companies like Facebook from stop you from your goal. You're doing a good job!

FB won't be reporting each individual message to TRAI, I think. They'll just submit a few picks, and give out the aggregate number of people who submitted the form.

I'm pretty sure that nobody's going to read every message that gets submitted through that form (because there'll be thousands of them, if not millions), but still, I felt so outraged when I have read the text beneath the form that I had to type what I had in mind.

Re: Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy

#16

Post by Ar-Curunir »

horsecaptin wrote: post #4

Facebook provides free access to Facebook / Wikipedia etc... then customers that have no access win because they get access and along with it, some pretty nifty tools to gain information and share news with their friends and family. On the other hand, if Facebook doesn't provide free internet, then all those people stay in the dark. What does net neutrality have to do with this? It's not those people are paying for a…

This is economic imperialism. The underlying current of thought is that India is too poor/stupid/backwards to get its population online. That's pretty fucking racist.

And Facebook is hardly doing this out of any altruistic tendencies. These poor people, who've only ever seen a facebook-ized internet, become a cash cow for FB - they can exploit them however they please.

I trust the EFF much more than I trust FB:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/internetorg-not-neutra...

Re: Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy

#17

Post by Ar-Curunir »

magic_man wrote: post #7
captn3m0 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "some internet access is better than none" argument. However, the end result is - facebook controlling internet access for those people - Zero Rating creates an imbalance in the ecosystem, favoring websites and services that can get into the walled garden - facebook gets to mine your usage data. There are better ways of improving internet access, such as : - The Mozilla Foundation runs a program with Gram…

Did you never use these free AOL CDs when you were a kid. Yes they did provide access to the entire internet, but it was designed to get people to use AOL. I am not going to complain about free internet even if it is walled.

I'd rather not have Western companies filter what Indians can and cannot have under the assumption that India is too poor or backwards to get its shit done.

Re: Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy

#19

Post by enitihas »

I don't think people crying for net neutrality understand how many people in India still do not have Internet access. Even free access to facebook changes people's lives in a better way. I belong to a small village in eastern UP, and the Internet penetration is still very less there. The Internet has huge potential to change people's lives for the better, and I have experienced it in my own life. Lots of people still can't afford to pay for the Internet, and for those people, as well as for their children, getting access to a subset of the Internet, however small, means a lot.

Re: Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy

#20

Post by nitrogen »

enitihas wrote: post #19

I don't think people crying for net neutrality understand how many people in India still do not have Internet access. Even free access to facebook changes people's lives in a better way. I belong to a small village in eastern UP, and the Internet penetration is still very less there. The Internet has huge potential to change people's lives for the better, and I have experienced it in my own life. Lots of people still…

A little good now at the expense of a significant amount of future opportunity. In established markets this is called "dumping" -- giving something away to destroy competition.
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